ABSTRACT
This chapter relates the personal networks of our respondents to the three communities of Bethnal Green, Woodford and Wolverhampton. A central concern is to consider people’s perception of change: how do older people experience life in the three areas now as opposed to that reported in the 1940s and 1950s? Has contact with neighbours changed or is it roughly the same? What patterns of support are encountered between older people and their neighbours in these communities? As these questions suggest, we have been especially interested in exploring the ties which people have to their immediate locality. The issue of defining ‘locality’ and ‘community’ has been open to endless controversy within the field of sociology. However, for a variety of reasons there is considerable value in applying issues which come under the heading of ‘community’ to the lives of older people. Crow and Allan observe that community figures in many aspects of our daily lives:
Much of what we do is engaged in through the interlocking social networks of neighbourhood, kinship and friendship, networks which together make up ‘community life’ as it is conventionally understood. ‘Community’ stands as a convenient shorthand term for the broad realm of local social arrangements beyond the private sphere of home and family but more familiar … than the impersonal institutions of the wider society. 1
