Community

Community is a product of communication. Communication with those who are familiar to us provides opportunities for trust to develop. But if there is no communication between people living in the same geographical area, how can there be trust or any sense of community? In urban environments, people are constantly dealing with strangers, or with people whom they know within one specialised compartment of life, such as the photocopier service technician, or the clerk to whom one pays the rates. Even friends often only see each other occasionally and in pre-arranged special contexts such as a dinner party.

The Australian Community Survey conducted by Edith Cowan University and NCLS Research found that there was less overlap between social, work and home life in urban than in rural areas. In a paper written by Alan Black and Philip Hughes and delivered by Alan Black at an international conference on the quality of urban life held in Singapore in February 2000 it was reported that in Australia:

• only 20 per cent of urban dwellers said most of their social acquaintances knew each other, compared with 50 per cent of people in rural areas of less than 2000 people;

• only 7 per cent of urban dwellers knew their neighbours well enough to know many of their personal concerns, compared with 20 per cent of people in small rural areas (Black and Hughes, 2000).

Trust and Expert Systems

How then can trust be built in urban areas? The surprising fact is that reported levels of trust in local people are nearly as high in many urban areas as they are in rural areas, and trust in ‘most Australians’ is significantly higher.

The social theorist, Anthony Giddens, suggests that in the modern world much trust relates to ‘expert systems’ (Giddens, 1990). These systems govern the activities in many parts of life, involving many people in highly specialised occupations. The provision of utilities such as water or electricity, the construction and selling of houses, food, clothes, or services such as education, banking or the mass media all involve large-scale systems with a variety of experts. No one person could have the expertise to work in every part of the system. Every system is dependent on the combined and specialised knowledge and skills of a variety of people.

Often trust involves confidence in the system itself. The parent trusts the teacher, not because the teacher is personally known, but because of trust in the whole education system: in the methods of training and employment of teachers, in the checks within the system which ensure that people do the tasks for which they were employed, and in the government of the local school.

A multitude of systems check, govern, regulate and provide counter-measures for other expert systems. Regulations are established by government regarding buying and selling, employment and retrenchment, contracting and fulfilling contracts. Media and consumer groups assist in ensuring some transparency of other systems. Legal systems hold people within systems accountable for their actions. Trust is dependent on the working of the whole society.

Professionalism

This has important implications for clergy and churches, apart from its general implications for the building of community life. In urban areas, most people living around a church will have little or no knowledge of the personal reputation of the people involved. Their trust in the local church will depend, to some extent, in their trust in the whole ‘church system’. It will depend on the levels of professionalism among clergy as a whole, and on the systems of checks and balances through which the integrity of the church, its patterns of organisation and leadership, are maintained. It is not surprising then that the Australian Community Survey found that the cases of sexual abuse by members of the clergy brought to the attention of the public by the media had contributed to a decline in confidence in the church and in actual church attendance.

Visible and transparent systems for the maintenance of the ethical integrity of church organisations and clergy, put into place by denominational organisations, contribute not only to justice but to the overall levels of social trust in urban Australia.

Philip Hughes

References:

Black, Alan and Philip Hughes. 2000. Social capital and the quality of life in cities. In Second International Conference on the Quality of Life in Cities, ed. ICQOLC 2000, 1:565-574. Singapore: ICQOLC 2000.

Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

The Australian Community Survey, conducted by researchers from NCLS Research and Edith Cowan University, was made possible by a Collaborage Grant from the Australian Research Council, and the support of Anglicare (NSW) and the Board of Mission of the Uniting Church (NSW). The research was jointly supervised by Prof. Alan Black and Dr Peter Kaldor. The research team included John Bellamy, Keith Castle and Philip Hughes.
New Book on
Social Capital
In March 2000, the Australian Institute of Family Studies published Social capital and public policy in Australia, edited by Ian Winter.

It is an excellent book introducing the notion of social capital and exploring its origins and development. A variety of essays explore social capital in Australia, its nature, measurement and application in business, non-profit organisations, government, community health, and education. A chapter by Philip Hughes, John Bellamy and Alan Black explores developing social trust through values education.

Available from AIFS, 300 Queen Street, Melbourne, 3000. Tel: (03) 9214-7888; fax: (03) 9214-7839.