Neighbourhoods

Call me old fashioned, but maybe nostalgia isn't the only problem

Here's a curiosity. Ryan Shorthouse in Prospect magazine has a go at both Philip Blond (Red Toryism) and Maurice Glasman (Blue Labour - you still with me?) for their 'nostalgia for a "golden age" of British communities'. Quite right too. 

[Start of short Kev rant, partly lifted from a forthcoming paper] The contemporary media-political rhetoric is partly problematic because it finds 'community' historically still within reach, through the living-memory images from the nostalgia industry. (I often think we would gain greater insight discussing the assumed decline of neighbourliness in early modern England). Our politicians and journalists invite us to do penance before the curling monochrome prints of streets where doors were always left open and everyone knew everyone. The problem is not that this mythology is entirely misleading – it isn’t, not entirely - but that it is packaged as universally flawless, implicitly recoverable, and key to the resolution of expensive problems of social policy. For politicians and political commentators to peddle this rhetoric uncritically is either ignorant or disingenuous. [Rant ends].

Perversely, Shorthouse ends his article by claiming that market forces and private capital

'could sustain and improve public services that people rely on. Revitalised community life will only really come from improving the skills of individuals: boosting education levels and improving employability, for instance.'

Well, and one or two other things we can all think of. A reliable economy would help, one that is not held to ransom by the Tories' dear friends in the financial sector and rescued at the cost of public services that are used by people who happen to be below their lofty field of vision. Meanwhile we all have to be patient while the current experiment in 'progressive conservatism' demonstrates quite how education levels and employability will be boosted by cutting education funding and closing libraries.

Call me old fashioned, but I too think that it's in society's interests for people to associate more, and more pro-socially, at local level. But we're not likely to achieve that with the current vicious assault on the public realm or by decimating services that people need just to give them the strength to reflect on their own circumstances.

 

What did you call me?

I spend quite a bit of time every day talking gibberish to a baby.

I do this because I'm aware that children in care have a high likelihood of delayed development and consequent disadvantage; and because early gains in speech and language can be of critical importance in later development. I'm helping to care for a baby who could easily get left behind if he doesn't get plenty of face-to-face communication right now. This kind of effort to compensate for disadvantage is routine in foster care.

But through a compelling piece on R4's Today programme this morning we learn that a noticeable proportion of children are starting school without knowing their own names, or in some cases not knowing that they have a name. How excluded can you get?

Once I ponder the implications of that in terms of sense of identity - let alone the development of communication skills - I find it scary, and feel ashamed of our society. One example given in the article referred to a parent who simply didn't know that you can talk to a child before they can talk back to you:

'he don't talk to me, so I don't talk to him'.

Some attempt was made lamely to blame contemporary media for this state of affairs. But Jean Gross, who has the great job title of 'the government's communication champion for children,' referred to young parents lacking contact with other adults of different generations.

And I think it might be worth asking about the sometimes-missing contribution of the extended family, intergenerational relations at neighbourhood level, and the impact of poor housing design. Where someone's immediate environment seriously discourages them from stepping out with their baby or toddler, and diminishes the likelihood of conversational encounters with others in the nieghbourhood if they do so, the reduction to silence and hence namelessness may be understandable.

Neighbourhood natter about parenting may not always be packed with wisdom, but at least there's a good chance that names will be exchanged.

Blaming the media and blaming the parents is way too easy. We need also to think about how parenthood is affected by the social and environmental character of our neighbourhoods, and what can be done about that.

It also strikes me that we bring a legitimate urgency to our calls for people to check on their elderly neighbours, especially in winter: surely a similar urgency should apply to connecting with parents of children who are in the fragile early spring of life.

 

17% would not help a neighbour

Here are some new data on neighbourliness, from a large US survey conducted for StateFarm, an insurance company. The sample was 17,000 and the project has been overseen by Keith Hampton, so is definitely worthy of attention.

To their credit, StateFarm provide more than the usual upbeat press release. Here are some of the things that I noticed on a read-through of the findings.

I was most struck by negative responses to the question: 'What would you do to help a neighbor in need?' Seventeen per cent would not help a neighbour in need, and this figure is pretty much consistent across age, gender and urbanicity. So if you thought, say, that older people in rural areas would be nearly universally neighbourly, think again.

  The survey asked about the channels used where people 'interact with their neighbours on a monthly basis'. It seems to me there's plenty of online contact going on, but the 10 per cent of text interaction is higher than I'd have expected.

Almost 40 per cent lend to neighbours and 24 per cent borrow 'at least several times a year' (don't ask me to explain the discrepency, although I note that 7 per cent are disgruntled about neighbours who don't return borrowed items).

One other thing. The data suggest that 17 per cent of 18-34 year olds know 'most of their neighbours' by name. I think that's pretty high, at least for under-25s. The graphic seems designed to imply that it isn't. What are our expectations?

And here's Keith's take on it all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Covered in roses

I like this example of a public record of pre-Olympic demolition in north east London, captured by Hugh Flouch. One of the boards proclaims simply:

'When they knocked down the flats I sat on the roof of my house to get a good look. My hustband covered in [sic] roses so they don't get covered in dust.'

More on neighbouring and recession

Here's more tentative support for the argument that economic hardship is stimulating neighbourliness. The Co-op has published a press release (but as yet no report or data) on another survey of neighbourliness following their 2010 report which I blogged a year ago.

They suggest that people are helping their neighbours more,

with increasing numbers looking after pets or plants (32% up from 23%), fetching shopping (15% up from 6%) and accepting mail or parcels (73% up fro 63%).

At the same time, they note an increase in the number of people reporting problems with their neighbours.

To me it seems a bit too simplistic to associate slight reported changes in neighbouring with the recession - especially when we don't know what the questions were - without also taking account of other forces and changes like localism, the decline of trust in large institutions, and networked support.

 

On being neighbourly(TM)

I've just been glancing through the About page for Hey Neighbor, which describes itself as 'a network for trusted neighbor connections and collaboration.' I'm expecting some interesting examples to build up.

But what's this? -

'MicroFavor™ simply means "a small favor"– the kind of favors neighbors might ask of one another. Help move a couch, borrow a truck, pick up the mail for someone who's away, or share a ride. It's up to you and your neighbors to decide how you can help each other.'

I guess I'm a bit naive with this kind of thing. Does the 'TM' mean that someone has trademarked the term 'Microfavor'? And am I in breach, in that last sentence? (It was accidentally re-spelled by my computer, yer honour, there should be a 'u' in there).

As ever I'm stilled in admiration for the way the American system can push the limits of self-parody. Do me a macrofavour.

 

Chat about neighbours on t'wireless

The Beeb seems to be doing more of those programmes in which articulate knowledgable people speak about issues in which they're not expert, I suppose because it's cheaper than the programme-makers having to do any research. This is an example of the kind (30 mins, available for seven days), an underwhelming programme about neighbours in which the thinking was done on the hoof.

Laurie Penny rescued it in part by pointing out that we can all live near to people and 'know' them and still be shocked or surprised to find out something fundamental about them; and that the same can apply in the online world. That was about the only insight on offer I'm afraid.

But I don't like to appear too negative, so here's an instance of where it might have got interesting, with a bit of thought. Guy Browning suggested that people would be more neighbourly if they were forced together more. The unstated and unexplored implication being that neighbourliness is an objective sufficiently desirable for other benefits (like comfort and privacy, say) to be sacrificed. Next time, they could start the debate there.

Thanks Martin for the heads-up.

 

Stranger out there

As our society's long-awaited public crisis of privacy finally sets the politicians' alarms off, here are some thoughts on how the mixing up of private and public can cause odd behaviour. 

I was driving home from a conference this afternoon around 6pm, the roads busy of course, came up a hill in a single line of traffic and there was a car stopped on a corner near the top, drivers having to slow and take turns to pass. I stopped in front and got out, quickly learning what I have come to expect - the lady had been there for 'an hour' and no-one had stopped to help her.

I'm not the sort of person to be suspicious of the story I heard and had no reason to disbeleive it. Her father had died the night before, she'd panicked out of the house with an uncharged mobile phone and an empty petrol tank, and from the hospital was now on her way to see her mum

Two kids (and a hamster) in the back and no buggy, so although she had an empty petrol can, she couldn't walk to get it filled. I sorted that easily enough in less than fifteen minutes and they were on their away. So there I was a short while later back in the traffic now busier, with time to think about the possible stats.

Let's suppose the lady exaggerated how long she'd been stuck there, perhaps it was thirty minutes, not an hour. There had to be a minimum of 15 vehicles per minute going past in the direction of travel (and a comparable number in the opposite direction). Even if only a few contained more than one passenger, that's at the very least 500 hundred people - and probably coming on for 2,000 - who saw her, without stopping to help. I could have guessed it, but she told me and I witnessed one example - lots of drivers tooted their horns in annoyance and at least one shouted abuse. She was in their way and may have slowed them down slightly, and being very important people they had stuff to do.

Some human beings behave so oddly when they get in cars, I suppose because it's sharply defined private space in the public realm and that confuses relationships.

 

 

Does austerity cause increase in knowing neighbours' names?

Between 2008 and 2010 the proportion of American adults who say they ‘know all or most of their neighbours by name’ increased by some 11 per cent, to 51%. In 2008, 31 per cent said they did not know any of their neighbours by name: two years later, this had dropped to just 18 per cent.

This comes from the latest output from the collaboration of Keith Hampton and his colleagues with Pew Internet Research - a study of the impact of social networking sites on levels of trust, personal relationships and civic and political involvement in the USA. (I’ll be posting some thoughts on the main findings of that study, over on the Networked Neighbourhoods blog shortly). The authors note that:

It might be that the persistence of the poor economic conditions of the American economy has prompted – or necessitated - that people to turn to their neighbors for informal support. It would be premature to suggest that this current trend is part of a gradual increase in social capital in America.

I’ll make my customary point here briefly about the assumption behind the question – knowing someone’s name implies a level of relationship not necessarily consistent with people’s understanding of neighbouring (certainly not mine). Knowing someone by name implies a stronger relationship than is necessarily needed or wanted. So as I’ve noted before, this emphasis perpetuates the unfortunate habit of over-privileging strong ties in the understanding of local social relations. The basis of neighbouring is recognition, which does not depend on knowing names, as nicely illustrated in this quotation from last year’s Gumtree research:

'It's true I don't know many neighbours by name, but we recognise each other, know who lives where and are aware of each other's routines. If something is out of place, we notice. We also pick up the litter in the street and close each other's gates when the postman leaves them open.'

The closest comparable recent UK data I have found offers responses to the statement ‘I know my immediate neighbours’ names’ with a return of 83 per cent (Circle Anglia Community Census carried out by ComRes 2009). Maybe this can be compared with the 81 per cent in the Pew survey who know some, most, or all by name.

A final point from the Pew report, which is mainly about the impact on social relations of the use of technologies: the authors found

'no indication that different types of technology use predict neighboring. Internet and non-internet users are equally as likely as others to know at least some of their neighbors.'

The main point of this post though is to suggest that the positive effect of austerity on local social relations is probably not fanciful and is certainly worthy of closer scrutiny. Any self-respecting community development worker knows that nothing succeeds like adversity.

And if an economic decline does have a positive effect on local social relaitons, does the reverse apply?