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1007/s13347-013-0100-4

Design for Community: Toward a Communitarian Ergonomics

Taylor Dotson
Science and Technology Studies Department
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8th Street
Sage Building 5th Floor
Troy, NY 12180-3590
Cell: (518) 703-2564
Fax: (518) 276-2659
Email: dotsot@rpi.edu
Abstract
This paper explores how the designed world could be better supportive of better communal ways of relating. In
pursuit of this end, I put the philosophy of technology dealing with the role that technologies play in shaping,
directing, mediating, and legislating human action in better communication with a diverse literature concerning
community. I argue that community ought to viewed as composed of three interrelated dimensions: experience,
structure, and practice. Specifically, it is a psychological sense evoked via a particular arrangement of ties and
constellation of social practices guided, at its best, by phronetic reasoning. It is a mode of social being that I set in
opposition to networked individualism. I examine the existent and potential communitarian ergonomics of the
design of contemporary urban spaces and network devices. However, I conclude that artifacts remain only one part
of the picture. A communally ergonomic mode of being requires not only compatible artifacts and built spaces but
also an institutional context supportive of community as an economic and political entity.
Keywords: Community; Technology; Technological mediation; The good life; Communitarian ergonomics; Design

The designed world ought to be more heavily scrutinized in terms of its compatibility with different forms
of community. This is apparent if one considers the research highlighting the problematic character of increasing
individualism and social fragmentation within Western, developed societies (Bellah et al. 1985, Taylor 1991,
Putnam 2000). In same way that Winner (1995) advocates that designers take into account the political
ergonomics of their designs for the practice of democracy, I argue that designers should also consider the
communitarian ergonomics of their creations for particular experiences, arrangements, and practices of sociality.
There are already excellent works (e.g., Willson 2006) examining virtual communities vis--vis information
technologies. This article differs takes a very different tack, however, considering a wider range of technologies and
directing attention primarily towards offline enactments of community. Furthermore, my purpose is not to
characterize the discussions concerning technology and community but to argue for a certain conception of
community and evaluate the compatibility of certain technologies, built spaces, markets and systems of governance
the designed world broadly defined with that conception.
The analysis is grounded in the work of three major figures in the philosophy of technology. First,
Winners (1977, 1980) work has illustrated how artifacts may serve as patterning legislations on human actions or
seem to necessitate or enable particular arrangements of power and authority. Second, Borgmann (1984) has
elucidated the relationship between technologies and human practice, noting how certain technologies provide goods
as mere commodities and fail to support the focal practices that center good human lives within meaningful
contexts of engagement. Third, Verbeek (2010) has described technologies as materializing morality, shaping
moral decisions and humans as moral actors. In my analysis, questions concerning technology and community
inevitably involve politics, morality and the good life.
The concept of community has received a great deal of philosophical attention; I cannot give justice to the
whole literature herein. Furthermore, I find many contributions from the psychological and social sciences
concerning community to be equally important and insightful. As such, I have drawn selectively from each of the
literatures in psychology, sociology and philosophy that deal with what I consider to be the most important
dimensions of community: the experiential, the structural and the practical. Specifically, I consider the literature
surrounding the psychological sense of community and the sociology concerning the geometry of communal ties.
As well, I draw upon sociological work (Bellah et al. 1985) inspired by the civic republican tradition of de

Tocqueville and Jefferson in addition to the communitarian critique of liberalism, represented by the philosophers
Taylor, MacIntyre, Barber and Sandel, which together illustrate the moral and practical dimensions of community.
The first half of this paper is devoted to developing a framework for viewing the connection between
technological mediations and the good life as well as outlining a conception of community. I argue that the design of
the artifactual world reflects and reinforces particular ways of being, relating, and viewing the self. That is, it
reflects and reinforces particular approaches to the good life. Next, I contend that community ought to be viewed not
only as a subjective feeling of belonging but also as constituted by particular arrangements of social ties and
practices. As such, I assert that it is a mode of sociality set in opposition to networked individualism, the lifestyle
in which one strives to exist as an atomized and unencumbered node instrumentally operating a personalized
network of ties. Rather, community demands a dense and multiplex weaving of social ties as well as a practice of
relating built upon the partial withdrawal of instrumental reason and application of phronetic judgment.
I define communitarian ergonomics as the extent to which artifacts and technological systems help sustain
community as an experience, a social structure, and a practice. Communally ergonomic technologies, that is, do not
materialize the practice of networked individualism. I attempt to concretize this definition by examining the
technological forces, persuasions and seductions against community enacted by many contemporary urban spaces
and network devices as well as design movements aimed at producing more communally ergonomic alternatives.
Nevertheless, I conclude that artifacts and technological systems themselves are only one aspect of the
communitarian ergonomics of human societies; it will be necessary to give equal consideration to the design of the
economy, systems of governance and other institutions that mediate daily living and contribute to the emergence and
obduracy of many communally non-ergonomic technological designs.
Technological Mediation and the Good Life
Too often, the good life is assumed to be merely a matter for individual choice, and technologies become
viewed as simply value-neutral tools that individuals rationally utilize in their pursuit of the good life. This view is a
flavor of technological liberalism: the symbiosis of philosophical liberalism and technological instrumentalism so
often the target of Grants (1986) critiques. However, a great deal of science and technology studies, philosophy of
technology and social psychological research undermines both the notion of the autonomously and rationally
choosing self and the instrumentalist view of the technology. Latour (1992), for instance, has examined technologies
as scripting programs of action. The decision to put on a seatbelt in an automobile is not usually a result of a free

and independent will making a considered decision about personal safety, but is more often a reaction to the
annoying beeping that persists until one complies. The situated and pre-rational aspects of human decision making,
implied in this example, has been clear to psychologists for some time; see Shafir (2007) for a review.
Such analyses support a view of technology in which the material world is seen as shaping human
practice and thereby becomes constitutive of human selves. There are three ways in which technologies may direct
practice. They may act as a force, a persuasion or a seduction (Verbeek 2011). Technologies act as forces when they
prohibit or command certain behaviors. Verbeek provides the example of the subway turnstile, which enforces
responsible fare-paying behavior. A more nefarious instance is the lack of a wheelchair ramp at building entrances,
which is a discriminatory technological legislation against the disabled. Latours (1992) discussion of the scripting
seatbelt noise is an example of a persuasion. Technological seductions are more complex and subtle, as Turkle
(2011) illustrates. Technologies are seductive when technological affordances meet too well with human
vulnerabilities. She describes some users of modern communication devices as modern-day Goldilockses, utilizing
the technology to support a fear-driven titration of their social intimacies so as to protect themselves from risky
social commitments. Thaler and Sunstein (2008) describe how human decision making is easily nudged, as when
special white lines painted across Lake Shore Drive in Chicago are spaced increasingly close as one approaches a
dangerously sharp curve, leading drivers to instinctually slow down. Such designs are more subtle and often more
effective than warming signs that would demand more self-conscious rationalization and persuasion.
This should not be viewed as simply a repackaging of technological or environmental determinism. The
material world ought to be recognized as constitutive of human practice but not in a totalizing or unidirectional way.
The shaping and directing power of technology is subtle but nonetheless significant. Small perturbations aggregate
to become larger social forces as a result of the pervasiveness and obduracy of material structures. As part of the
cognitive ecology of human decision making, they contribute to the development of ingrained habits, social norms
and expectations as well as cultural patterns. Recognition of this fact is completely compatible with the view of
technologies as socially constructed. Technological mediations are asked for, designed, and implemented by
someone.
Regardless, the influence of technologies on human practice is also visibly constitutive of human selfhood.
Baudrillard (1968/2005) recognized that the practices of modern consumption were not merely concerned with
function or utility but with the assembling of objects as a system of signs through which the consumer could fashion

a self. The movie Fight Club (Fincher 1999) provides a great illustration of this idea. The protagonist is found, while
sitting on his toilet and thumbing through an IKEA catalog, describing how his carefully designed apartment reflects
who he is or, more likely, who he wishes to be. This phenomenon continues to be visible on social networking sites
such as Facebook. Aspects of ones identity become components of a collection. The user does not so much present
him or herself as curate an ideal version. Likewise, one increasingly keeps tabs on Facebook friends and pursues
direct communication rather rarely, inspecting ones friends as a collector may look upon the prized objects into
which they root their sense of selfhood.
Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981), however, argue that the relation between the self, things
and the world are not necessarily so shallow. Indeed, things may contribute to the cultivation of a self when they
help create order in consciousness at levels of the person, community, and patterns of natural order (p. 16). The
self-centered, almost solipsistic, practice described by Baudrillard is not universal; there is some room for
interpretive flexibility. Some of Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Haltons interlocutors pursued what they called an
instrumental materialism rather than a terminal one. For them, some objects were valued not merely as sources
of personal pleasure but as instrumental in connecting the owner to a larger social, political and natural world. For
instance, one young girl valued the home refrigerator for the benefits it provided to her as an individual, while it was
important to her brother because he used it to treat friends to food and drink (p. 98).
The above work suggests that ones conception of self and the world is reflected in ones technologies and
ones relationships with and through them. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to suspect that altering the primary
means by which people interact with reality will influence their conception or construction of it. Jacques Ellul
(1964), for example, argued that markets do not simply facilitate trade but contribute to the remaking of humans as
homo economicus, economic man. That is, the more people interact with one another on the level of rational and
self-interested exchange, the more that mode of relation becomes naturalized and internalized as a model for
interaction. In fact, experimental evidence (Vohs, Mead and Goode 2006) seems to confirm that priming people with
the concept of money evokes more self-interested and self-isolating behavior. Ellul, of course, is well known for the
broader argument that a similar priming and internalization of la technique, the view that efficiency trumps all
other values, dominates technological society.
Verbeek (2011) has taken this argument further, contending that technologies materialize morality. In
shaping practice and the interpretation of reality, technologies influence moral decision making about the good life

how one ought to live. Acting as forces, persuasions and seductions, they impact the Foucauldian practices of the
self that shape human beings as moral subjects. Verbeeks argument centers on an attempt to connect a real
ethics (Borgmann 2006) of materiality with practical ethics. He highlights how the addition of an ultrasound and
amniocentesis procedure into pregnancy or a gun into ones pocket alters the moral and interpretive context of
decision making the fetus being more easily viewed as a separate person and an object of the medical gaze or a
man with a gun now having the potential to become an emboldened gunman. Verbeek goes on to maintain that,
while technologies have moral agency, the good life is not achieved in the attempt to cast off and totally escape their
influences on decision making aiming at an ideal autonomous self. Rather, one ought to strive to develop a
productive relationship with these constraints, re-aiming the influence of technologies in more desirable directions.
Borgmanns (1984) distinction between technological devices and focal things is highly compatible with
such a conceptualization of the good life. The design of devices promotes the experience of a good as a commodity,
as a mere end, unencumbered by means (p. 44). Focal things enable and demand focal practices that are aimed at
engaging users more deeply with others, the environment and the thing itself. They require more than mere
involvement or interaction but a committed integration of ones body and mind towards a larger reality, rather than
only inward towards the desires of the self. A woodstove not only requires the physical engagement of the user with
the function of the thing but also with the environment, as in the process of collecting wood, and with others by
centering social interaction. Central heating, while comfortable and convenient, enables the social fragmentation of
the household and reduces the depth of the practice of obtaining warmth. Again, the point is not that modern
technologies be abandoned but that we ought to recognize how they draw humans into certain moral relationship
with others, the environment and things. The design of the artifactual world reflects and reinforces particular ways
of being and relating, an actuality that should encourage a more careful and cautious attitude towards technological
design.
My concern here is with only one, quite important, aspect of being. How do different technological forces,
persuasions and seductions contribute to the maintenance of social practices that are overly individualistic and
atomistic? How can they be more communal? If one takes the good life as not purely an object of individual
construction, but rather negotiated with particular technological, social and institutional contexts, how can the
modernity be more supportive of the pragmatic kind of good life referred to by Csikszentmihalyi and RochbergHalton (1981): the cultivation of a self able to create and pursue goals that are guided by some moral standard and

are redirected by a discerning practical judgment about the potential consequences for ones wider community and
environment?
These kinds of questions concerning technology and community, of course, are not unprecedented. The
works of Mumford and Simmel immediately come to mind. Indeed, sociological characterizations of the transitions
from pre-modernity to modernity (Tnnies 1887/2001) and from modernity to post-modern network societies
(Castells 2000) clearly outline a substantial role play by technological progress in co-shaping human social
arrangements and practices. There appears to be a pattern to (post)modern design that emphasizes the increased
distancing, compartmentalization, flexibility and specialization of social ties that may be too enabling of their
instrumentalization. That is, one can argue more broadly that social bonds have become more cognitively and
geographically distant, more limited in purpose and less demanding of commitment. Such an arrangement permits
sociality to be increasingly an object of control and subjected to instrumental reason. Studies pointing to the effects
of suburbanization and television (Putnam 2000) or the decline of the local pub or caf (Oldenburg 1999) lend
themselves to such an argument. Furthermore, others have done important work in search of exemplary alternatives.
Borgmann (2006) has described farmers markets and minor league ballparks as providing centers for the practice of
communal celebration and better situated in [their] context of time, space and community than their alternatives:
supermarkets and sports video games. Nevertheless, before proposing what communally ergonomic designs would
do, I must clarify what I mean by community.
Defining Community
Within scholarship and popular thought, there is an immense diversity in definitions of community, many
of which deprive the concept of much of its potential depth. Community is often used as simply a more affectively
pleasant way describing a lifestyle enclave (Bellah et al. 1985) or some ethnic, socioeconomic, sexual or racial
category as if those within that category actually interacted daily with each other as a coherent social unit. Or, as in
the case of network models, community is depicted as simply the web of people one knows and communicates with;
community, thus conceived, is a collection of ties providing some degree of social support but not necessarily
demanding ones moral obligation.
I will argue instead that community ought to be conceived as having three interrelated constitutive
dimensions: the experiential, the structural and the practical. That is, community should be viewed as not only
containing subjective and organizational elements but also agential. Experiential elements of community involve a

sense of belonging and mutual trust that contributes to an ability to view oneself as part of a larger social body. The
structure of community is manifested in a particular geometry or topology of social ties. Additionally, community is
defined by particular practice of relating and mode of moral reasoning; one cannot be an unattached individual but
must exist as a socially embedded person. By including this, too often neglected, practical dimension, my definition
is more strongly normative. It serves to better conceptualize community as something more substantive than a
subjective feeling of belonging or network of social support.
Admittedly, there is a general sense of discomfort surrounding projects aiming to construct more morally
and politically thick notions of community. The idea of community is in many areas associated with narrowminded parochialism and even the rise of 20th century European fascism. However, this view fails to distinguish
community as a mode of social organization from its symbolic use in political and cultural pathology. The argument
can be made that such pathologies are not necessarily a natural outgrowth of community but rather a phenomenon
that emerges in the vacuum left by the disappearance of communal modes of organization, a tragic outcome that
Nisbet (1953/2010) called the modern quest for community. Indeed, many have documented how contemporary
fundamentalist movements and resistance identities have arisen in parallel with the culturally flattening effects of
a globalized network society (Barber 2001; Castells 2004). As Bauman (2001) also points out, identity is
increasingly a surrogate for community (p. 15). That is, people are strongly drawn to the sense of stability that the
idea of an authentic identity provides in response to a mode of living that feels increasingly insecure. As such,
identity may be a more apt target for such criticisms than community per se. I for one do not find it difficult to
imagine just and democratic communities that are, nonetheless, morally demanding of its members.
Again, the whole lineage of thought on community is too large to be considered within a single journal
article. What follows is an admittedly partial review of an expansive area of thought that synthesizes a diverse swath
of research from across the social sciences and philosophy. The spirit of my definition will be in opposition to the
notion of networked individualism; community ought to be viewed as an mode of relating that limits social
fragmentation and the degree to which relationships are pursued through the lens of self-serving instrumental reason,
relying on the production of people capable of building high levels of mutual trust, phronetically reasoning about
their place and relationships, and being encumbered by a sense of mutual obligation.
The Experiential

Community is experienced as a psychological sense of belonging. Tnnies (1887/2001) conceptual

distinction between community (gemeinschaft) and society (gesellschaft) reflects this. In Gemeinschaft [people]
stay together in spite of everything that separates them; in Gesellschaft they remain separate in spite of everything
that unites them (p. 52). As such, community requires the viewing of ones relations as part of a unity that exists in
spite of but is not necessarily effacing of difference. Furthermore, a community ideally serves as a source of
personal meaning and sense of purpose as well as promoting the development of feelings of mutual trust and
obligation.
Unsurprisingly, this aspect of community is most often studied social psychologically. Sarason (1974)
argued that being part of a psychological community involves more than existing within a geo-political space; one
exists as part of a mutually supportive network of relationships, which are dependable and prevent one from
feeling sustained feelings of loneliness or adopting a style of living masking anxiety (p. 1). McMillan and
Chavis (1986) definition of the sense of community remains the most widely accepted. They argue that it depends
on feelings of membership, influence, fulfillment of needs and shared emotional connection. Not only does one feel
as if one belongs but also that one has a sense of agency in mutually fulfilling each others needs. A shared
emotional connection among members develops from the frequency and quality of social interactions as well as
experiencing shared events and feeling as if oneself and others are personally invested in the group.
Nevertheless, consideration of the experiential dimensions of community alone is insufficient. Beniger
(1987) noted how feelings of connection with others may be produced through the manipulation of media; an
increasing level of personalization and simulated sincerity enables the sense of belonging to what inevitably remains
a pseudo-community. Certainly, teenagers across the country share the experience and can influence the outcome
of the television show American Idol, but most would hesitate to call it a community though, to be fair, McMillan
and Chavis would likely hesitate as well. While the subjective sense of communality is important, the definition of
community ought to also include a strong structural dimension, which would further illuminate some of the
characteristics of community as a unique means to gain emotionally security and ward off loneliness.
The Structural
Many would no doubt agree that a deeper sense of community demands at least occasional bodily copresence, maintaining that there remains something experientially valuable about embodied interaction with another
being. Rheingold (2000, p. xvi), for instance, credited the authenticity of the virtual community he was a part of in

light of the frequent face-to-face encounters pursued by its members and its grounding in the physical world. The
fact that most people use the Internet mainly to supplement and support their offline connections rather than to
replace them, suggests that there remains something special and often irreplaceable about bodily co-presence when
it comes to social intimacy.
The importance of bodily co-presence is also clear from situations in which it is avoided. That is to say, it
serves a role in the social practice of both communion and exclusion. For instance, Wiltses (2007) social history of
the American swimming pool illustrates how municipal pools once permitted a degree of public and leveling
interaction as well as a substantive mixing of different racial groups. Yet, they eventually developed into sites of
active discrimination and racial violence. Wiltse found that some 20th century whites were so adverse to interracial
bodily contact that they even objected to swimming in the same water. His account suggests that physical distancing
is not only the typical result of discrimination but also serves to reinforce racism as a cultural pathology. The
elimination of the possibility of embodied interaction helps enable the treating of others as abstract objects rather
than genuine human beings. The clear importance of co-presence for feelings of communion suggests the need for
places and technological arrangements that encourage or even demand some degree of embodied interaction, though
propinquity alone is certainly far from sufficient to promote a sense of community.
The experience of community also depends on a particular arrangement of social ties. Calhoun (1980)
criticized early studies of community for overemphasizing the experiential dimension because it often then
overshadows the social bonds and political mechanisms which hold communities together and make them possible
(p. 69). He argued that communal bonds are dense, multiplex and systematic. Ties are dense when, more often than
not, any potential tie between members is actually present. The degree of separation between any two community
members tends toward one, and there are multiple linkages. Bonds are multiplex whenever they are defined by more
than one kind of relationship. That is, ties are not strictly compartmentalized along functional lines. For instance,
one would interact with many of the same people from ones neighborhood also at work, while shopping downtown
or at a school meeting. Furthermore, communal bonds are systematic in that individuals are linked to groups which
are well incorporated into some larger unity in turn.
This geometry of community can be contrasted with that of networked individualism (Castells 2001;
Wellman 1999; 2001). The network model of community was pioneered by Wellman (1979; 1987), who describes it
as a form of community liberated from local solidarity or place-based roots. To Wellman, communities are and

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perhaps have always been egocentric networks of intimate ties. Networked individualism redefines community in,
arguably inappropriate, market-metaphorical terms; individuals are entrepreneurial operators of networks and
build portfolios of social ties. It seems that in the slide from viewing community as dense, multiplex and
systematic webs of bonds to primarily dyadic, diffuse and primarily voluntary networks of individuals, one is neither
really studying the same social structure nor considering community in the same moral or practical sense. While it is
clear that a great deal more socializing especially among well-off, (sub)urban and educated elites occurs today
across networks, to call them communities is to render the concept shorn of much of its potentially more substantive
meaning. Oldenburg (1999) goes so far as to suggest that network theorists recast an artifact of atomization as an
advanced form of society (p. 265).
The Practical
Returning to Tnnies (1887/2001) distinction between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, what seems
important about community is not merely its structure but that it is characterized by mutual obligation rather than
self-serving instrumental reason. This has been illustrated in sociological studies of individualism and commitment.
Bellah and his co-authors (1985) argued that Americas increasingly dominant language of individualism and its
concomitant practices of separation posed a threat to commitment and the habits of the heart underlying civic
democracy. Contemporary relationships are increasingly defined according to the logic of therapeutic
contractualism, an integration of economic and bureaucratic modes of interaction as a model for personal
relationships. Ties are no longer commitments but voluntaristic arrangements aimed at individual utilitarian or
expressive self-fulfillment. They are to exist only as long as they provide a personal return on investment and do not
threaten ones sense of self-efficacy. Of course, Bellah and his coauthors also noted that for many people the first
language of individualism was often supplemented by a second language of commitment. Indeed, most
contemporary marriages, domestic partnerships, families and friendships would not be able to sustain themselves if
they were subjected to such a persistent and instrumental calculation of personal cost and benefit. Nevertheless, the
ethic of therapeutic contractualism appears to be at the root of the emerging practice of networked individualism.
Community, on the other hand, seems better characterized by a constellation of relational practices from
idle socializing to community organizing that are guided by an ethic opposed to therapeutic contractualism.
Building upon the concepts of practice developed by both MacIntyre (1984) and Borgmann (1984), community
practices can be viewed as cooperative activities through which a sense of belonging and social support is realized;

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like the practices of friendship, they are defined and enabled by the possession and exercise of relevant excellences
and virtues. Furthermore, a practice of community extends ones capacity for these excellences and ones
conceptions of the ends and goods internal to it. Community is also a focal practice that in being a unity of
achievement and enjoyment centers ones life within a meaningful way and engages one deeply with others.
Community, like friendship and familial love, is a social practice that appears to depend upon a partial
withdrawal of instrumental reason and choice. The argument is not that community cannot be an object of
contemplation, as Bauman (2001) seems to suggest, but rather that it demands a different mode of reasoning. The
Aristotelian virtue of phronesis, or practical wisdom, offers a balanced option between tacit understanding and
instrumental scrutiny. It is to be distinguished from episteme: the instrumental rationality associated with scientific
knowledge, and techne: intuitive craft know-how. Phronesis is achieved through the practice of considered, intuitive
and empathic deliberation about what would be the right or virtuous action within a particular set of circumstances.
Schwartz and Sharpe (2010) have examined phronesis in the daily living of working professionals: teachers, judges,
lawyers and doctors. They argue that rigid bureaucratic rules or market-like incentive schemes do not evoke the kind
of thinking that leads to good teaching, advocating and doctoring; such rules and incentives prevent the intelligent
trial and error necessary for learning how to exercise phronetic judgment and frequently produce overly selfinterested and uncaring actions. In the same way that phronesis appears necessary for the pragmatic, caring and
relationship-building behavior that is characteristic of good professionals, it is likely an essential element in the
practice of cultivating and maintaining good communal relationships.
Furthermore, the practice of community is reliant on and enabling of a kind of phronetic judgment that is
rooted in the conception of the self as a communal being. Through communal practices of the self, one learns to
better embed and conceive of oneself as embedded within a constitutive community. Indeed, the communitarian
critique of philosophical liberalism pursued by Taylor, MacIntyre and Sandel has focused on emphasizing how
humans are born into a web of relationships and a living tradition that cannot easily be detached but nevertheless
provides the horizon of significance against which ones selfhood may dialogically emerge. Yet, the unencumbered
self, which Sandel (1984) described as forever lurching between detachment and entanglement and without moral
depth, appears to be manifest in the networked individualism described by Castells and Wellman. Many modern
people do, in fact, conceive of themselves as so unencumbered, or champion it as a laudable goal. It would seem that

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modern technologies, in so far as they afford networked individualism, enable practices of the self that promote a
view of human beings as unencumbered individuals rather than socially embedded persons.
If the practices of community are to be sustained, there must be appropriate supportive structures in place.
MacIntyre (1984) argued that a practice is supported by institutions and through the activities necessary in
maintaining them, and Borgmanns (1984) philosophy emphasizes the important role of focal things in sustaining
focal practices. At the heart of what I am calling communitarian ergonomics is exactly that examination of how the
various institutional and technological structures of everyday living collude to promote or inhibit the practice and
experience of community. In the next section, I will consider a number of examples of communication technologies
and urban spaces that highlight what Taylor (1991) has referred to as the bent of technological society that, if left
unopposed, lends itself to the modern malaises of individualism, fragmentation and instrumental reason as well as
design movements striving for change.
Toward a Communitarian Ergonomics
In light of the above arguments, I define communitarian ergonomics as the fit between technological
mediations and the experiential, structural and practical dimensions of community. Built spaces or communications
technologies not only need to evoke a subjective sense of belonging, but they also must serve support a particular
spatial and functional arrangement of social ties. Though they are even more demanding, the best designs also
promote the development of people able to phronetically reason about their social relations and to engage in
communitarian-enhancing interactions within their local social ecology.
An examination of the communal ergonomics of a technology would begin by asking: Does this design
enable the disembedding of persons from their local contexts or does it encourage them to exist more collectively
and collaboratively as groups? Sclove (1995) provides an illustrative example. In the Spanish village of Ibieca, the
introduction of indoor plumbing disrupted the fabric of communal life. While the new network of pipes afforded
them relief from arduous labor and provided each household with an individual water source, the village lost a
structure that had served as a focal point for the community and encouraged social congregation and intermixing.
The village fountain was not merely a source of water but also a technological mediation promoting communal
bonding. However, the point is not to advocate a return to the days of the communal water pump; rather, it is to
recognize that the alluring conveniences of personalized networks of goods and service provision, transportation or

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social support often come at a cost to community. Communally ergonomic technologies, on the other hand, will
likely be similar in kind to the village fountain.
I have deliberately chosen the term communitarian to describe technologies compatible with community
in virtue of its association with various political and philosophical movements critical of contemporary liberalism.
As the works of Winner and Verbeek suggest, technological design is a mode of political and moral legislation.
Designing for community would be no exception. For the kind of democratic communitarianism that Bellah
advocates (1995), for Kemmis (1990) politics of inhabitation, or for Barbers (1984) strong democracy to be
able to serve as a corrective to the excesses of contemporary liberalism, their thoughtful proposals must take greater
account of the principles and practices of supportive social structures and technologies in daily living. Meaningful
collective deliberation about what constitutes desirable directions for public action is better supported when citizens
have the experiential and structural grounds necessary to conceive of themselves as belonging to collective entities.
The kind of affect-laden talk that Barber views as necessary for building the sense of mutuality and affiliation
necessary for the enactment of strongly democratic political communities like requires suitable places and
institutions in which to pursue such talk. A politics of engagement (Kemmis 1990) relies on citizens who are
already deeply engaged with one another on street corners, at pubs and in voluntary association.
Yet, such supportive structures and technologies in turn may rely on compatible economic and political
arrangements. Nisbet (1953/2010), for instance, blamed the relative weakness of communal institutions on the
growing economic and political centralization within western nations.
As such, the communitarian ergonomics of built spaces and technological devices ought not to be
considered independently of the ergonomics of markets and systems of governance, an issue I take up later in the
article. First, I will describe more concretely how certain contemporary technological-mediations are non-ergonomic
for community, and I will examine alternative designs that begin to ameliorate these deficiencies.
The City and New Urbanism
Suburbanization is a frequent target for those who view community as in decline with good reason.
Modernist urban design has resulted in cities built around the model of a network, aiming to segregate, distance and
compartmentalize different aspects of daily activity and connect them through arterial networks of highways and
interstates. Jacobs (1961/1992) has emphasized the need for zones of mixed primary uses for city vitality, attributing
the decline of modern downtowns to the decontamination of uses: Modern cities too often and too strictly separate

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cultural, governmental, residential and commercial spaces. Lynch (1984) conceptualized the degree of this
separation as the grain of the city, arguing that too coarse a grain leads to areas virtually devoid of activity for
much of the day. This leads to a decline in transparency; the interdependent functions, activities and processes
within locales that help to evoke a sense of place become less visible. Unsurprisingly, many critiques of suburbia
argue that they cannot generate a sense of rootedness the reason why Kunstler (1993) entitled his study of suburbia
The Geography of Nowhere. Furthermore, coarse-graining increasingly compartmentalizes the city along
functional and spatial lines. This diminishes the degree to which ties can be multiplex and, along with the increasing
distances introduced by sprawl, limits the potential density of social bonds. Different aspects of daily living and sets
of social ties remain sequestered to different areas of the city, encouraging a more diffuse, network-like structure
upon the geometry of social ties.
The specialization and functional compartmentalization of daily living within many cities may also inhibit
communal practices. Work, entertainment, shopping, and socializing become activities not only occurring in
spatially distinct areas but also involving wholly different sets of ties. These sets of relationships become
increasingly specialized, each one governed by its own particular logic. This arrangement too easily lends itself to
the application of instrumental rationality, as the ties in each compartment become evaluated mainly in terms of how
well they fulfill a narrowly prescribed functional purpose i.e., commodified. The compartmentalized city risks
becoming a macro-device as communal relationship building is replaced by the shuttling of bodies between various,
unrelated commodity-spaces.
New Urbanism offers a more communitarian alternative to the macro-device model of the city. New
Urbanist planners propose the reintroduction of traditional elements of urban design: mixed-use, large sidewalks,
pedestrian areas, small set-backs, moderate density and so on. It is a design movement intimately concerned with the
communal affordances of physical spaces. A number of studies find a positive correlation between New
Urbanist/traditional design features and the psychological sense of community (Bothwell, Gindroz and Lang 1998;
Lund 2002; Kim and Kaplan 2004; Pendola and Gen 2008). These studies also emphasize the importance of spaces
that allow for and encourage serendipitous public social interaction. A residence set too far from the sidewalk and
with too little space in front to sit and converse is a persuasion against venturing a conversation and lingering,
lowering the probability of the occurrence of neighboring. Without pleasant interfaces between the public and
private, inhabitants may too often recede to the comfort of their dens and living rooms.

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The same phenomenon is apparent in commercial spaces. With few agreeable public places to linger, grab a
bite to eat and do some shopping, it is unsurprising that people flock to malls in pursuit of such activities (Lynch
1984; Weisman 1992). Yet, even shopping malls are ill-suited for such tasks, being designed more for private profit
than public good. Malls are planned to promote shopping and limit the kind of sociable but unprofitable loitering
that occurs in vibrant city streets.
Founding New Urbanism is the belief that such frequent and co-present interactions not only produce a
feeling of community but also serves as the foundation for the more practical enactment of community. Bothwell et
al. (1998), for instance, refer to New Urbanism as the architecture of engagement. Unplanned and informal
encounters support a process of learning to engage others as socially embedded and communal beings and require a
compatible design of physical spaces. Indeed, Whytes (1988) work on the city upholds the importance of welldesigned spaces for gossip and idle talk for the life of a city. Plazas and public squares are well-designed insofar as
they able enable or serve as seductions to lingering and relaxing. Again, the argument here is that frequent and
pleasant social interaction not only breeds a sense of place but cannot help but produce the place-based ties of
affection and attachment that undergird community.
Idle talk and serendipitous interaction also plays a significant role in Oldenbergs (1999) study of
neighborhood cafes and pubs, what he refers to as third places. Third places contribute to all of the dimensions of
community. First, as places rooted in a locale and affording pleasant social interaction, they contribute to a sense of
belonging. Second, they encourage the density and multiplexity of local ties by encouraging social mixing of
course, only insofar as they serve somewhat diverse constituencies. Third, it is not only through their promotion of
local social interaction that they help to cultivate the practice of community but also in their historical role as spaces
for hammering out business deals and discussing collective problems; though far from ideal, they have served as
focal places for the practice of a unifying kind of deliberative politics. Mumford (1938/1970) similarly argued that it
was around the table of a public house[that] a more purposive sociability was born. Here plans were made for
banding against the employers; here projects for universalizing the ballot, for raising wages and shortening hours,
for regulating the general conditions of industry and eventually taking command of the state were first hazily argued
and inchoately formed (p. 174). Yet, these are structures too often designed-out of todays neighborhoods. As
Oldenburg points out, contemporary urban planning has effectively rendered communally-focal third places
impossible.

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Network Devices and Relational Design

Yet, the built environment is not the only technological mediation that affects community. One could argue
that the more recent attraction to social networking and communication devices is partially a byproduct of the
decline of physically ergonomic physical spaces in many technological societies. As Willson argues (2006), they are
technologies sought to solve the problem of compartmentalization and disconnection that is partly a consequence of
extended and abstracted relations brought about by the use of technology (p. 80). The appeal of network devices
lies in the fact that they are, to some degree, social technologies, providing some relief from a built environment and
society that are increasingly atomizing. Still, as Willson also contends, network devices simultaneously enable the
increasing compartmentalization and individualization of social activity. Recall Turkles (2011) illustration of how
users of network devices often use them to tincture their exposure to social intimacy. Computerized self-checkout
kiosks are a more mundane example, often enabling the sometimes fearful avoidance of public social interaction
with strangers. With such avoidance, the kind of public intermixing and local relationship building that helps
cultivate the structural and practical dimensions of community never occurs, and the opportunity to be practice
communal sociality is lost.
The influence of network devices, such as mobile phones, similarly affects the communitarian ergonomics
of social spaces. As Wellman (2001) notes, they enable the privatization of public spaces. Someone on their cell
phone on a bus or engrossed in instant messaging on their laptop in a coffee shop has a public physical presence but
is not practically engaged in public sociality. There are several modes of mediation at work here. First, network
devices can serve as a barrier or a force. One cannot as easily converse with a stranger if they are already fixated on
their device. Second, it persuades against chance encounters. By maintaining the gaze, the probability of making
eye-contact is diminished. Since eye-contact is a welcoming signal to potential social interaction, socializing is
discouraged. For users, the device is often a seduction. They afford cocooning. The ability to immediately connect
with a more safe and reliable contact whenever desired is alluring, likely reducing the willingness to strike up a
conversation with a stranger or passing acquaintance.
Furthermore, by enabling the increased compartmentalization and privatization of social relationships,
network devices often undermine the moral practice of community and materialize a good life premised on
networked-individualism. Once commodified through devices, sociality becomes available as an object of personal
control and instrumental reason. The dynamics of social ties are increasingly dictated by their ability to provide a

17

personal return on investment, since the agency for determining if, when and where contact will occur increasingly
lies with the user of the device. Social interaction may be encouraged to follow the model of the commodity more
than the focal practice. Part of what traditionally sustains communal groups has been the extent to which members
interact with one another in spite of whether or not it provides an immediate return on investment. That is, such
relations are more guided by phronesis than instrumental reason.
Nevertheless, in spite of their tendency to afford private sociability at the cost of public engagement, there
are laudable efforts to mobilize network devices in the service of community. For instance, Community Informatics
aims to enable local economic development and political empowerment through the use of Internet communication
devices. The fields definition of community is largely compatible with the one outlined above; it is distinguished
from the fragmented and largely contractual or rule based relationships of individualism based networks
(Gurstein 2007, p. 21-2). However, early attempts to apply Community Informatics community computing centers
and local service delivery of Internet access left much to be desired. As Stoecker (2005) argues, it is unclear
whether those efforts were as much in the service of community as technological and market-oriented thinking. If an
intervention mainly permits greater access to the consumptive lifestyle of networked individualism, it may be
addressing the digital divide but hardly advances community. However, many Community Informaticians (e.g., Foth
2003) are fully aware that connectivity does not ensure community and aim towards interventions could better
promote a sense of social ownership, increase mutual trust and reciprocity, and provide more substantive support for
the growth of offline social networks.
In this regard, there have been some promising efforts towards communally ergonomic network devices
in the area of social innovation for sustainability (Meroni 2007; Jegou and Manzini 2008; Cipolla and Manzini
2009). The relational design of service provision aims to encourage the development of personal relationships and
mutual trust through face-to-face interactions; network devices play a supportive rather than terminal role in such
designs. The aim of these interventions is to enable product and service infrastructures outside of traditional market
arrangements. By relying explicitly on collective organization and sharing, such designs depend on and reinforce the
multiplex bonding and phronetic reasoning that I have argued to undergird communal practices. One project
involves the creation of a common shop space and tool sharing scheme facilitated and regulated by the community
through electronic keys. This relational design engages tool borrowers in the practice of communally governing their
resources as well as building social relationships between neighbors that promote trust and interdependence. E-

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Stop projects utilize small network devices to put pedestrians in contact with local drivers headed the same
direction. While not directly promoting deeper the sense of community as a practice, E-Stop projects could
promote a growth in the density and multiplexity of social relationships that may not otherwise happen. At a
minimum, they help promote the sense of place and mutual trust from which more substantive practices may
emerge.
In spite of these advances, the communitarian ergonomics of most contemporary network devices remains
uncertain at best. The same devices that are appropriated to facilitate neighborhood tool or ride sharing also enable
and encourage the acquisition of products, services and social connection from afar. They connect people with
commodities that are cheaper, more specialized and less demanding trust. Thus, they contribute to neighborhoods
less rich in serendipitous interaction and cooperation. Nevertheless, as should be clear by the above discussion, the
communitarian ergonomics of human societies is as much a reflection of economic and political arrangements as
technological contexts. In fact, the contemporary design of economic and political systems may be one of the most
significant sources of modern atomization.
Economic and Political Dimensions
If community as a social and material entity is to be supported, it must also be maintained as an economic
and political reality. The dominance of individualized means of relating, inhabiting, communicating and traveling
has not developed in a vacuum but is reinforced by the design of economic and political systems that they reinforce
in turn. The vibrancy of communal interactions depends not only on supportive built-spaces and technologies but
also the awareness and practice of political and economic interdependency. DeFilippis (2001), in this vein, critiques
Putnams (2000) concept of social capital for failing to note power asymmetries and economic capital. He goes on to
argue that economic capital needs to be developed and controlled within communities, through community land
trusts and credit unions, in order to encourage local financial interdependence. Additionally, it has been shown that
economic inequality is significantly to blame for the low levels of trust associated with declining social capital
(Pickett and Wilkinson 2010), suggesting that it increases feelings of social distance and disunity.
Designing working situations to be more locally rooted and craft-like could also help foster community
relationships. Economic localism not only reinvigorates downtown areas and local social ties but more enables local
workers to witness the fruits of their labor being used in the locality and by people they know. Crawford (2009, p.
187) makes this exact point, arguing that the distancing of production from consumption is a significant contributor

19

to alienated labor. Furthermore, as Castells (2001) contends, the individualized relationship to societyis rooted,
first of all, in the individualization of the relationship between capital and labor, between workers and the work
process (p. 128). Indeed, an early UNESCO study (Scott and Lynton 1952) argued that community was
undermined by practices of industrial firms that increasingly drove a wedge between the social and economic
aspects of local activity. Factories were becoming increasingly governed from afar. Even when locally owned,
owners and employees were seldom interacting outside the factory.
Another factor may simply be that most people work too much. It is hard to be motivated towards local
involvement when overly stressed or exhausted. Calls for a 21-hour work week (Coote, Simms and Franklin 2010)
and similar downshifting movements are, no doubt, partially motivated by this observation. As well, the level of
mobility demanded by the modern job also discourages community involvement, and long commutes eat away at
time that could be spent neighboring or joining a local association (Putnam 2000).
At the same time, community depends on the cultivation of styles of reasoning that are more phronetic and
less instrumental. Unfortunately, it may be difficult to cultivate phronesis once a practice becomes associated with
instrumental rationality, as in markets or bureaucracies. Behavioral research (Gneezy and Rustichini 2000) suggests
that once an action becomes marketized it is often difficult for people to return to viewing the behavior as guided by
social or moral norms. Cultivating a communally-minded moral economy (Thompson 1971) resilient enough to
counter the atomizing but alluring promises of the market economy is an imposing problem. It does not help that
goods are almost inevitably cheaper on Amazon according to todays limited accounting practices, while
Facebook and Youtube promise risk-free access to a greater diversity of interesting and amusing people.
Nevertheless, community time banks and local currencies can serve as useful intermediaries, insulating local
productive activity from the influence of globalized markets and explicitly designing local reciprocity into the
medium of exchange.
Finally, communal practices can be supported by the existence of participatory political systems. Nisbet
(1953/2010, p. xxx) argued that community was the product of people working together to solve problems, fulfill
common objectives, and build the codes of authority under which they live. The design of contemporary systems of
governance, however, allows politics to be increasingly personalized, procedural or avoided altogether. First,
Lichterman (1996) has differentiated traditional communitarian social movements from an emerging politics of
personalism. While the former were rooted in place attachment, personalistic participants remain active only as long

20

as their involvement contributes to a personal sense of self-actualization. Activist politics is increasingly sought
more as a means towards self-fulfillment than as a way to help and engage with others. Second, many (Sandel 1984,
Kemmis 1990) lament the degree to which modern political interaction is framed strictly in terms of procedural
justice because it limits the extent to which citizens engage with one another as anything other than self-interested
individuals or partisan interest groups. Under proceduralism, political interaction works under the paradigm of the
device: It does not demand focal engagement with ones fellow citizens as authentic others. The state becomes
simply a machine for turning tax dollars into valued services for whichever groups that can best mobilize their
private interests. In addition, the scale and speed at which current governments strive to act likely prevents the
development of the kind of local, participatory and practice-based politics that Barber (1984) refers to as strong
democracy, instead calling for a bureaucratic and technocratic model of organization. It is likely through a renewed
practice of decentralized politics that groups of citizens could best realize and more phronetically practice a common
existence. Third, as Reich (1991) has noted, those affluent enough to exist as networked individual have increasingly
seceded from the public to their own personal enclaves. They flee the process of politics entirely by escaping to
gated communities in which public services and public engagement are eschewed in favor of purchasing private
alternatives.
Conclusion
I have argued that community is a vector outcome not only of experiences, structures of social ties and
moral practices, but also of artifacts, technological systems, built spaces, economic structures and forms of
governance. Such systems and spaces vary substantially in the degrees to which they are forces, persuasions and
seductions for the enactment of community. Some technologies are designed as if to legislate against communal
practices, often by materializing the practice of networked individualism. Although it is somewhat straightforward
to recognize how built spaces can discourage or encourage the social interactions for the practice of community, it is
harder to understand the more subtle anti-communitarian role played by many network devices. As social
technologies, they may seem inherently to be communally ergonomic. There is potential for a relational design of
product and service infrastructure utilizing network devices that could serve communal ends; but in actual practice
network devices too frequently facilitate the unweaving of dense communal webs into simplified, personalized
networks.

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A number of important questions merit further analysis. Invariably, there are conceptual issues to be
resolved. The above developed definition of community will likely need a more systematic presentation of its
conditions, characteristics and manifestations. Furthermore, having raised a number of doubts concerning the
communitarian ergonomics of network-centric designs, I believe that a fuller ethical analysis of the network as it
appears in contemporary technologies, institutions and modes of thought is in order. Other concerns are more
empirical. An examination of the conditions for evoking communally-oriented habits of thought and practice may be
best pursued through a more thorough integration of the findings of studies of human decision-making and
environmental psychology within the philosophy of technology. Additionally, a continuing dialogue with social
constructivist and reconstructivist (Woodhouse 2005) approaches to technology studies can help situate questions
concerning technology and community with respect to the cultural, political and economic processes that underlie
the creation, implementation and reform of artifacts and technological systems.
Papanek (1984) once claimed that there are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a
very few of them (p. ix). If my account finds agreement among academics, scholarship ought to be not only
concerned with the influence of the designed world on human and environmental health or societies arrangement of
power and authority but also on the character of contemporary social relationships.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks his reviewers and E.J. Woodhouse for their helpful comments.
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