Attachments in the Nested Community

Abstract

Studies of emotional attachments to local communities in America have not generally included the conceptualization of the nested community offered by Albert Hunter and Gerald Suttles. Thus, most have not addressed the differential degree to which city dwellers forge attachments to different levels of community, or the social processes behind those emotional links. This article attempts to speak to those issues. It is based on surveys conducted in a high-rise apartment development in downtown Newark, New Jersey, a site selected strategically to yield respondents living in a "defended neighborhood" sited at the symbolic heart of a larger "community of limited liability." Using correlation and multiple regression analyses, the article examines the sources of respondents' attachments to each of those levels of the nested community. In the former, attachment is found to be in part a positive function of immersion in local interactional networks (as in other studies) but in larger part a positive reaction to perceived safety in the neighborhood's environs. In the latter, attachment is found to be both a positive carryover of more local attachments and a negative reaction to the conditions of contemporary urban life. Further analysis demonstrates the empirical distinctiveness of these attachments and the processes giving rise to them. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for future research on emotional links to nested communities.