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The Sociology of Community Connections

John G. Bruhn New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers New York • Boston • Dortrecht • London • Moscow

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bruhn, John G., 1934The sociology of community connections / by John G. Bruhn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-306-48615-6 (hardbound) - ISBN 0-306-48617-2 (ebook) - ISBN 0-306-48616-4 (paperback) 1. Community. 2. Social networks. 3. Neighborliness. I. Title. HM756.B78 2004 307—dc22

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ISBN HB: 0-306-48615-6 PB: 0-306-48616-4 e-Book: 0-306-48617-2 © 2005 by Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York 233 Spring Street, New York, New York 10013 http://www.kluweronline.com 10

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A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. All rights reserved No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Permissions for books published in Europe: [email protected] Permissions for books published in the United States of America: [email protected] Printed in the United States of America

To my Nebraska hometown, Norfolk, where I experienced the love of community

Preface

People seem to have less time for one another and the nature of the time they do spend with others is changing. How and why we connect with people seems to be increasingly related to their usefulness in helping us to achieve individual goals and meet individual needs. While pursuing the credo of the survival of the fittest is not new, it has usually been balanced by a concern for the common good. While there are many people who experience healthy, long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships in our society, the values and ethics that sustain them lack the societal support evident in previous decades. In our society, indeed, in the world, there seem to be more broken and fragmented relationships than in the past, an absence of connections where they appear to be needed, an uncertainty and lack of trust in relationships we have sustained, and a tendency to select, restrict, and even plan, those connections which promote self-interest. Depending upon their disciplinary vantage point, scholars differ in their attributions of causes for the changing and weakening of social connections in our country. These causes include technology, rapid social change, the ineffectiveness of social institutions in meeting new needs, greed and selfishness, greater ethnic diversity, the loss of community as a "place," generational differences, changing values, and fear. It is likely that all of these factors have contributed to the new ways in which we connect with each other. Psychiatrist Anthony Storr