Power & Belonging

There’s an assumption that society being inclusive is a good thing. I was, however, disabused of that notion a few years ago by john a powell*, the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. 

I was interviewing john in 2020 as part of my project to understand the evidence linking agency and health. His assertion was that ‘inclusion’ assumes that the society you’re being included in is ‘right’. But that is never the case. All societies have their challenges, whether it’s classism, racism, ableism, inequality or something else. What ‘inclusion’ doesn’t, err, include is having the right to influence and shape the thing you’re being included in. 

john calls having that right ‘belonging’.

Of course, to influence and shape society you need individual agency and collective power. But it also works the other way – a sense of belonging can help people use their agency and power. In essence, if you think you have the right to influence and shape the society you’re in, you’re more likely to use your agency and power to that end. 

This is something the leaders of the California Endowment found out after a few years of supporting community organizers to help build the power of low-income communities living in 14 places across the state. As the work progressed, they realized that many communities had been traumatized by years of discrimination and marginalization. As a consequence, people did not feel they belonged and hence were unwilling to use their agency and power to engage with the leaders of systems such as health care, the police and city planning. 

The Endowment’s solution was to create spaces and opportunities for people of different communities to share their cultural histories and experiences, both with each other and with leaders of systems. The process helped to create both a stronger shared identity between communities and trust in system leaders. The shared identity and trust helped communities to start to feel that they belonged, and hence they were more willing to use their agency and power to shape their neighborhoods.

These days, the Othering & Belonging Institute has broken belonging down into four elements: inclusion, connection, recognition, and agency/power. Am I being included in this society? Do I feel any connection to the people and institutions within it? Am I and my community recognized, respected and valued? And can I use my agency and can my community use its power to influence things? If the answer is yes to all four, you belong. 

Tony Iton, the former Senior Vice President for Strategy at the California Endowment, thinks this all speaks to the idea of a social contract – the premise that we (the people) collectively institute a government so that it creates the conditions for everyone to have a fair shot at life. The fact that inequities exist means that some people are enduring unfairness, which, by definition, means government is failing and the social contract is broken. 

In an ideal world, the social contract would be repaired and honored by governments getting better at their job. However, the world is far from ideal. Consider the classism, racism and ableism mentioned above – these traits are not exactly unheard of in governments. And so part of the repairing process has to be driven by people and communities holding their governments, including its institutions, to account for fairer and more just social arrangements. 

Tony summarizes all this as ABC – only communities with sufficient agency and a strong sense of belonging can enforce the social contract that underpins our health and life expectancy.

Pritpal S Tamber

* john spells his name all lower case. His think we all need to be reminded that we’re part of the universe, not lording over it as capital letters have the potential to signify. I like the idea but my spell checker hates it, constantly correcting the j to J and the p to P but leaving the a as a. As a consequence, I’ve spent time drafting this post stopping john being “a Powell” but that’s a neurotic story best reserved for when we next have a pint.

The image under the title is by Marie Montocchio / Ikon Images