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170 COMMUNICA TION THEORY
escape, and when they do escape, they typically take all kinds of risks, as
a means of rebellion and compensation for a life course of over-regulation.
Paradoxically, the over-regulation that is found in institutionalized forms
of community stands in an inverse relationship to the very weak kinds of
tie that are found outside these protected bubbles of community. Whilst
they may become suffocating, the cost of leaving them may be to accept a
condition where contract and law must perpetually rule over mistrust
and individual interest.
The contrast between the micro-community and the outside world
grows ever more pronounced in modern/postmodern societies, to the
point at which integration into the larger contexts of what Cooley called
secondary relationships as well as tertiary, indirect mediated relationships
becomes difficult for many people.
Another major aspect of this contrast is around the question of belief.
As community miniaturizes, the number of settings in which individuals
are enveloped by different belief systems also multiplies. Thus the dis-
courses within the family will be different from those in the school yard
and different again in the workplace. In most cases, these differences
come into conflict with one another, and for an individual to cope with
this fact s/he will invariably adopt different and contradictory subject
positions. The fact that the theory of the subject emerged at the zenith of
the period of modernity needs to be related to this question of the plurali-
zation of settings of integration.
Such pluralization need not be seen as a dilution of community from
the point of view of a given individual. Bell and Newby (1976) argue that
community is only possible when the connection between individuals
can be characterized as multi-stranded. These strands could be based in
repetition of meeting in the street, kinship, membership of a group. Like
Tönnies, Bell and Newby distinguish between three different forms of
community: there are geographically based communities of propinquity,
which do not necessarily require a strong conscience collective; there are
communities of a localized social sub-system, such as in institutions; and,
lastly, there is the populist sense of community as belonging and good-
will, which is described as communion. Communion need not depend only
on parochial assembly and may well occur at a distance.
But for Bell and Newby, neither an extended nor a local sense of com-
munity is necessarily sufficient on its own. What is lacking in a techno-
logically extended communication event might be supplemented by
embodied travel. Conversely, the more that people travel in an embodied
manner, the more they might feel the calling to ‘stay connected’ via elec-
tronic or other means to the places that have been visited. But, for the most
part, in environments of virtual electronic community, we are permanently
exposed to a propinquity with strangers: on the screens we immerse our-
selves in; in gazing from our car at high speed; or in halls of large volumes
of flânerie – the airport, the shopping mall, the tourist bubble. In the midst of
such a maelstrom and proximity of strangers beating out familiar pathways