Let there be strong networks

Here’s another report calling for policy to bolster social networks – this one is from the International Longevity Centre UK, Can localism work for older people in urban environments? In this case the call is ‘to strengthen interpersonal, intergenerational, and multigenerational networks, particularly in urban areas.’

This accumulating acknowledgement that our dependence on institutions has left us vulnerable, as a society, is not misplaced in my view. The echo is familiar, as is the echo of the echo. Network poverty was worthy of more research attention than it got in recent wealthier times. Now that we really need some data on it, I suspect we’re going to be leaning heavily on the RSA study because I’m not sure there’s a great deal else to go on.

So what does it mean, to a policymaker, this call to help strengthen social networks? How should policy respond?

I’d start with a requirement that local policies should avoid doing damage to existing local social networks, a bit like the duty to involve. Vicki Nash suggested something similar, ‘community proofing,’ some years ago.

It would mean for instance that a new supermarket or road widening or library closure could not be approved without an intelligible analysis of its impact on local social networks, an analysis that in turn would inform public consultation. It wouldn’t take us long to develop the methodology, once we had to. I’ve suggested before, the reason we don't have the methodology to demonstrate the social value of local amenities that stimulate social networks is because no political value has been placed on human processes that are informal and organic.

Will that change, with all these calls to strengthen networks? Is there the political will to acknowledge that local social interactions have value which plays out in, and profoundly affects the costs of, other social provision?

The requirement to avoid network damage does not have to be accompanied by a given standard of social network strength, to which all neighbourhoods should be expected to aspire. Wrong approach, don’t go there.

But yes it should set us thinking about other ways of enhancing informal interaction, for example through the design of local spaces and dwellings; placing more than crudely economic value on local third places; support for local online networks; policies that discourage unnecessary car use and encourage walking; promotion of the principle of local (walkable) services and local (walkable) schools… All these will seem eminently sensible, if they don’t already, once there is government-level recognition of the essential value of informal interactions and the local social networks that they represent.

All this has drawn me back to a book chapter I wrote on policy and local social relations, here, in which I noted that

‘social relationships in neighbourhoods are organic, requiring a healthy ecology that reflects informality and also requiring that most of the time formality keeps its distance.’

And in which I quoted Robert Ellikson’s observation that

‘…lawmakers who are unappreciative of the social conditions that foster informal cooperation are likely to create a world in which there is both more law and less order.’

 

 

Comments

[Ian Bertram]

This is interesting to me - I have been thinking recently about the way in which we seem less and less to interact in public spaces. I mean here the sort of process described by Benjamin Barber that I touched on here: http://www.withoutthestate.com/panchromatica/2006/10/the_politics_of.html

These days I am no longer directly involved in these issues, but taking Cameron's 'Big Society' at face value (which would I think be a big mistake) it seems to me that the commercialisation and privatisation of the public arena seen in shopping developments and gated communities has major implications for the simple possibility of social networks - in real space as opposed to online - and that in turn doesn't really bode well for the 'Big Society'.

[Kevin Harris]

Thanks Ian - i think my point would be that with gated estates and shopping malls we are talking about a compromised public realm. It's still possible to see social networks in play there but they are less open to diversity, and therefore less public. I think Lyn Lofland - http://www.transactionpub.com/title/The-Public-Realm-978-0-202-30608-7.html - has something to say about this.

What bothers me is that there is not much of a concerted response around the theme of 'publicness', presumably because it's too theoretical. Public sector cuts have generated action, and this is where the lead can be expected to come from, with allies perhaps previously-thought unlikely, such as the Womens Institute - http://www.thewi.org.uk/standard.aspx?id=9706 -
banging the drum loudly. Film-maker Michael Chanan has written recently - http://www.chronicleofprotest-thefilm.co.uk/2011/04/12/film-makers-statement/ =
about
'the reclamation of public space through occupations, street protests, marches and rallies, as the proper place for the expression of popular political demands'
- which similarly makes me think that the debate about 'public' will emerge from analysis of public protest, not the other way round. For months there has been lots of civilised discussion in the press and on radio about defending public libraries, with as yet no sign of an intelligent response from government. The classic image of middle class ladies chaining themselves to the railings may yet be realised and may yet be the force that has the most impact.