Sense of Community in Nickel and Dimed: Analytical Essay

Throughout this class, I have learned that Urban Studies has a lot to do with community. In a community, the general focus is the ties that bind people together and tear them apart. I genuinely enjoyed chapters six through nine in the book but I would like to specifically focus on chapters six and eight having to do with community and the way people are tied together within those communities. I found Local Hero, The Milagro Beanfield War, and Nickel and Dimed gave me a strong sense of community while reviewing the content. I intend to examine how the materials reviewed in class tie into the chapters I enjoyed so much. The three pieces I would like to review are joined by community, not only community in terms of physical location but a community in terms of ethnic and religious backgrounds.

Chapter six of the text revolves around rural-urban typologies are limited tools for understanding the shift from rural-preindustrial to urban-industrial life. The typology comes out of a nineteenth-century view of one-way thinking. It cannot account for significant differences within preindustrial communities or industrial societies. Although the chapter focuses on Europe, this was not the case for most of the world. Instinctively, we may not feel that the sense of community is the same all over the world. I am sure life in a tribal village and medieval London would be somewhat different. Of course, there are differences between everyday life in a 3rd world area and a metropolis. The effects of industrialization, cultural values, and other variables have to be carefully unscrambled when assessing the rural to urban shift within societies. Chapter six has a basic theme that revolves around theorists fundamentally disagreeing on the nature of urbanization.

Chapter six also introduces the topic of the community. Phillips states, “like love, truth, and other abstract concepts, the community has no agreed-on meaning. In the discipline of sociology alone, there are at least 90 definitions of the word (p.167).” I have learned that in Urban Studies, the community is a sense of belonging, a “we-ness” that typifies many traditional communities. Some groups share both a physical territory and a cohesive society existence, a traditional community. However, many groups called communities today are not bound by plots of land. For instance, a close-knit ethnic or religious community could be widely dispersed. Yet its members share a culture and origins that bind them. Those previous definitions are what I believe tie the class materials into this chapter. The three pieces I would like to review are joined by community; whether it is ethnic, religious, or physical.

Chapter eight has to do with making connections and social networks. For the most part, people are not isolated. Instead, they belong to communities and social networks. Analyzing these networks is another approach to studying how contemporary people maintain a sense of connection (Phillips, 2010, p251). The network has to do with the proportion of actual connections among network members compared with the possible number of connections among actual members. The ties of networking are strong and come from friendships, emotion, acquaintanceship, and frequent contact. Aside from networks, there is a growing recognition that members of a global community share common concerns, possibly a common fate. I find this chapter relates to the three pieces I would like to review in the way that not all characters in the pieces were not only a community but a strong network of individuals.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed fits into chapter eight. It explores the depressing life of minimum-wage workers and their struggles to sustain an existence. Ehrenreich’s goal is to shire the light on American poverty and its endless cycle of paycheck to paycheck. The premise of the book is to understand how hundreds and thousands of people live at the poverty level and how there is a realization that this way of life very much exists. There are many people who refuse to take government handouts and do the best they can to get by.

Ehrenreich’s technique is solid in that she places herself in the middle of the experiment by working multiple minimum wage jobs in three different cities. She would go to a town and look for a job, which was never as easy as one would think. After obtaining a job, she would look for housing within her very small budget; and for one month attempts to live off her minimum wage job. The book basically covers clinical trials and studies of Ehrenreich’s experiences mixed with a real human element. The human aspect is what I truly enjoyed about this book and is what ties into chapters six and eight of our text.

While Ehrenreich was working these interesting minimum wage jobs, she would interview her co-workers. She learned their backstories and how they were able to survive on minimum wage. She learned the most human aspect from her experiment; they survived by forming a network and creating their own community. Each job she held had similar people that survived in the same way, by creating their own communities. They would room with each other where they could, they would watch each other’s children, and cheer each other on. The people she encountered did not identify as “residents” as members of low-status ZIP codes. These places may be instrumental in forging a new sense of we-ness among people of different ages, backgrounds status positions, and tastes (Phillips, 2010, p250). To some, these “communities” meet the challenge: they guarantee freedom and provide intimacy; they are placeless, faceless and interconnective communities.

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Another piece we reviewed in class was a movie that revolved around the theme of community. Local Hero is a movie that is set in the cute small town of Ferness. The town is geographically and economically isolated. It consists of a small row of homes, a pub, a tiny hotel, one phone booth, and a ton of people that value the idea of community. The people of Ferness are good, kind people. Fishermen making a living from the sea and everyone else makes a living where they can, doubling up on jobs if necessary. The people appear odd at first but at the layers are pulled back you see that they are a true community.

An oil company sets out to buy the tiny scenic town on the bay in Scotland where they intend to build an oil refinery. The oil company sends Mac to buy the land. Mac meets Gordon, the hotel owner, who is also the accountant, and the bartender. Mac makes it known that he intends to buy the town to build a refinery. Gordon suggests Mac wander around the town and get to know the place that he intends to buy. While Mac is away, Gordon uses the strong network the town has built and got the word out regarding the possible sale of the town. The townspeople are thrilled at the chance to sell their land and become instant millionaires, which makes Mac a very popular guy within the town.

As the deal nears an end, the locals hold a ceilidh (kay-lay) to meet and talk about the deal. The entire town shows up to get drunk and discuss how they will spend their millions on Maseratis and Ferraris. Everyone has a great time but Mac. Mac has grown to love the town and its people. The ceilidh only solidifies the sense of community that Mac wants in his life. The town was bought but an observatory and a marine preserve were built as to not ruin the bay. While that was not the original intent, the sense of community was strong and swayed the young businessman’s mind. At the end of movie, Mac says, “But I can go back, year after year, and I do. With each viewing, the simple joy of life at Ferness, and the preciousness of that particular time and place becomes more and more dear (Forsyth).”

The movie tied into not only community-based on territory but community based on common culture. Chapter eight discusses how researchers think that a ZIP code is the single most important bit of information about people all over the world. A ZIP code identifies us as birds of a feather: members of residential communities where neighbors share preferences for food, cars, and presidential candidates. Ferness was not concerned with communities based solely on the sharing of space. Rather, they were focused on communities rooted in social relationships. As for communities with a common culture, they are not bound by a plot of land. The people of Ferness are members that share a culture and origins that bind them and set them apart from others in a society.

The final piece I would like to use from class is The Milagro Beanfield War which is a film that demonstrates the lengths a community will go to help each other. The movie opens with a spirit dancing around in the night playing music. The spirits within the town show up throughout the movie almost as if they are keeping the community of Milagro focused on their roots. The basis of the movie follows Joe, a poor man that lives in the rundown town of Milagro, New Mexico. The predominantly Hispanic town had seen better days back when it was a thriving farm community. The Devine Company which is a development company of elites comes in and the locals have a difficult time in regard to their water and property rights. The Devine Company is in the process of constructing a luxury resort that will attract wealthier people that will allow for tax rate increases; the rates will be too high for the people of Milagro to continue living in their town.

Joe, who was down on his luck inadvertently diverts water from an irrigation ditch owned by the Devine Company to irrigate his own bean field. Once word spreads that Joe is irrigating his bean field, a “war” begins between the Milagro community and the developers of the Devine Company. The simple act ultimately unifies the people of Milagro into an army fighting to preserve the valley and their whimsical way of life.

Milagro means miracle in Spanish and it looked like the town needed one. Joe seemed like he was going to give up but a local business owner, Ruby helped push Joe to carry on. Ruby felt something was wrong and used the network built within the community to mobilize the town. The Devine Company were the villains of this story and they overplayed their hand. The film ends with the Milagro community temporarily defeating the Devine Company. The final scene is the members of the community picking beans from Joe’s field while developers hear the word that their project has been postponed. Of course, the spirits come back to help celebrate the win over the developers and keep the whimsy of Milagro alive.

The Milagro Beanfield War was my favorite piece in regards to networking and community. Most citizens were farmers. Although agriculturists, they preferred to live in the town, walk their fields, and spend any leisure time talking to the people within their community which is the definition of a communal way of life (Phillips, 2010, p170).