I live in small town America, but go elsewhere to experience community, or rather, think of it differently to experience it. I think a lot of people would say that same thing, whether they live in small town America or not. Gerald Arbuckle writes about community, stating that it is synonymous with a local social system or group, “a set of social relationships that occur within a locality.” He further defines it by “a quality of relationship.” When people feel like they belong together, they might not be able to articulate it any other way except to say “we are a community.” Community is both concrete and abstract. It is linked to location through a territorial locus, but it simultaneously incorporates a sense of belonging. There is something important inherent in the notion of communitas having to do with an exchange that goes back to the Middle Ages and perhaps earlier, because it has to do with relationships, and maybe that’s why we like it. We belong together.
Much is written/spoken at this time of year decrying rampant commercialism –and I’m not saying I disagree– but there is much to be said, I think, for the relational concept underlying the commercium or the REASON we buy/give gifts/want to give gifts/receive gifts, and also for the importance of gift giving. Maybe, like so many things, it just all depends. Maybe we want to belong to something more. The idea of a commercial economy –which resembles our own in many ways –started in the Middle Ages. Commercium incorporates a relational concept. In common life it encompassed the economic exchange of goods and property, romantic and sexual contact; all forms of intercourse. Exchange was the underlying precept. In a figurative sense, community associations and relationships under that umbrella also fell into “the commercium.” We talk about the marketplace of ideas, and I certainly like that!
Commercium denoted (then) the relationship caused by the exchange of bonum, both between people and between people and gods, and that makes me wonder what it denotes/connotes now? Maybe the reason people get all excited about the topic is simply a desire for focus (along with the locus).
The thought underlying the term began in antiquity, with the notion of do ut des, which emanated from the idea of supplication, or the manner of giving in a genuine relationship in order that the other may also give. The implication was of mutual sharing and exchange. Just as we experience now, I suppose, it was easy for these relationships to become skewed and for the giver to expect a return. I’m suggesting that it’s not impossible to recognize the possibility of the pure form which rests in the voluntary act and in the very nature of possibility: do ut des. Put simply, the layered meaning of commercium, lay in relationship. Exchange and agreement were united. I love the way Francis and Clare of Assisi thought of this (surprise!), so that the medieval notion of the Incarnation of Christ perfectly expressed the concept, offering the opportunity for each person who entered the relationship to participate in divine life. Can I look to medieval examples to find a place in communitas in modern day?
Jocelyn Wogan-Brown writes that “‘Community’ is a bad word for medievalists, especially, to be careless with: for it too readily assimilates to the construction of the Middle Ages as the period of “an organic and static society chiefly important as the passive and narrativeless Other against which post-medieval history can be written.” She proposes that specificity in defining communities, especially those of women’s communities, is important and should be differentiated from society-at-large or passive groupings of people. I would agree with her in the sense that we want to be very careful in the way that we use ANY word, and then continue to point to excellent examples in history. My favorite woman in history, Clare of Assisi,
Clare of Assisi
purposefully formed herself around this very notion, and gathered a community around her, creating something new. She and other women and men like her charted a path partly based on specific communities formed before their time, and partly based on those they found lacking within their own milieu. Don’t we all do that? How else did they form their new community? That other part came from the sense of community that formed the imagined ideal for which they yearned and then actively worked towards. What do we call our fellow travelers and companions? I love the word companion. . . .
Communitas seems to be a fluid concept and as we work towards an Imagined Future, the ideals we work towards often bring us into contact with others who are ALSO working towards similar ideals that add to the commercium. How do we then inhabit and shape the ongoing community? Fabienne Michelet writes that during times of conquest and expansion, the center and the periphery are inextricably bound and thus part of the same mental structure or what he terms the “mental map” because this is how borders are determined. The periphery is filled with action and movement. Because of this, the center is filled with meaning. This is all quite dramatic, and because of this, part of the ongoing movement we talk about as we move. Our identity is wrapped up in this, isn’t it? How we imagine our selves and define that imaginated self qua self are conceived as borders, which seem so fixed. Paul Zumthor, the great story theorist says we imagine concepts as boundaries. It may seem that the power structure is fixed, but power is based in relation to periphery and decentering. I’m thinking that the songs de geste by their very nature tell us that different centers co-exist: political, religious, geographical, etc. The more they coincide, the more layers of meaning are applied to the center that exists in the “mental map.” Power and identity are inseparably linked to this map, but dependent on the conditions of the borders. Dorothy Yamamoto agrees, writing: “The most powerful symbolic repertoires are located at borders, margins and edges, rather than at the accepted centre of the social body.” It seems like this is good news!
Martin Buber seemed to approach the idea of community in much the same way that Clare of Assisi practiced it at her monastery of San Damiano. Buber argued that “an organic commonwealth will never build itself up out of individuals, but only out of small and even smaller communities; a nation is a community to the degree that it is a community of communities.” Buber saw the issue it in terms of the need to allow a community to struggle into gradual formation. This could be achieved by “great spiritual tact” through relationship and “with the constant and tireless weighing and measuring of the right proportion between them.” Buber believed that the concrete reality of communitas could be preserved even in society-at-large in a process he regarded as analogous to organic growth, or to what he called “the life of dialogue.”
YIKES! This is getting complicated! I thought all I was doing was sitting down to reflect on communitas. . .
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