The Successful Community, The Successful Individual

Caveat: This post may relate to thoughts I had here. Hopefully this doesn't read as repetitive, but continues to problematize the discussion, keep it open, etc. 

While no doubt Tharon Howard had a particular audience in mind when writing Design to Thrive, and no doubt that audience holds many of the presupposed values necessary to understand what he means when positing something as a "successful community," reading his book still left me wanting to question the notion of a successful community itself, since so much of Howard's argument rides on his audience already knowing what this means. Whether in terms of origins or resonances, the criteria upon the conception of a definition of a successful community might be as complex and diverse as understanding the desires of the individual in relation to what a community is. Perhaps some questions to consider: Is a community successful if it sufficiently produces the desires or meets the intended ends of the individual(s) creating that community? Must the actual needs of the other members of the community (its constituents) be met, or is all that is required is the belief that those needs are being met? Is the successful community determined by the success of an individual in that system, or is there a larger circumference that takes into account fairness and equity by which such success is defined? Interpellation, anyone? Conspicuous consumption, anyone? Of course I am thinking of these questions in terms of RIBS: Renumeration, Influence, Belonging, and Significance. 

It is important to clarify that I am not asserting Howard didn't consider these types of questions in his book, but that he already knew what his audience would consider a successful community to be. He exploits this knowledge effectively. (If he attempted to define what a successful community is in more political, or even academic, terms he may have lost large portions of his audience.) Even with his use of Pierre Bourdieu, Mark Poster, and other scholars of Post-Marxist, postmodern, and social constructivist thought--scholarship often quite critical of capitalist modes of production/information--his audience would seem to actually hold many of the values that this scholarship continually critiques in favor of models less labor exploitative, or at least more equitable in construct. In other words, even though the terms renumeration, influence, belonging, and significance convey a sense of the free communities of equal participation that the term "community" itself has historically conjured for us (i.e. community is always good), it is difficult not to see (in Howard's book) very individualistic motives governing the creation of these communities. Because of this, in some ways it seems that he is using the critics' thoughts to inform the objects of critique how to better perpetuate hegemonic practices, and how to satisfy their capitalist desires by fulfilling the consumptive desires of their constituents. In other ways (particularly Chapter 8), he is doing the opposite: he is writing a handbook for counter-hegemonic practice. I hope that at this point it is clear that I am giving Howard a lot of credit for how he constructed this book. For (if we are to consider the politics of the book) he seems to ride skillfully a fine line between teaching "the Man" how to remain "the Man," and teaching the marginalized how to organize and rebel against "the Man" if need be.

Perhaps I am taking this to extremes never intended by Howard, and if so, then let it be said that this is less a critique of Howard's book and more a critique of our notion of community in general. Or perhaps I am just attempting to practice some dissoi logoi. Nevertheless, below are a couple passages related to each of his core principles from Design to Thrive that show how well he walks this line I mentioned above, and taken in a different context could portray extremely different meanings (from hegemonic to counter-hegemonic). Try to read them through both perspectives.

Remuneration: "individuals remain members of a social network when there is a clear benefit for doing so. People need to believe that they will obtain some positive return on the investment of their time and energy in order to be attracted to participation in an e-community" (lines 1304-11, my emphasis).

"When somebody comes into a community and tries to redirect a conversation to their blog site or to another community, leaders of the community need to intervene and make clear that the discussion needs to stay in the community where it began and shouldn't be redirected elsewhere" (2017-18).  A metaphorical Berlin Wall or a community organizer concerned only with her constituents' needs?

These two passages are probably extreme enough (at least in how I framed them) for the questions I put forth at the top of this post. I'd like to close with saying how much I admire Howard's ability to make an argument that, I think, I appeals to an array of different politics, perhaps only excluding anti-technology groups. Might this type of rhetoric be more of what we see in the future? Where constituents are aware of how their identity is interpellated by and through the differential relationship they have with their communities. Might terms like "manipulation" and "interpellation" take on less pejorative weight, or even be accepted as commonplace in communication studies? Should they? I think we know Howard's answer.