Place and Community

James Matthew Wilson, The Problem of Place (Part I in an ongoing series, Localism and the Universal Church)

Place may be a principle of community for settled, agrarian societies, less so for nomadic or hunter-gatherer groups. I do think that having a place does promote stability and enable a community to progress culturally through the division of labor.

Santa Cruz Local Foods is changing hands - Big Changes. It is an example of how we do not accord people with roots and commitment to the "community" a priority over outsiders. Rather, who is able to live in a community is dictated by their ability to acquire and keep property. Those who have more money have more "rights" than those who have less.

Is it correct to point the finger at the tech industry and the government for favoring it? It may generate wealth for the state, but at the cost of community, as people from other states (and even other countries) settle here for jobs for themselves and the public schools for their children, displacing those who were born in the area but not created to work in the industry. The engineers who move here may be just looking out for their own interest, like everyone else, but disliking them for being voluntarily participating in the matrix comes easy.

Perhaps it is natural that the industry grew near certain universities here and on the east coast - but if it were cheap to relocate, what is to prevent what happened here from happening to some small town in, say, Idaho, if the local government decided to subsidize the transfer of companies from here to that state or town?

Some may claim that the freedom to move is integral to American identity and culture. How about, then, the freedom to move and easily retain citizenship? Is that also essential? If so, then maybe there is no hope for American culture, as the inordinate desire to move on the part of many destroys community.

American Conservative: Revolt of the Rich
Authoritarian Politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism
Payoff in the Pit of Plutocracy

VDare: Bad News For Immigration Patriots: Cardinal Timothy Dolan's "Close Working Relationship" With Romney

Elias Crim reviews The Hound of Distributism
(Houston Catholic Worker review from earlier this year)

Energy expert says world's oil production has peaked
Peak cheap oil is an incontrovertible fact

Related:
Medievalists.net: Hellenism and the Shaping of the Byzantine Empire - link to the paper
The Amish, Faith, and Community