"Grappling with the loneliness epidemic, the damaging role of social media on face-to-face socialising, and young people's struggles to interact with peers in the post-pandemic era, psychotherapists look for an explanation in the lack of 'community'. Sociologists talk about community as a solution for childcare shortages and the best way to support nuclear families. Anthropologists remind us about the power of collective rituals, and bring up examples of culturally diverse models of communal life."
"Being a parent, a university professor, a citizen, an inhabitant of a rapidly warming planet, it's hard not to recognise the damage that the undermining of communal ties has brought about at both individual and societal levels in the past decades, in which the spread and the normalisation of the neoliberal order has remade political, economic and social life. Yet, the diversity of problems that tend to be associated with the (presumed) lack or weakness of community should give us pause"
Calls for community span psychotherapy, sociology, anthropology and climate science, framing communal ties as solutions for loneliness, childcare gaps, ritual cohesion, economic sharing and youth social struggles. The ubiquity of community as remedy prompts scrutiny about what kind of community is being advocated and how 'community' is defined. Personal positions — parent, academic and citizen facing climate change — underscore observed harms from weakened communal ties over recent decades and the role of neoliberal normalization in remaking political, economic and social life. The diversity of problems linked to presumed communal decline invites examination of why people left communal forms and what continues to push individuals away.
Read at Aeon
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