In his book, James May’s 20th Century, the author writes, “The Model T was designed and built ‘for the great multitude….’ It pioneered the moving production line, and put the planet’s most forward-thinking people on wheels…. What it didn’t pioneer…is the standardized system of car control we now take for granted.” (29) In this same chapter, titled “Shrinking the World,” he lays out the history of the Volkswagen “Beetle.” May notes that what started out as “the people’s car” under Hitler never took off at that time. Few were produced, and those for Nazi officers. The factory was eventually turned into a munitions plant, bombed, left in ruins and, post-war, offered to American car manufacturers, who mocked the possibility of ever mass producing what Henry Ford himself called a (insert blasphemous word here). A British army officer named Ivan Hirst decided that resurrecting the little car, and the town with it, was worth a go. May indicates the satire in the fact that the car eventually did become, “the peoples’ car.” It just happened to do so with a completely different set of people. (He also notes the irony in that, though it started out as a vehicle for the Third Reich, it became the quintessential peacenik car and an icon for hippies everywhere.)
“Global standardization” of cars is a reality and has been for generations. Cars beginning in one country but ending in another, uniting a fractured planet. The world-wide web. A “global community.” I plugged those words into google. With parental controls engaged, 2,260,000 hits popped up referencing that phrase in less than half a second. Obviously people believe in and discuss a “global community.” But what does that mean?
I sat with my advisor and colleague today discussing “communities.” The three of us met in a room which has the unwieldy moniker “University of North Dakota Working Group in Digital and New Media.” It is an interesting room that, in itself, represents the layers of the discussion. The room is not intended for graduate students in history alone. Truthfully, I have no idea exactly which groups of people use that room beyond my colleagues and myself. I know people do as they come and go in it just as I do. We smile politely at each other and go about our business.
The room is filled with wonderful techno-gadgets to include some nice computers. It is there that I sometimes jump into the world-wide web, access Omeka, and input data. I become more linked with the program, (which, in turn, links to “the world”), than with those who inhabit my space. Unless, of course, the interns are meeting with our professor, which we do on Tuesdays. During that time we sometimes delve into programs together either learning something new, or helping each other (which generally means my peers helping me) explore strange new worlds, or parsing readings and et c.
I do know that everyone who has access to “the lab” is in some way connected to the university. In some respects, we are connected to each other because we all use the same space. Students come and go, not just on a daily basis, but semester to semester, year to year. Neither the environment nor the population remains stable, but always in flux.
Airports function in much the same way. They are points of departure, arrival, and/or transiency. They are, like the proverbial rushing river, never the same from moment to moment. When my spouse left for the Middle East last year, he departed from the local airport. When he arrived home eight months later, I met him on the same spot. Yet neither of us were the same. Time had wrought changes in us, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Nevertheless, airports represent community to me. All the people in them, whether passengers, pilots, attendants, ticketing agents, baggage checkers, security officers, janitors, or food workers recognize this as a place of transiency. We are connected by our understanding of that space, despite the fact that the space is in a continual, unstable state of flux. Perhaps this notion of “community” evolved from my own upbringing.
My family of origin was, in effect, nomadic. As I’ve stated before, my father was military. As a result, we moved, on average, every year. Despite the bad press often given to the military lifestyle, I never knew any families that were “unstable.” Moving was a way of life. It had purpose. Friendships came and went. Some remained and continue to do so. They were not then, nor now, based on location. We learned early on that the planet was a fairly small place and easily traversed. Even before cell phones and personal computers we knew how to stay in contact and nurture our unions. This, to me, is “community.”
My advisor approached the term “community” from a different vantage point. He chose what was, to me, a shocking polarization. (I am quite sure I came across the same to him.) He used the examples of boundaries that metaphorically surround neighborhoods in larger cities. (Understand, please, that this was for comparison only and to help illustrate his point.) If I understood him correctly, he argued that things like ethnicity, time spent in a particular location, and ties associated with rituals (such as a long-standing member of a neighborhood restaurant shutting down their place of business for one of the “local family’s” son’s engagement party) all contributed to the definition of community.
I found this understanding of the word uncomfortably limiting. Community, to me, is a state of being and not tied to a place. It is, in truth, an “imagined” space that links people based on shared experiences and world views. It allows for flux and change. It understands that, as airports are places that bring happiness, sadness, or ambivalence, so does community. The importance of the “space” is not the time that has passed nor who is there, but that the experience is shared, even if at different times. It looks for the “tie that binds.”
The idea of local, closed communities that must share time, space, and history is too confining for me. Perhaps that is because, (and I do not mean to overstate this), I have experienced such “communities” as an “outsider.” I did not label myself as such, but was labeled. Seeing “community” in the way that I do, I have never understood people who remain so guarded and inclusive that they eschew the new. I have always assumed a certain amount of insecurity, selfishness, or cultural hubris on their part and, since I moved so often, certainly did not waste the friendships I could be establishing there on people that chose to remain sequestered in this way.
I compare my spouse’s upbringing with my own. He lived his entire life in a rural community of less than 1,000 people. Stereotypically, this town should be a small “community” of people who, because they spent copious amounts of time together in limited space sharing daily, monthly, and annual rituals, (the “Corn and Clover Carnival” comes to mind), should be nearly inseparable. Yet my spouse claims few actual ties to this place. Those friends he continues to share “community” with do not live anywhere near it. He has fond memories of his past and the townspeople. He is liked, well-respected and recognized on those rare occasions when we drive through, but this place is simply a part of his life, and our lives have lots of “parts” which constitute the whole. It was one more airport on his journey, so to speak.
What, then, does “community” actually mean? My colleague in the lab googled the word and got a myriad of definitions, most of them quite limited. Finding that unsatisfactory, I once again turned to Oxford for the roots of this word when I arrived home. (Everyone really should own an excellent dictionary.) To my delight, I found that “community” comes from Middle English and originates from “the quality of appertaining to all in common.” Its use can be traced to 1561. By 1587 it had come to mean “common character; agreement; social intercourse; communion.” It is not until much later (1727) that we find “a body of persons living together, and practicing community of goods” (ie. sharing “physical space”) to be used as the norm.
If you’ll look at the opening paragraph of this blog, you’ll note that Mr. May, whose book is for sale on the world-wide web and therefore capable of reaching anyone on the planet, has addressed standardization in cars that “we,” as in “the global community” take for granted. World-wide standardization is happening. Selling books, and most anything else (both fortunately and unfortunately), is global business. Authors are “speaking” to the world. More profoundly, Mr. May recently had the opportunity to be one of those few blessed individuals who flew to the very edge of our atmosphere in a U2 spyplane. He recorded his venture. Hovering on that thin, frail, outer edge of the bubble that surrounds our planet, the blackness of eternity above, looking down at the sky below, seeing our world from that vantage point, he recognized that we are, indeed, one singular group of people. I am not naive enough to believe that we will ever all get along, or that we can share every experience. But, like Mr. May, I believe that if we could all but look down on this place we’ve named Earth, we would indeed comprehend that we are truly a global community. The world is my backyard. Hello, Neighbor.
(With many thanks to Mr. James May and BBC2 for the following preview.)
Chris
kahnedegaard
Bill Caraher
saramcintee
