Researching Beneath the Surface by Clarke Simon; Hoggett Paul; & Paul Hoggett

Author:Clarke, Simon; Hoggett, Paul; & Paul Hoggett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

Schools and churches can provide such pegs and are markers of community. The fear of the effect of the loss of such markers was apparent in several of the wards where we conducted the research, two of which had lost their local secondary school. This change was felt to have had a very negative effect, with “the soul” ripped out of the community. Some talked of how children no longer grew up together, but went to schools in areas where traditionally they would never have gone, and where they experienced difficulties because of territorial rivalry. “They went to their sworn enemies if you like. It was the same when we were at school, there was fighting amongst the schools.”

Because the children no longer went through school and the local youth club together, and did not progress on to the pub and perhaps work as a group, they lost contact with each other, and one mother feared that this would lead to crime and violence: her son had been attacked in the local park by a group of younger teenagers and had been struck by the fact that he had not recognized anyone; another son had got into trouble in a local pub because he was not in his own “territory”.

The lack of a secondary school also means that people are unwilling to invest time and effort in the community, knowing that their children will have to go to school elsewhere and, for the middle classes, this may mean that they choose to move house in order to get their child into a school of their choice. The same phenomenon occurs in the workplace when people know they will be there for a short time and then move on, hoping they are going to something better. This mobility and lack of long-term investment of self affect not just the social relations of a neighbourhood, but also people’s values and the emotions they employ in their dealings with others. As Sennett demonstrates,

“No long term” is a principle which corrodes trust, loyalty, and mutual commitment… usually deeper experiences of trust are more informal, as when people learn on whom they can rely when given a difficult or impossible task. Such social bonds take time to develop, slowly rooting into the cracks and crevices of institutions… Detachment and superficial cooperativeness are better armor for dealing with current realities than behavior based on values of loyalty and service. [Sennett, 1998, pp. 24 25]

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