Harmony for science and humanities within the 'community'

Stories are an art-form. Story-telling is an art. Yet in our Australian community we also tell stories about science, about our scientific prowess. And there is - or ought to be - a science of stories. I think that’s a good definition of what community development ought to be: The science of stories. Community stories. Community knowledge.

You see, there are two kinds of knowledge. One kind - known by behavioural scientists as “explicit” knowledge, can be written down, codified in manuals and documents. Think of it as particulate “facts”. The other kind is known as “tacit” knowledge: It’s the knowledge you didn’t know you had until you needed to have it. Like how to ride a bike: Or how to be a good father.

Stories carry and transmit both kinds of knowledge. Community stories define, maintain and refresh community knowledge. There is a science to the art here: An intermingling of the disciplines. Here, you might seek a rapprochement.

If the essence of community really is in the stories they tell, then anthropologists are exactly the right people to help us understand our own communities. For too many years, in post-colonial mode, they have studied “the other” - it is now time to come home, and help study and develop our own communities. Similarly, our artists reflect us to ourselves - the stories they tell may tell us much about the nature of “community”. Think “The Lucky Country”.

We need people wanting to study “community” with both the rigour of the “hard” sciences, and the immersive techniques of the “soft” sciences. We need to understand more about what makes a “community”, what makes people feel a part of a “community”, what maintains a “community”. The answer to each of these puzzles will - I think - involve community knowledge, and community stories.

Here - in the difficult terrain of “community” - lies the possibility of a necessary melding of the arts and the sciences, on a number of levels. Send the funding, I say. Watch out for my grant application, under the title “The Science of Stories”.