Practices in Community Building

“Political friendship is not an emotion, but a practice, a set of hard-won, complicated habits that are used to bridge trouble, difficulty, and differences of personality, experience, and aspiration.” – Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers

What does it take to build community on a campus made up of diverse sets of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives? What sorts of communities are possible under the conditions of pluralism where we cannot take for granted that people in our community share similar interests or are making the same assumptions about political, social, or cultural goods? Is it possible to build something we would call friendship among people who experience social and political complexities differently, especially given the welter of feelings--rage and compassion, joy, fear, and sorrow--that course through us all?

To claim, taking cues from the above quote from Danielle Allen, that building community requires learning practices or habits of engagement frames these questions in a particular way. It insists that communities are forged through embodied efforts and actions. What are the sorts of social practices and social habits--the doings--that help build communities marked by pluralistic cross-pressures? How does one learn these practices and habits? What traditions and examples can we call on?

In this class, we will through the explicit and implicit norms that qualitatively shape community, norms such as:

• To what degree and how should the pain of others be recognized?
• How important is a “hermeneutics of generosity” in community building, which begins with trying to understand the other’s intentions before judging or criticizing them?
• How does self-criticism and criticism of others function in community?
• How important is dialogue, and of what sorts, to building forms of political friendship? Exchange of ideas--dialogue--may be necessary, but our focus on practice and habits also casts a skeptical eye on the notion that community rests solely or primarily on evaluating the soundness of propositions. History is replete with other social practices--story-telling, song, listening, dance--that carry and convey real discursive value.

Informed by selected readings rooted in the themes of the Core Curriculum, students will envision and develop projects that appeal to their interests, which they will bring to fruiti