Introduction
Much attention continues to be focused on local neighbourhoods as centres of social solidarity. Place-based communities are understood to facilitate mechanisms of mutual aid and self-sufficiency which underpin a range of policy aims, including resilience, sustainability and increased civic engagement (Morris and Gilchrist, Reference Morris and Gilchrist2011; Wilding, Reference Wilding2011; Peeters, Reference Peeters2013), whilst the absence of local interactions and familiarity with one's neighbours is understood to limit access to social capital (Lindsay, Reference Lindsay2010), and to increase vulnerability, loneliness and reliance on service provision (Victor et al., Reference Victor, Scambler, Bowling and Bond2005; Heylen, Reference Heylen2010; Windle et al., Reference Windle, Francis and Coomber2011). As a result, considerable energy is devoted to (re)discovering community spirit and building ‘connected communities’ through numerous top-down initiatives. However, attempts to shape community in particular ways frequently overlook how patterns of social engagement are embedded in the everyday interactions that constitute people's social worlds, and how and why experiences and meanings of community vary (Creasy et al., Reference Creasy, Gavelin and Potter2008). Furthermore, the relentless focus on the ‘warmly persuasive’ (Williams, Reference Williams1983: 76) nostalgic view of community which suffuses contemporary policy and practice has meant that its ‘downsides’ (Portes, Reference Portes1998), and the tensions and divisions that exist within neighbourhoods (Wallace, Reference Wallace2007, Reference Wallace2010), tend to be ignored. Such issues have implications for the idealisation of a particular form of social solidarity as a mould into which all ‘functional’ social relations should fit, and suggest a need to better understand how local patterns of social relations are shaped and experienced.
This article draws on case study research carried out in a low-income neighbourhood in Leeds, anonymised as ‘North Woods’, to trace the influence of patterns of work, leisure and housing on patterns of local social engagement over time, and to explore participants’ understandings and experiences of community. It is argued that changes in the broader contexts within which communities are situated, and in the conditions within which people live, can lead to social ‘disorganisation’ within local neighbourhoods, through the undermining of both the ‘relations of similarity’ and ‘relations of contiguity’ which underpin community (Maxwell, Reference Maxwell2010: 53). The intention is to demonstrate how people make and ‘do’ community in particular contexts and why contemporary communities often are not centred upon particular places, and to challenge the idea that an apparent decline in place-based community necessarily indicates a trend towards ‘antisocial individualism’ (Mooney, Reference Mooney2010: 2), or a lack of a sense of duty and responsibility towards others. The article provides background on the research project and some key statistics about the case study area; it then gives a summary of the historical context of the local neighbourhood; and finally it focuses on participants’ understandings and experiences of community and social engagement in the present day.
Background to the research and case study area
The research project on which this article is based explored the different ways in which people participated, or not, in their local neighbourhood, including both formal and informal modes of engagement. Issues around community, belonging and the informal relationships and encounters which occurred between local residents emerged as key themes from the research, not only in how they shaped people's civic engagement and involvement with local organisations, but also in terms of the light these themes threw onnto contemporary policy and theory about community. The research used in-depth narrative interviews with seventeen local residents and five local stakeholdersFootnote 1 alongside ethnographic research into key local events, activities and organisations and desk-based research into the social and economic history of the local area. The interviews explored experiences of formal and informal modes of participation, and perceptions of the (non)participation of others. Participants were asked about their relationships with other local residents, and the informal support mechanisms in which they were involved, as well as their sense of belonging to the local community. Within the research, efforts were made to distinguish between ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘community’, employing the idea of ‘neighbourhood-as-space’ (Meegan and Mitchell, Reference Meegan and Mitchell2001: 2175). Community was defined in terms of both relationships and interactions and ‘imagined’ dimensions (Anderson, Reference Anderson1983; Hoggett, Reference Hoggett1997).
The case study neighbourhood is located on the outskirts of an inner-city ‘wedge’, a few miles from Leeds city centre. The area is relatively small and comprised of four Super Output Areas (SOAs), including around 3,200 properties with a total population of 7,828 (ACORN, 2009: 2). The majority of the area is comprised of an housing estate built in the early twentieth century, and roughly equal proportions of owner occupiers (46 per cent) and social housing tenants (45 per cent) live in the neighbourhood, with the rest being private tenants (ACORN, 2009: 12). The area has a limited number of shops, a primary school, a children's centre, community centre, and a YMCA, as well as a Working Men's Club and two churches. A large majority, 95 per cent of local residents, are from a White British ethnic background, with relatively lower proportions of ethnic minority residents than in Leeds as a whole (ACORN, 2009: 10). The ACORN (2009: 2) category profile shows that 65 per cent of local residents experience relative disadvantage and are classed as ‘hard pressed’, with high numbers of ‘struggling families’ and ‘burdened singles’. There are fairly high numbers of disadvantaged older people living in the area, and 21 per cent of local residents are classed as ‘post-industrial pensioners with a limiting long term illness’. However, within the area 12 per cent are classed as ‘secure families’ and 28 per cent of local residents are classified as ‘comfortably off’. One of the four SOAs (Area A) which make up the case study area is ranked in the most deprived 10 per cent in the country for the Index of Multiple Deprivation, including being in the most deprived 3 per cent for both crime and living environment deprivation, and the bottom 10 per cent for income deprivation affecting children, education, skills and training deprivation, and health deprivation and disability. Another (Area B) is in the 3 per cent most deprived for living environment deprivation, and the lowest 10 per cent for crime, whilst the other two areas have no scores in the lowest 3 per cent or 10 per cent.
Tracing social engagement over time
Early years
The majority of the houses on the North Woods estate were built during the 1920s and 1930s to house tenants from local slum clearances in nearby North Ville. From its beginnings, the North Woods area included both privately owned and social housing, including private streets surrounding the social housing estate, and some privately owned houses within the estate itself. Anne, a resident since the late 1930s, recalled the process of slum clearance, and spoke of how her family and others had ‘come up here to get a better life’ from the back-to-back terraces in North Ville. The majority of local residents in paid work worked in key local workplaces, particularly the local forge, as well as tailors, mills and the local quarry. Concerns about community cohesion were seemingly present from the early days of council housing provision, due to the fact that slum clearances frequently disrupted existing networks of mutual support and sociality (Ravetz, Reference Ravetz2001). Alongside people's dislocation from familiar areas, this often led to an absence of trust and a increased tendency for people to ‘keep themselves to themselves’ (Willmott and Young, Reference Willmott and Young1957: 122). In contrast, participants recalled North Woods being like ‘one big family’, with many of the new residents sharing friendship and kinship networks within the neighbourhood. Many had moved from streets close by the new estate, but also had a sense of solidarity derived from shared work and leisure activities and a similarity of economic status, which often provided ‘the glue which affected how communities functioned’ (Jones and Murie, Reference Jones and Murie2006: 138).
The regular rhythms of both domestic and paid labour, such as weekly wash days and pay days, seem to have meant that the timetables of local residents tended to be fairly well synchronised, and that social encounters and interactions were relatively predictable. For example, Barry talks about the men meeting in the pub, and Anne and Eileen about the women meeting out shopping:
there used to be a pub called the Wood Green. And we all used to go in there when we’d finished work, especially on a Friday when we got paid. (Barry)
When the women came to do their shopping, they all stood and talked, and everybody would discuss things with them. It’d be, ‘Oh, and have you heard so-and-so and so-and-so?’ ‘Right, we’ll put a stop to that’. (Eileen)
Informal networks of information sharing, or ‘gossip’, facilitated informal modes of social control amongst residents, which sometimes involved verbal or physical intimidation:
If there were people burgling houses and stuff, and you found out who it were – especially if they broke into pensioners’ and stuff – certain people would go round and give them a good hiding. Whether they broke their legs or not . . . or what. But they got told, ‘Keep out of people's property’. (Barry)
Information sharing also enabled mutual aid; for example, Barry told the story of when the local men from the pub had clubbed together to buy and deliver a food hamper to an older resident who had been burgled.
Numerous opportunities for social engagement were available within the local neighbourhood, including various local leisure activities organised by organisations such as the tenants’ association and local church. Anne and Eileen discussed their memories of estate carnivals in which they were involved, including Anne's role as ‘Miss North Woods’ during the early 1950s. Formal provision such as this can to some extent be seen as evidence of the perceived need to develop ‘community spirit’ amongst the residents of the new council estates to allay concerns about social fragmentation (Ravetz, Reference Ravetz2001). But participants also recalled examples of residents organising collective activities amongst themselves, so, for example, Dorothy talked about communal bonfire celebrations on her street:
We used to have communal bonfires across the road. It was because we couldn't afford a whole evening's worth of fireworks, and so we thought ‘We’ll all get together’, so that's what we used to do.
Similarly, Barry spoke about the numerous events and activities which took place at the local pub, including rugby matches, the local ‘pigeon section’ (a racing pigeon club), and pool tournaments. Other events happened through the local church, such as garden parties and coffee mornings, and the church was described as a kind of ‘social hub’. Shared activities were in part facilitated by the availability of women organisers who were not in paid work, and again underpinned by commonalities in economic circumstance and shared interests. Many of the activities discussed by participants were intergenerational, although there were some clear divisions in terms of gender.
Whilst participants’ recollections tend towards nostalgia for the past, the close-knit nature of the neighbourhood is of course unlikely to have simply created a world of cosy social relations, and there is no intention here to perpetuate the myth of ‘proletarian bonhomie in the face of hardship’ (Wallace, Reference Wallace2010: 57). It is likely that frictions, tensions and conflict will have existed amongst neighbours, and some of the more oppressive dimensions of close-knit communities are hinted at in Barry's account of the physical intimidation of wrong-doers. What is demonstrated is the presence of the kinds of ‘frequent and intense interaction’ (Bauman, Reference Bauman2001: 48) which historically underpinned the experience and meaning of community in the case study area. The solidarities and mutual support mechanisms described emerged to some extent from necessity and a sense of interdependency and commonality amongst local residents, and resonate with accounts of similar neighbourhoods (for example, see Wilmott and Young, Reference Willmott and Young1957; Damer, Reference Damer1989; Bott, Reference Bott2003; Lupton, Reference Lupton2003). However, the shared experiences upon which the local community was built were eroded during the late twentieth century through changes in work and housing, and a general ‘emptying out’ of the neighbourhood.
Later years
During the latter half of the twentieth century, against a background of deindustrialisation, the local workplaces in which many North Woods residents were employed closed down or relocated. The forge finally closed in 2003, although the workforce had diminished steadily for many years before this:
When I first became a councillor [in 1979], a lot of people were still working at the forge, and they were earning reasonable money. So the estate had a lot of skilled . . . working class, really. Obviously, it was the Thatcher years when unemployment began to rise . . . the Forge was declining, and in fact there was a general industrial decline in the area. And people are quite bitter about the Forge closing, still, because they lost their jobs and because it sort of dribbled out at the end. There wasn't a good settlement for people either, because the firm had gone bust by the time it sold out. (Peter)
Changes in the availability of local work through the decline of once dominant local industries, and the imposition of redundancy on large numbers of residents of particular neighbourhoods, had social as well as economic effects, ‘leaving members without the support and stability essential to communal life’ (Adam, Reference Adam1998: 20). Often, former industrial workers made redundant during this period found it difficult to find alternative employment ‘or dropped out of the labour market altogether’ (Turner, Reference Turner2003: 41). Figures suggest that this has perhaps been the case for some in the North Woods area, in which both men and women are more likely to be long-term unemployed but less likely to have never worked than in Leeds as a whole, and where there are proportionally higher rates of Job Seekers Allowance claimants aged fifty-plus than elsewhere. Not only was alternative employment generally located outside of the North Woods area, but it also tended to be situated within the growing service sector, for example, ‘part-time call centre work and that sort of thing’ (Paul).
In North Woods, as in other areas (for example, see Lupton, Reference Lupton2003), a number of social problems resulted from these processes of socioeconomic change. Several of the participants talked about ‘trouble’ starting during the 1980s, reaching a peak during the 1990s:
you got people starting breaking into houses and burgling, pinching cars – joyriders ‒ and then you got a lot of people walking round the estate, doing drugs and selling drugs on the estate. It's altered the estate a lot has all that. (Barry)
Former children's outreach worker, Carol, recalled the sorts of problems she encountered in her work, including ‘domestic violence, alcohol, unemployment, [and] poor housing’, and during this period the estate became unpopular as a place to live and developed a stigmatised reputation. Many of the key local sites for social interaction and collective leisure, including some local shops and the dancehall, disappeared, with the pub being closed down due to criminal activity and eventually burnt down in an arson attack. This process of ‘emptying out’ of the neighbourhood, paralleled by a withdrawal of key services, such as housing, from the local area, left fewer opportunities for people to develop relationships with other local residents. There was a clear perception amongst those who recalled this period that the neighbourhood had been abandoned, and that ‘no-one gave a shit’ (Paul).
During this period of decline, local residents drew on their traditions of mutual aid and informal support to try to address some of the issues they faced. In the 1990s, a community association was established by a group of long-term residents, which played a key role in addressing many of the problems which had emerged in the neighbourhood. Peter suggested that the community association could be seen as a formalisation of the informal activities which already took place, as ‘it's what they were used to . . . looking after the old people and that sort of thing’. Participants also noted that many of those involved with establishing the community association had acted as foremen in local factories, giving them an authority which enabled them to fill leadership roles, whilst others brought specific skills and knowledge acquired through work, as Anne suggests:
They wanted a treasurer, and I said ‘Go on then, I’ll do it’, seeing as I’d been used to handling money at work. And ever since then, I’ve been treasurer for the association.
Indeed, throughout the research the close links between the social context of the neighbourhood and the manifestations of formal engagement across a range of participatory contexts, particularly in relation to the community association, were emphasised.
Whilst the association achieved many improvements in the case study area, the dramatic changes imposed on the neighbourhood had an enduring impact on the local community, and on the social structures which had rested upon established patterns of paid work, domestic labour and leisure activities. As the following section will discuss, whilst for the most part participants reported positive experiences of living in the neighbourhood at the time of the research, social interactions amongst residents were frequently limited to a particular street or group of houses, and a small number of people suggested that they almost never encountered or spoke to other residents. Changes in the patterns and geographies of the daily lives of local residents resulting from the broader processes of change had diminished the potential for social engagement within the local neighbourhood, whilst the stigmatised reputation of the neighbourhood impacted upon local residents’ inclination to engage with their neighbours. At the same time, a lack of a sense of local community was not necessarily perceived negatively, and it was clear that for some participants the idea of place-based community was either irrelevant or undesirable. Alternative mechanisms and traditions of support had emerged amongst different groups living in the area, which reflected their particular experiences, needs and relationships.
Meanings and experiences of community in the present day
In contrast to historical accounts of shared work and leisure, none of the research participants reported working with anyone else from the local neighbourhood, and most travelled to work in other areas of Leeds or beyond. The neighbourhood was described as a ‘dormitory estate’ (Peter), and people also tended to travel to other areas to socialise with friends, to go shopping or for leisure activities. The continued ‘emptiness’ of the area was referred to by most participants, particularly in relation to activities for young people. Chris explained that, as he worked outside of the local area, he tended to shop at the supermarket which was located on his route home from work and rarely had cause to use the limited facilities available locally:
it's just convenient, going to Morrison's on the way home. I do use the [local] Co-op, but . . . you know, whereas somewhere like Far Town has grocers, and farmer's markets, and those kinds of things that draw people in . . . there isn't that here.
Joanne spoke about travelling to another area of Leeds for Tango lessons, whilst Simon was a member of a golf club in a neighbouring suburb. For less affluent participants, a lack of options in the local area often meant that they or their children were unable to pursue their interest in a particular sport or hobby due to the cost of travel to other areas. Few communal leisure activities were organised informally by local residents, and the main providers of leisure activities were local organisations such as the school, the older people's group and the community centre. Most of these organisations tended to focus their activities upon a particular section of the population, with the remit generally defined in terms of age, or, for example, parenthood. Even when this was not the case, it was often still perceived to be: for example, although the community association was intended to be for everyone, activities such as Bingo and coach trips were perceived to be dominated by and most relevant to older people, particularly older women.
Whilst for some participants a lack of interactions with other local residents was primarily circumstantial, some spoke about their strategies or motivations for actively avoiding engagement, often prompted by the stigmatised reputation of the neighbourhood. For example, Stuart stated that:
I keep myself to myself, and I don't mix with people round here. I don't mix with them or take shit off them, you know? I just want to bring up my kids and . . . get on with it, yeah?
To some extent, this was related to disagreements Stuart had experienced with his close neighbours, although he also stated that ‘there's no-one I want to know around here’, and all of his friends lived elsewhere. Joanne, Suresh and Simon each spoke about how they decided not to send their children to the local primary school because they had concerns about them falling in with the ‘wrong crowd’, or, in Joanne's case, due to concerns about her son experiencing racism. Joanne admitted that, as a result, her son has limited options for leisure activities and socialising in the local area. However, clearly such disadvantages must be weighed against the advantages of avoiding potentially negative experiences. North Woods was clearly associated to a large extent with social housing tenants, who were implicitly associated with ‘problems’ or ‘trouble’, and several participants suggested that, as their experiences of living in the neighbourhood were positive, their street was perhaps not ‘typical’ of the local area. Interestingly, those who felt their experiences were atypical included social housing tenants, private tenants and homeowners. This is of course characteristic of ways in which people seek to distance themselves, ‘I am not one of them’ (Wacquant, Reference Wacquant1999: 1644), from stigmatised or problem identities. For a small number of, primarily younger, participants, there was a general desire to avoid the constraints of community membership. For example, Joanne suggested that:
In a way, it's kind of that I deliberately try to keep myself slightly separate from communities, because I don't want my own lifestyle and everything else to be judged by people. It's just easier to be a bit more separate.
Similarly, Mike stated that he preferred to live away from his father as ‘he’d know every move I’d make!’. These kinds of ambivalence or antipathy towards community membership demonstrate some of the difficulties in developing community within neighbourhood contexts.
The idea of place-based community sometimes lacked resonance with participants’ personal histories, particularly those with private tenancies who tended to expect to move on, and as such found that it was ‘difficult to get a community feeling’ (Mike). An increased transiency amongst the local population was sometimes viewed negatively and seen to further undermine a sense of local community. As might be expected, those who had moved to the area from elsewhere tended to have friendship and kinship networks which were geographically dispersed. As a consequence, their mechanisms of support often took place across relatively long distances. For example, Joanne spoke about how her childcare arrangements during the school holidays would involve family in Essex and Sheffield, as well as friends in different parts of Leeds. Whilst for Joanne these arrangements appeared relatively unproblematic, Eileen expressed concern that her granddaughter had been unable to acquire a house in the area after having a baby, meaning that she would lack local family support:
there were five generations up here, and she couldn't get a house. And you need your family around you, don't you? Well . . . I don't mean to live with you, but you need them there to help you out.
Hence, there were clear differences in expectations about the extent to which support networks should or might be centred on particular places. It is likely that certain groups, such as older people and the less affluent, are most likely to rely on others living locally (Forrest and Kearns, Reference Forrest and Kearns2001).
Sometimes, existing networks of family and friends amongst local residents were seen to exclude outsiders and newcomers, which often included relatively long-term residents. For example, Sarah, who had lived in the area for over a decade, suggested that although she liked living in the area, she had ‘always felt like an outsider looking in’, and this perception was echoed by Mary who had lived in the neighbourhood for twenty-five years:
To a certain extent I do feel like a member of the North Woods community. I may not feel it like other people on the estate do, because as you well know, a lot of this estate is made up of families. So . . . I feel slightly outside that, because I wasn't born and brought up on the estate and I don't know everyone. I can feel like a newcomer, sometimes, even after all this time.
Stuart, a much more recently arrived resident, suggested that he felt some degree of powerlessness as a result of his outsider status, particularly when it came to dealing with disagreements and conflict with his neighbours. He referred to the presence on his street of ‘families that have been in the area for generations’, and his lack of knowledge of who was related to whom, meaning that ‘you don't know who you’re getting into a fight with’. Such concerns highlight the importance of engaging with power relations within communities, which remains a relatively unproblematised issue in much policy and practice (Pearce, Reference Pearce2013). But further, these accounts again highlight the importance of shared histories and experiences in shaping communities, and how these processes might take different forms at particular times and in particular places. In the case study area, traditions of long-term residency and intergenerational family presence were taken, and experienced, as indicative of the entry requirements governing local community membership, excluding those who did not share these traditions. However, changes in processes of social housing allocation, amongst other factors, had diminished the likelihood of such traditions being continued.
Despite some degree of fragmentation, it was clear that within the neighbourhood there remained vestiges of traditional modes of mutual aid and support amongst existing networks. For example, Ian told the story of how local people had responded to the death of his neighbour:
I remember when my neighbour died a year ago everyone got involved, and supported his family. I’ve never known that, because I’ve never lived on an estate before. People were giving support and . . . some people had donated some money towards the cost of the funeral. And loads of people they knew from years ago managed to come together and . . . forgive and forget, just for that one thing.
Other participants spoke about their involvement in exchanges of more detached ‘neighbourly’ support, involving activities such as property maintenance and looking after pets during holidays. These tended to be spatially limited to a particular street or group of houses, and often did not develop into closer friendships or more extensive modes of support:
I don't think in all the years I’ve been here I’ve been in my next door neighbour Mark's house more than about four or five times. But when he went in the hospital and came out I used to go every Saturday and do his lawn and things. Maybe sometimes once or twice during the summer, we might have a barbecue and then everyone will come around. You don't get people coming in, ‘Oh, I’ve come for a chat’ or . . . it's not like that here. (Marcus)
Overall, there was a sense that mechanisms of informal support tended to be limited to particular sections of the neighbourhood, rather than being as widespread as in the past. However, the kinds of neighbourly activities which characterised the contemporary social context were still highly valued by participants, and contributed to their enjoyment of living in the neighbourhood.
Changes in patterns of support and social engagement amongst local residents were also reflected in shifts in patterns of formal participation, such as volunteering, which had in turn affected the community association. At the time of research, it had experienced a significant decline in membership, and several participants expressed concerns about its future. In Anne's words, ‘people have died, people have left the vicinity . . . people have dwindled away’, and few had come forward to take over from or support the original volunteers, who were now mostly in their seventies. A lack of engagement amongst other residents tended to be interpreted by the more active residents as demonstrating a lack of ‘commitment to the community’, or showing that ‘people don't like doing anything for nothing’. However, the evidence demonstrated that often people were engaged in voluntary work in other geographical areas. For example, Gita volunteered at a Sikh temple in a different neighbourhood of Leeds, and Chris had done voluntary work arranged through his church in South Town, a disadvantaged neighbourhood in Leeds. Other people spoke about being involved with other charitable organisations such as Oxfam, whilst Sarah discussed her voluntary role in putting on musical events in the city centre. Such activities demonstrated that a lack of involvement in activities in their own neighbourhood did not necessarily indicate that people were disinclined to volunteer time or lacked of a sense of duty to others, but rather that opportunities to volunteer tended to relate to participants’ existing interests, relationships and activities. As Chris stated:
In a sense it would be more logical for me to be involved in the same stuff in North Woods as it would in South Town, but . . . I guess it's just because that link naturally happened through my church that I ended up being involved there.
Several people were unaware of what kinds of organisations and activities there were in the neighbourhood, due to the fact that most of their activities and interactions occurred elsewhere, and hence they did not know of local volunteering opportunities. Others felt that their ‘outsider’ status might mean that their involvement was not welcome, or that they would not be able to represent the views and needs of local people.
Conclusion
The aim of this article has been to demonstrate how meanings and experiences of community emerge from everyday activities and interactions, and how forms of social solidarity are shaped by the broader socioeconomic context. The analysis presented here suggests that the apparent trend towards social fragmentation at neighbourhood levels reflects the deterritorialisation of contemporary patterns of work, housing, leisure and relationships. This challenges behavioural explanations of the decline of place-based community, and highlights the constraints people experience in their capacity and inclination to develop relationships with others. In particular, key modes of stratification and inequality, and the associated stigmatisation of particular groups, would seem to have important effects on the forms that social solidarity takes. Furthermore, it has been suggested that attitudes towards, and experiences of, community membership vary amongst different groups, and that aims to rediscover or rebuild community on neighbourhood levels are not universally perceived as desirable. These issues challenge the assumption implicit in policy and practice that social networks can be purposively built to ensure individual and collective benefit, and demonstrate a need to understand and engage more fully with the ways that community is shaped by the broader context. Whilst it would seem that certain groups, such as older and poorer people, might lose out from a loss of place-based community, it might be useful to start to identify and account for new and different ways of doing and perceiving community outside of a narrow geographical conceptualisation, and to consider how to adapt policy and practice to meet the needs of these groups within this context.
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