ABSTRACT
| Title of Document: | MEMBERSHIP VS. BEING OF THE COMMUNITY: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF THE GO-GO MUSIC-CULTURAL COMMUNITY. |
| Tahira Chloe Mahdi, Doctor of Philosophy, 2018. | |
| Directed By: | Kenneth I. Maton, Professor, Department of Psychology |
Community membership is an important element of McMillan and Chavis’ (1986) classic sense of community framework, which has been a staple in community psychology research. The present study explored the extent to which the McMillan and Chavis five-attribute definition of community membership matched how membership is defined by members of the Go-Go music-cultural community that is highly localized to the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area. This qualitative case study also explored the possibility that other membership attributes exist for the Go-Go community besides the five McMillan and Chavis attributes of boundaries, emotional safety, sense of belonging and identification, personal investment, and common symbol system. Results suggest that the membership construct may not be relevant for all types of communities, as boundaries, emotional safety, sense of belonging and identification, and personal investment do not operate in the Go-Go community the way that McMillan and Chavis defined them.
A different construct called being of the community is offered for the Go-Go community as a better fit than membership. Attributes for this alternative concept, being of the community, include permeable levels, personal knowledge and experience, and recognition, as well as common symbol system. This construct takes into account the Go-Go community’s contextual intersection of: geographical location, the Washington, D.C. area; the historical era in which Washington, D.C. was majority-Black, 1970s through early 2000s; the perceived older age of the community; the perceived Blackness of the community; and the community’s connection to the entertainment industry. Being of the community is also offered as a better fit than membership because of the Go-Go community’s unbounded structure, in contrast to the bounded structure of the communities that exemplify McMillan and Chavis’ (1986) attributes of membership.
Noting scholarly critiques of the sense of community construct as an assumption of homogeneity and social equality (e.g., Wiesenfeld, 1996), and critiques of music scene studies as prioritizing the male voice (e.g., Hill, 2014), the present study imparts alternative findings regarding race, age, socioeconomic status, and gender. Implications of this study include the need for researchers to consider issues of power and cultural marginalization as they study communities and the role of Western dominant culture in how community theory is constructed and applied to all types of communities (i.e., without addressing contextual variation, including culturally and historically specific variation).
This work speaks to academic audiences interested in moving toward more contextualized approaches to community study. This study also has significance for the Go-Go community, as the community has been consistently stereotyped and marginalized in its local sociopolitical context; participants’ experiences and perspectives illuminate the cultural significance of Go-Go to the people who are of the community.
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