ancient cities

184 Community Studies
A primary aim of the Bethnal Green study was a
focus upon how patterns of working-class family
and community organization became transformed
by the interventions of urban planners and welfare
agencies engaged with the revitalization of what was
perceived as a dilapidated area in East London.
Although the Bethnal Green area was depicted
as the epitome of working-class life and as embodying
the ethos of communal solidarity, such working-class
community studies were later subjected
to significant criticism for the extent to which
neighborhood antagonisms and internal community
conflict were obscured from the analysis.
Focusing upon the coalescence of community and
employment, many studies of working-class areas
tended to emphasize how certain industries became
the fulcrum point for the development of a local
community. Critics accused such studies of perpetuating
an inherently romanticized depiction of
working-class life and as containing an implicit
legitimation of the class system. Indeed, it is perhaps
a significant irony of the community studies
tradition that the field achieved its greatest degree
of prominence at precisely that time when many
such working-class communities were beginning to
fragment as a result of the wider effects of socioeconomic
and industrial change.
In addition to the study of community life in
metropolitan settings, a number of investigations
were also conducted outside of the major metropolitan
regions. A classic study of this era is
Norman Dennis’s Coal Is Our Life: An Analysis of
a Yorkshire Mining Community. Offering an
exploration of family and labor relations in coal
mining communities, such studies investigated the
effects of industrial and economic change upon
community life in British rural areas. Presenting a
view of family and community life as predominately
mediated by the centrality of the mining
industry, these studies were later criticized for presenting
a world hermetically sealed against the
wider effects of Western industrial economies.
Indeed, the decline of the coal mining industry
in Britain came to epitomize the loss of the type of
foundational occupational identity that was seen as
holding such working-class communities together.
Without the protective framework of an integrated
community and occupational structure, community
life came to be seen as increasingly episodic
and fragmented. In place of the communal solidarity,
traditionalism, and spirit of collectivism deemed
central to the constitution of working-class life, the
effects of industrial change, coupled with initiatives
of urban renewal and population relocation,
did much to challenge and undermine the disciplinary
strength of community studies. It is largely
in these terms that the field of community studies
encountered significant criticism for its conceptual
and methodological limitations with regard to its
failure in accounting for the global ramifications
of social and industrial change. Notwithstanding
these criticisms, such studies arguably offer valuable
insight into a unique period of social history
in British rural areas.
Other investigations of community life in rural
areas tended to present the nature of community as
an unchanging repository of tradition and custom.
For example, Conrad M. Arensberg and S. T.
Kimball’s Family and Community in Ireland, an
influential study conducted in western Ireland,
presented rural life as unchanging and seemingly
resistant to social change. Although such works
inspired a substantial body of similar work by
social geographers and social anthropologists, they
also encountered significant criticism due to the
emphasis placed upon community depicted as a
functioning totality to the exclusion of conflicting
and repressive elements of community life. In place
of the emphasis upon homogeneity, continuity, and
tradition, community life was revealed to be a far
more kaleidoscopic entity and one mediated by a
wide variety of external factors.
The Future of Community Studies
Notwithstanding the cumulative strength of the
criticisms directed toward community studies,
many scholars have continued to defend the field
against accusations of redundancy by emphasizing
how such study provides detailed analysis of the
social, cultural, and psychological effects of embedded
social relations. Often employing an ethnographic
perspective augmented by statistical data,
many such works focus substantively upon the
effects of health, employment, youth, crime, racism,
immigration, ethnicity, gender, identity, sexuality,
environment, urban planning, and the effects
of policy initiatives upon life in particular areas. In
this sense, the community studies tradition remains
an active and engaging field.