Mcknight, J. and Block, P. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods. (2010) Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco.
I chose to read The Abundant Community for two reasons. The first being the title itself. It was not only intriguing to me as an aspiring health information professional, but as a citizen yearning to be part of an abundant community both personally and professionally. Secondly, the title denotes a message of physical health within a neighborhood/community as well as its citizens ultimately creating a community that is personally and socially satisfying as a result of eating healthier food and preserving our natural resources.
After reading the first chapter, my first overall impression of The Abundant Community was of skepticism and idealization concerning the possibility of citizens creating an abundant community. As I read, I found it hard not to become nostalgic for the neighborhoods of my youth where kids, parents, and neighbors knew each other and socializing was more spontaneous. Many neighbors would drop by on a whim. In those days, neighbor friends visited our home and would casually exchange information with my parents about each other’s skills and interests and how they could contribute their natural gifts or talents to help each other and each other’s kids. I remember my mother helping one friend with a cultural project for school and that same friend’s father taking me out for extra driving practice to pass Driver Training.
The authors, John McKnight and Peter Block, while discussing the negative effects of our consumer society on families, neighborhoods, communities, and the environment, assert that community citizens have capabilities to express needs and gifts to contribute to our neighborhoods and to each other in creating a more sustainable and satisfying life while minimizing our dependence on excess material goods in order to validate our overall personal value.
“Community, as defined by the Encyclopedia of Community, is a specific group of people sharing a common interest.” In his book, Community, The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block states that “Communities are human systems given form by conversations that build relatedness” which is also the premise of The Abundant Community. The authors organize their concepts and proposals into three parts.
In Part I, John McKnight and Peter Block discuss the shift from citizen to consumer, define the consumer way as “lives of scarcity and consumption,” and define the citizen way as “lives of abundance and cooperation.” They further illustrate the “Elements of Satisfaction” which resonated with me since my learning community is health oriented. In regard to health, they emphasize that “Our neighborhoods are the primary source of our health.” These include “…, personal behaviors, social relationships and physical environment.” The authors poignantly assert that, “Our institutions can offer only service – not care – for care is the freely given commitment from the heart of one to another; it cannot be purchased.” I agree with the authors that while our physicians can examine and treat us and our family members with medications or recommend physical therapy at the minimum, we also need to take responsibility for our health and those of our families into our own hands and seek information on alternate therapies when the initial medicines fail or cease to help.
A final and important observation for this chapter is the authors stating and defining three terms that are not only fundamental to creating an abundant community, but that are fundamental to health learning communities. These terms are listed and defined as follows:
- Association: “Three or more people who come together by choice and mostly without pay because of a common interest. The common interest may be simply to be together, or it may be to change the world.”
- Neighborhood: “The place where you live and sleep. It could be your block or the square mile surrounding where you live. It may or may not have a name.”
- Community: “A general term to describe what occurs outside systems and institutions.” Similarly, in relation to our class lectures and readings, the authors also state that “it also refers to an aggregation of people or neighborhoods that have something in common. It is both a place and an experience of connectedness.”
In Part Two, McKnight and Block shift their discussion from critiquing the consumer society and its consequential costs to our personal lives, neighborhood and communities to considering the possibilities and actions we as citizens can take to bring our communities back to a more sustainable and satisfying life. These possibilities include “placing hospitality at the center of newly activated communities and the encouragement and empowerment of citizens to utilize share, and exchange their natural gifts of teaching, nurturing caring for the youth, infirmed and elderly, the land and welcome those on the margins” as Elfreda Chatman focused her doctoral research on the marginalized individual, defined as “someone that lives in two small worlds of culture, which are very different from each other.”
The authors then include and define the terms Association and Associational life that conveniently fit into Peter Block’s definition of community. Association is further defined as “fundamentally, a group of people who have a shared affinity” and further defined as “a primary place in community where individual capacities get expressed.” Associational life, according to the authors, begins with a group of people who are drawn together for some reason, and that reason is what makes it work.” They provide examples of bike clubs, pet clubs and health clubs. Another example belonging to an association or fitting into an associational life regarding my health information community are volunteers working with health information librarians to help and train medical professionals with information seeking strategies and troubleshooting computer issues.
The authors in Part three continue to discuss the value of associations and associational life, their strong relationship and central(ness) to democracy, and giving ourselves power to wean ourselves from our dependency on consumer goods and the consumer society.
Another statement the authors make that resonates with health Information communities is that, “Every association is empowering and powerful, because it acts as the amplifier of the gifts, skills, and talents of each member. It is the principal community means of helping people to give their gifts.”
For an association to empower citizens to utilize and share their gifts, The authors state that to create abundant communities, it is vital to: ”elevate and make more visible people who have connecting capacity and, encourage each of us to discover the connecting possibility in our own selves.”
While I believe these are noble ideas for more functional communities and neighborhoods, I find it idealistic to believe that the “average” person will have the spiritual insight to overlook a major deficiency in character or even a slight disability of someone who is slow in thinking or moving in today’s fast-paced society. The authors profoundly state that “The greatest community weakness is that we haven’t seen them and felt their loneliness. We have often ignored or even feared them. And yet their gifts are our greatest undiscovered treasure!” They conclude, “Therefore the Connectors’ Table [such as health information professionals, bracketed content mine] need to pay special attention to the people at the edge, the people with the names that describe their empty half rather than their gifted full half. For the strength of our neighborhood as greatest when we all give all our gifts.”
Conclusion
Therefore, library health professionals can take heed, glean and implement many of the inspiring ideas and concepts of the authors, McKnight and Block to enhance their health resource centers and information communities. While health librarians may be knowledgeable, focused and dedicated in their pursuit to find information for physicians and other health professionals, they can develop ways of creating a hospitable and welcoming environment (without disturbing those quietly studying and/or utilizing the Center’s resources) to all who visit, explore and seek information for personal and professional reasons.
One final and very poignant thought by the authors is “every local community of any kind is a group of specially connected people. But the very fact of their special connection necessarily creates outsiders.” One area where health information professionals can create an abundant community is to observe visitors or students that display special talents of helping friends or family members search for information on the Health Resource Center’s online catalog or help a medical professional troubleshoot a glitch. Many community hospitals have auxiliary or volunteer programs where the public can join and share their gifts. El Camino Hospital has such an auxiliary with the Health Resource Center being one of them. With encouragement and effective mentoring by health information professionals, volunteers connected to physicians and health professionals utilizing their gifts of troubleshooting and information seeking strategies may be inspired to study medicine, health information librarianship, or information technology.
References:
Block, P. (2008). Community: the structure of belonging. (2008) Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Francisco.
Fulton, C. ““An Ordinary Life in the Round: Elfreda Annmary Chatman” in Libraries and the Cultural Record. (2010) 45(2), p.239
Mcknight, J. and Block, P. The abundant community: awakening the power of families and neighborhoods. (2010) Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco.