There is a darker side to the togetherness townspeople experience, though. Just as among kin groups, there is a strong sense of “us” and “them.” It seems to “us” that we know each other and are all the same because “us” excludes “them.” The excluded don’t belong. They are the newcomers of different ancestry who don’t quite fit in, the poor who townspeople figure are on welfare and probably up to no good, the teenagers whose names appear on the police report.
