Community and affluenza

I’m reading Affluenza by Clive Hamilton and Richard Dennis at the moment as the next instalment for our bookclub. It’s five years old now, but is still a challenging read, with lots of interesting little asides. Here is a curious little passage on the effect of affluenza on community:

Working long and irregular hours does not just cause accidents and make us sick and tired: it breaks down the bonds that hold our communities together … As well as stripping away the time people would generally have to devote to community activities, overwork seems to shape people’s mindsets in such a way that they feel their community is something they must protect themselves from rather than a resource from which they can draw and to which they can contribute. When hours become precious, people tend to hoard them …

Community involvement takes time, but is also has the potential to provide great benefits for the individuals involved. Because long hours force people to retreat from community involvement – whether it be playing in the local footy team or helping out with meals on wheels – ‘leisure time’ has become more commodified or more lonely, or both.

In general, involvement in community activities is a low-cost, or no-cost, way to spend leisure time. As people retreat from these activities they are likely to spend more money on eating out, renting movies or going away for the weekend – pursuits that cost much more than doing some volunteer work with friends or attending a post-match sausage sizzle. Withdrawal from community also reinforces the tendency among people who work long hours to mix almost exclusively with their workmates. There is nothing wrong with forming friendships with work colleagues, but problems do arise when individuals are unable to gain an external perspective on their work culture and the hours they are working. Community activity facilitates much broader mixing across socio-economic groups. Although hierarchies can exist in community and sporting groups, they are less likely to be based solely on income and profession. The broader an individual’s social network the less likely it is that they will see themselves at the bottom of the pecking order, because the definition of ‘success’ will differ widely across different organisations.

Overwork’s corrosive effect on communities is another vector for affluenza. Community ties offer people low-cost entertainment and a broader perspective on the appropriateness of excessive work and overconsumption. A commitment to community activities can also give us the reason we need to leave work on time. Conspicuous consumption is likely to be less important to people who are well known in their communities because more people will know what they are really like and will respect and admire them. It is necessary to judge someone by the type of car in their driveway only if you have never actually met them.