THE POSITIVE ROLES OF THE COMMUNITY
Evolutionary psychologists argue that we help others who are related to us or look like us because it is genetically hardwired into us – to the extent altruism toward kin is a genetic trait that helped its own survival in the Stone Age, when much of our evolution happened, it helped itself be passed on.4 Similarly, we may be genetically evolved to help others, provided they reciprocate the favour, and we are programmed to have a strong distaste for freeloaders who do not. Since evolution is slow, we are fully adapted to the challenges of the Stone Age, and we continue to retain such propensities, even if no longer critical for survival. In other words, we are predisposed to be social.
We have built on this predisposition. People have always banded together because a group is better at defense (or attack) than an individual. In modern society, healthy communities continue to police themselves and their surroundings to ensure safety for their members. They do more, though – much more.
They offer their members a sense of identity, a sense of place and belonging that will survive the trials and tribulations of modern life. They do this through stories, customs, rituals, relationships, and joint celebrations or mourning so that when faced with a choice between self-interest and community interest, or between community members and others, members are more inclined to put their own community first. Often, communities inculcate shared values and goals in members, as well as imbue in them a sense of personal utility from various actions that benefit the community.
The community also monitors economic transactions as well as noneconomic ‘favours’ within the community, and it sees that everyone delivers their promised part fairly, if not immediately then over time. It assists those falling behind, as members contribute to those in need. It also aggregates the capabilities of all its members and brings them to bear to enhance collective well-being. Let us examine all these roles in greater detail.
Survival: Training and Socialising the Young
A community needs to train its young to be productive, to take over from current adult members as they age. Equally important, the values of the young members have to be shaped to protect the well-being of the community. Most communities train their young through apprenticeships, where they are taught skills and learn to internalize the norms and values of the community.
Apprenticeship often ends with a rite of passage that signals the coming of age of a youth into adulthood. In a number of tribes such as the Aborigines in Australia or the Papuans of New Guinea, the rites were so physically brutal that those up for initiation occasionally died.5 Not only did the ordeal prevent those who did not have the requisite tolerance for pain, or desire for greater power and responsibility in the tribe, from achieving full manhood, but those who did survive it also would likely be even more committed to the tribe. Modern communities like fraternities at colleges, law firms, research universities, or the military have their own rites of passage, differing only in the degree of physical or mental pain from tribal initiation ceremonies.
The community plays a very important role in supporting education, even in modern schooling systems. As Chicago Nobel laureate economist James Heckman emphasises, a child’s attitudes toward learning, as well as her future health, are shaped in the critical preschool years where the family and community matter far more than the formal education system. Moreover, even after children enter the formal schooling system, the community determines whether they make use of it to the fullest extent. Whether children are given the time, encouragement, and the support to do homework depends on the environment at home and the attitude of their friends toward academic effort.
Linkages between the school and the community are also important. Parents will be more eager to monitor and support teaching if they feel they can influence how the school is run – many successful schools draw on parents for school boards, for staffing and supporting extracurricular programmes, as well as for providing funds for equipment that is not accounted for in the normal budget. Communities help the young outside schools, whether it is through preschool learning, summer jobs, or watching out for, and counseling, teenagers who might stray. Equally, teachers, coming from the community, can work to build alternative local social supports for students whose families are broken. Schools are also an important focal point for parents to build mutual friendships, as they are drawn together in a common endeavour.
The community shapes the views of its members about one another, so as to encourage mutual support. The elderly are a store of knowledge and have experiences and wisdom that can be very important in guiding the community. Nevertheless, in environments where reproductive capabilities matter enormously or much of the work is physically taxing, the elderly may be a dispensable burden. To give the elderly an incentive to share their wisdom, even while protecting their position, the socialisation process often inculcates respect for age. In modern South Indian Brahmin marriages and coming-of-age ceremonies, the elderly have an important position as they guide the young on the specific rituals to be followed. The young signal their acceptance of the natural order by repeatedly prostrating themselves before anyone older, asking for their blessings. Rank or position in the outside world is immaterial in determining who prostrates themselves before whom – all that matters is age. More generally, communities may allocate authority and power in ways that have nothing to do with economic capability, but help keep the community together.
Creating Binding Social Relationships
In close-knit communities, few transactions are explicit exchanges of broadly equal values. A mother nurses her child with no thought of sending a bill for services rendered, while we ply dinner guests with food and wine with no concern of when they will reciprocate. As ties get weaker in the community, more reciprocity is expected, but usually in such a way that the original gesture is never fully reciprocated so as to ‘close the account’.
American anthropologist Laura Bohannan spent years working with the Tiv people of Northern Nigeria. When she arrived to study the community, she was inundated with gifts by the very poor villagers – a common experience for guests in traditional societies. Not wanting to appear rude, she accepted them but was eventually taught the appropriate etiquette by the headman’s wife, who told her to ‘stop wandering aimlessly about the countryside and start calling to return the gifts’ she had received. Bohannon concluded:
‘What had been given must be returned, and at the appropriate time – in most cases, within two market weeks. For more valuable gifts, like livestock, one should wait until the giver is in sudden need and then offer financial aid. In the absence of banks, large presents of this sort are one way of saving…. I couldn’t remember [who gave what]; I didn’t think anyone could. But they did, and I watched with amazed admiration as Udama [the headman’s wife] dispensed handfuls of okra, the odd tenth-penny and other bits in an endless circle of gifts in which no one ever handed over the precise value of the object last received but in which, over months, the total exchange was never more than a penny in anyone’s favour.’ 6
Gifts among the Tiv, as in most societies, serve to strengthen social bonds. That a gift is not returned in exact and equal measure prevents gift exchange from becoming a market transaction. Indeed, the very point is that nothing is demanded in return by the giver – social ties are built only when the giver seemingly forgets the gift as soon as it is given. Yet someone who only receives and never gives is quickly ostracised, hence the advice to return the gifts. Relationships are built not just by offering gifts but also by offering services. As Bohannan sat with neighbours assisting a woman’s childbirth, she reflected:
‘I also remembered that my great-grandmother had her first child alone with her husband on the frontier; in her diary, she had longed for another woman then…. More generally, though, I could see that where we multiplied specialists and services, these people multiplied personal relationship …’
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