Colin Penter: Radical ideas on civil society, the not-for-profit world and social justice activism: "Counterfeit" communties and the commodification of community

Sunday, June 5, 2011

"Counterfeit" communties and the commodification of community

The adverts appear everywhere. Developers adverting their ritzy housing estates claiming that they don't build houses, they build communities. And property developers employ community development specialists to create "communities" in order to sell more houses at higher prices.

And then there are the Government departments and NGO's who describe their top down efforts to impose solutions on people to achieve already defined outcomes as "community development".

Frankly it is all an illusion.

It is as Australian blogger and writer Bruce Watson rightly points out the commodification of community- the turning of a complex human and social institution into a commodity that can be exploited for profit and political gain. Watson reminds us that most of what takes place under the banner of "community" has become clouded and easily manipulated for commodification and marketing.

John Freie and Bruce Watson call it "counterfeit communities" and it is a good description. In counterfeit communities it is less important that communities exist in reality. It is the appearance of community that is important. People are encouraged to see the manifestations and spirit of community without accepting the complex interactions that must occur for it to be realized. As Wilson writes:

"Community has regrettably become a product to be advertised, marketed and sold. It makes no difference whether genuine community exists or not. As long as it appears to exist. Consequently, we are subjected to planned communities that are advertised as “truly a special place”, “we’ve made the dream a reality” and “the tasteful community you deserve” with a “neighbourhood bar and grill” (in the multi-story shopping centre complex)"

As Watson points counterfeit communities, despite all the glossy brochures, promises and hyperbole, are inherently hollow and exploitative. They are never fully satisfying.

And Wilson gets to the nub of counterfeit community:

"Counterfeit community extends the power and expands the wealth of those who create it".

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Reflections

"There are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about.. things that stand for civic decency and public respect for imagination and knowledge and the value of simple delight" Phillip Pullman

“NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but in a materially inconsequential way. Their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of buffer between the sarkar and public. Between Empire and its subjects. They have become the arbitrators, the interpreters, the facilitators. In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among. They’re what botanists would call an indicator species. It’s almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than the phenomenon of the U.S. preparing to invade a country and simultaneously readying NGOs to go in and clean up the devastation. In order make sure their funding is not jeopardized and that the governments of the countries they work in will allow them to function, NGOs have to present their work in a shallow framework, more or less shorn of a political or historical context” Arundhati Roy

"This government does not like campaigning and advocacy organisations, and the removal of the ACNC as an independent regulator simply exposes those organisations to attack". Greg Ogle

" ...the the nation’s nonprofit association leaders have to speak out publicly about the juggernaut of market thinking that has increasingly relegated nonprofits to a category of unexciting, not particularly effective, second-rate responders to the social and economic problems of our country. Those problems are largely the product of our market economy. Hopefully, nonprofits won’t see themselves as having collapsed into the for-profit sector’s bench". Rick Cohen

"It’s no longer sufficient for the nonprofit sector to sidestep critical societal issues of race, campaign finance, climate change, and the fiscal cliff for fear that in speaking out on them they will alienate arenas of political support they need to cultivate and protect. The nonprofit sector has a concrete role to play in telling politicians to get their acts together, to start speaking to the real issues of the day, and to act as if being elected to government means having to engage in the process of governing" Rick Cohen

"We in the sector are constantly exhorted to provide evidence of need and success in order to get funding - but the government is allowed to get away with rolling out a controversial, highly contested model of funding the sector without providing evidence. How hypocritical is that? Well, it won't work. Private-sector models are not the solution to deeply entrenched, long-term social problems.
Deborah Allcock Tyler

" Introducing the different logics of civil society and the market into the same organization can have a negative effect by confusing the bottom line still further, complicating accountability and stimulating mission drift"
Michael Edwards, Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World

The rise of advocacy groups and NGOs has...accompanied the neoliberal turn and increased spectacularly since 1980 or so. The NGOs have in many instances stepped into the vacuum in social provision left by the withdrawal of the state from such activities. This amounts to privatization by NGO. In some instances, this has helped accelerate further state withdrawal from social provision. NGOs thereby function as "Trojan horses for neoliberal globalization."
David Harvey

"The dominant story is of a corporatised, economics-driven sector, where leaders are promoted on their ability to run businesses that happen to be charities"
Lucy Morris

"History knows many periods of dark times in which the public realm has been obscured and the world become so dubious that people have ceased to ask any more of politics than it show due consideration for their vital interests and public liberty"
Hannah Arendt

Just because the non-profit sector needs to improve its performance does not necessarily mean it has to become more business like"
Paul Light

If you make yourself a sheep the wolves will eat you
Benjamin Franklin

"It's clear Australia's third sector development is being hamstrung by its poor relations with state and federal governments, and by the absence of a coherent policy framework."
Mark Lyons

"The history of social justice and social change has been written by social movements. Change does not come from above"
John Falzon

"No lasting change has been successful without large numbers of people acting consciously and collectively around human values of solidarity and social justice, not market values. Markets are great ways to do some things, but not to fashion communities of caring and compassion"
Michael Edwards

Colin Penter: Radical ideas on civil society, the not-for-profit world and social justice activism

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Sunday, June 5, 2011

"Counterfeit" communties and the commodification of community

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