Another great read from North Wales rugby historian, Herb Howell, all the way from Portland, Oregon.
SMALL TOWNS AND THEIR SPORTING CULTURES
By Herbert Howell
The sociology of various aspects of community life is enriching but also full of contradictions about how and why people within often find limitations within their own life. The study of the history of North Wales Rugby is so much more than the pass, the ruck or the match score!
Most of the towns comprising this particular rugby catchment area are less than five thousand residents each. The social life is limited in scope and in choices of social behavior and a lack of stimulation over an extended period of time. The cultural diversity can also be pretty narrow!
During a little over two recent years, the data gathering, interviews, and searches through archives have been taking a significant shape. There are still of few gaps remaining in the data and in my visitations throughout North and Mid Wales.
“Moral Communities” are places where people feel an obligation to one another and uphold the expectations of ordinary life. This is to support their feelings of being at home and doing the right things.
Treat the community as home while people form their own identities therein. This is different from the idea that people are all independent individuals. In this regard, people would have been seen as forming their opinions based on economic interests and their psychological needs. They are then not the rugged individualists they appear to be, but fundamentally, they are not.
Rural communities tend to be more conservative than their urban counterparts. Small towns are the centerpiece for rural life and their surrounding areas. People’s identity tends to be rooted in their town, which may have been established hundreds of years before. This is a place where people know people; their family extended.
Their friends at the pub, the lady at the bank or the manager at the local market; everybody knows everybody. Most care about the local sports teams of rugby or football clubs. They all take a serious pride in the community spirit. The town/village as a big part of who you are, as well as a foundation for your values. Those values might play out as loyalty, equality, inclusiveness, or standing up for one another.
This then becomes your way of life.
Understanding the cultural dynamics presently at work in most communities requires starting with the local norms, expectations, and habits that persons living in those community take for granted, most of the time. (When they are the desirable aspects of their community).
It matters to those residents of small towns. They take pride in their communities’ achievements, if only something locally significant as a new fire truck or a winning rugby team!!
People do recognize the disadvantages of living where they do but weigh those disadvantages against the obligations they feel to their children, aging parents, and to themselves. But there are resilient people who are quite aware of the obstacles they face.
These days, the population of their towns are on a steady decline. When the local school or bank branch close, it has a serious impact on everyone. In rural communities, one first responds to the people they trust, as well as to look to when they need help.
Churches are often the places serving moral obligation. That goes both ways by meaning that one should not be a burden if you need help but to pitch in generously, when you can help others.
People of financial means are usually expected to [lay leadership roles as are local elected officials. People do expect government to provide assistance as well.
Rural populations (85-90 %) in America tend to be “Anglo white”. That often translates to bigotry toward people who are not white. Rural communities may not be as racist or as misogynistic as critics sometimes claim, but racism and misogyny are built into patterns of life that nearly all white communities have come to accept.
Rural communities are often called home. Homes are where the routines of life exists with people as with familiarity and habit. Moral communities are places of moral obligation. It represents their way of life. Obligations to the community include obligations to specific people within the community. First comes ourselves and then one’s family. That translates to community by taking care of one’s won and not becoming a burden to one’s neighbors.
The next order of community obligations is the extensions of one’s own family, as they interact within the community’ such as the schools and the children that attend or meeting the needs of aging relatives. There are countless other community organizations as well as community wide projects. (see the Rhyl RFC) community involvement projects )
“Moral Communities” can infer meanings about quality of life the residents feel is right for them and the moral community can influence can influence their attitudes, values and now they think about themselves and their environment. In truth, it can be defined as their way of life.
One value of rural communities is their attitude concerning new ideas coming into the area. They really do not want to change. They really don’t want to change the way they live. Some communities simply do not want outsiders moving into their community. There are very few secrets in small towns as people tend to check up on you, as a part of their surroundings. It can also protect one from going off and doing something stupid or something you are not supposed to do. In larger communities one tends to be more anomalous.
These function work to keep things in balance and you will probably always have a backup should trouble arise.
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