Doing Community Amid Tension and Vulnerability: Involvement and Control in Older Adults' Accounts of Their Neighbourhood

Abstract

Rather than fixed entities, urban communities are in a constant process of making: They are practised in and through everyday relational settings and are therefore necessarily tension‐laden. Drawing from focus group interviews with older adults living in the third‐largest city in Finland, we aim to further the understanding of "doing community" amid tensions and vulnerability. We analyse older people's accounts of their everyday dealings and doings in their neighbourhood with an emphasis on the intensities of involvement and control when relating with others. As a result, four types of relational settings are identified: being‐with others; cooperation with others; contesting and being contested by others; and ruling and being ruled by others. Through close reading of each type, we illustrate the variety in which older adults negotiate involvement and control. To conclude, we propose that, in addition to previously identified privacy and access, involvement and control are significant dimensions of the relational settings of belonging in an urban community. We suggest that focusing on involvement and control may particularly well illuminate the position of neighbourhood residents in vulnerable circumstances. Therefore, involvement and control offer a useful extension for analyses of doing community through everyday encounters and practices.