home > PERSPECTIVES > BELONGINGWhat does it mean to belong? How is it created? Is all of it good? What breaks it? How is belonging changing? In our research, we see the question of belonging as fundamental to understanding our present moment and where we are heading. So, here we gather our collective thinking in a multidisciplinary content series that brings together essays, interviews, film, photography and more, to encourage reflection and curiosity about a human phenomenon we believe is crucial to society and to business.
Belonging
A Special Series by ReD Associates
CONTENTs
What is Belonging Anyway?
Essay
How I Built Belonging
Interviews
How To Build Belonging At A
350,000-Person Company
Interview
Lost and Found In Public Space
Essay
Why Bitcoin Is Really about Belonging
Essay
One Day We Arrived in Japan
Documentary
Belonging: At Home in the Crowd
Talk
Can Hermès Be Your Friend?
Essay
When Belonging Ends
Excerpts
How I Built Belonging
From global brands to AI-led start-ups, how do business leaders approach fostering connection and community both within their organisations and among their consumer base?
Read our series of interviews below
INTERVIEWS
Article
What financial institutions can learn from the hidden cultures of crypto
DOCUMENTARY
One Day We Arrived in Japan
An original documentary by co-directors Aaron Litvin and Ana Paula Hirano
Watch
ReD DIALOGUE
Belonging:
At Home in the Crowd
What can the worlds of sport and music fandom teach us about building community?
PODCAST
When we talk about issues like how to make sense of our post-lockdown landscape, how to build inclusive organisations in an increasingly remote world, or how to get communities to come together to tackle problems like climate change, what we are really talking about is belonging, and how to get it right.
ARTICLE
What can luxury companies learn from a soft drink campaign and a Berlin nightclub about belonging?
EXCERPTS
When Belonging Ends
I went to the gym several times a week until my credit card expired and the automated payments stopped
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“I went to the gym several times a week until my credit card expired and the automated payments stopped. I thought I was addicted to the machines and the endorphins kicking in after a good workout, but I was wrong. A missing credit card update in my subscription was all it took to break my otherwise healthy habit. The good people in the gym (and their CRM database) still send me encouraging emails every so often – with good offers and discounts – but I’m out of the rhythm and cannot recommit.”
I subscribed to Wired but then it got too techy for my life stage
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“Like with political parties, a lifelong affair with one magazine or newspaper is no longer the common thing to do, even though it is the publisher’s dream. Twenty years ago I could see myself married to Wired forever. Its frontier-seeking, future optimistic, intellectual, tech-savvy, West Coast feel had me with Kevin Kelly’s cover story about the New Rules for the New Economy back in 1997. But the subscription only lasted for a year or three. The same can be said about The Economist, Numero, Monocle, LRB, Paris Review, Kinfolk, and all the other lifestyle-identity enhancing-casually-dropped-on-the-sofa-table subscriptions I’ve had over the years.”
I was an avid carnivore and milk drinker but the zeitgeist changed
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“I grew up on meat and milk. It seemed like an indispensable part of my food plan for maybe 35 years, and I didn’t reflect on it one bit. Then slowly, over time, and without me paying any attention to it, I turned down my meaty and milky diet. It happened without me noticing it or identifying as a flexitarian or whatever. Unconsciously letting go of something you belong to, and letting fish and greens and two-legged animals take over, is my oblivious surrender to the zeitgeist.”
"In an era where belongings are increasingly politicised and dragged into fast-changing cultural battlefields, the options to express oneself with ambiguity and nuance have narrowed. How will the shapeshifting symbolic value of objects alter norms and behaviours around self-expression and how we signal membership to different groups and communities?"
COLLAGE
LIST
From sci-fi novels to ancient philosophical meditations by way of classic sociological studies, our staff picks on the best books about belonging
Editorial
Matthew Janney, Maria Cury, and Mikkel Krenchel
Executive Team
Sandra Cariglio, Nebal Hachach, Filip Lau, and Tamara Moellenberg
Design
Nanna Sine Munnecke and Matthew Kay
Contributors
Millie Arora, Gabrielle Borenstein, Astrid Ingemann Breitenstein, Eliot Salandy Brown, Lara Casciola, Ian Dull, Ana Paula Hirano, Alexis Jakubowicz, Johanna Li, Maria Salgado, Olav Stavnem, Taylor Steelman, Charlie Strong, and Charlotte Vangsgaard