CAMBRIDGE LETTER
The `c' word
BILL KIRKMAN
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Does the loose use of "community" matter?
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REUTERS
Haiti ... a matter of concern for the international community.
"PRESSURE is being applied on President Aristide by the international community". The statement is clear and unambiguous — but what does it mean? Does it in fact mean anything?
The use of "community" to describe a supposedly coherent group, or clear body of opinion, has become commonplace but it is nearly always misleading, and frequently a substitute for rigorous thought. Take "international community" for example. Does it mean the United Nations, or the United States and its close allies, which is not the same thing? Or does it perhaps mean the European Union, and if so, does it imply that all EU members think alike, which they manifestly do not?
The "c" word is applied much more widely than this. We hear a good deal, for example, about the "aid community". In a broad sense, one can appreciate what is meant, but only in a sense so broad that it makes the suggestion of a monolithic entity misleading. It takes no account of differences in funding, area of operation or precise purpose, implying that the International Red Cross, Oxfam and Farm Africa, to take three bodies at random, think and work in the same way.
In the United Kingdom, in the period since the New York Twin Towers attack, and more recently the Iraq war and the so-called war on terrorism, there has been a big increase in the attention paid to the characteristics of our multi-cultural British society. Sadly, this increased interest has tended to manifest itself in comments on the role of "the faith communities". All too often, that has been a euphemism for Islamophobia, or at the least an attitude which views all Muslims with suspicion. Such an attitude, making no attempt to understand people as individuals, with individual views, can quickly demonise great numbers of good, harmless citizens.
To understand how dangerously misleading it is to refer to "the faith communities", it is worth looking at two other domestic U.K. examples. The first is Northern Ireland, where decades of communal strife have had strong overtones of religious hostility. It is of course hostility between Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians. It persists in Northern Ireland in a way not remotely echoed in other parts of the U.K. If we referred to "the faith community" in Northern Ireland, what would we mean? We certainly could not realistically imply that there was a community consensus between all claiming to be Christians.
My second example is even more pointed. I am a member of the Church of England, which is part of the world-wide Anglican Communion. In recent months the Anglican Communion has been riven with discord between "liberals" and extreme traditionalists.
Within the Church of England itself there has been much vituperative quarrelling between different factions in what has always been a famously broad church. As a member of the Church of England, I emphatically do not see myself as part of a "faith community" with a group of unpleasant bigots who also belong to it.
Does the loose use of "community" matter? I believe it does. In the context of religious faith it is potentially extremely dangerous. Stereotyping is all too easy, Allowing adherents to particular religious faiths to be lumped together, often in a pejorative way, could have a disastrous effect on Britain's broadly tolerant society. (This applies also, of course, to the stereotyping of those of no faith: "the atheist community" would be equally misleading and equally dangerous.) Similar danger lies is stereotyping ethnic groups. In U.K. terms, talk of "the ethnic minority communities", or "the Asian, or the Afro-Caribbean, communities" clearly ignores great breadths of ethnic difference as well as the fact that people are individuals. It nurtures fears, suspicions and anxieties and, as we have seen in some (happily few) local elections in Britain, can be exploited by extremist political parties.
Misuse of "community" at what we might call the macro level — the employment of such terms as "the international community" which I referred to at the beginning of this Letter — is obviously less dangerous for individuals within a country.
It has, however, far wider implications for international relations. Just as it is important to recognise that individuals cannot properly be seen as just part of a neatly labelled amorphous mass, so it is crucial for those responsible for tackling major international issues not to fall into the "community" trap. Disagreements between member states of the United Nations over the Iraq war, and subsequently profound political differences within Iraq itself, provide salutary reminders of that.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, U.K. E-mail him at: wpk1000@hotmail.com
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