Cultures and societies in a changing world (original) (raw)

Community: Five Dimensions of a Key Sociological Concept

Theory. The Newsletter of the Research Committee on Sociological Theory of The International Sociological Association, 2013

The article aims to contribute to a multidimensional ´sociological theory of community´ , by identifying some relevant aspects that appear throughout the history of our discipline, from the classics to the present. In the context of an historical-conceptual and comparative study, a number of analytic dimensions of community have emerged, which we have called ´registers´, ´uses´ or ´meanings´ of community. The article presents five of them: 1) Community as historical predecessor of modern society; 2) Community as ideal type opposed to society; 3) Community as utopian solution to the pathologies of the present; 4) Community as technological device for the reconstitution of the social bond; 5) Community as the substrate of life in common. In this way, we offer not only certain interpretations of the past of our discipline, but we also see the emergence of an exuberant landscape of possibilities for the continuation of theoretical investigation.

What is this thing called community? A communication perspective

Large Australian mining companies seem to incorporating the development principles and practice adopted by the International Council of Mines and Metals to "contribute to the social, economic and institutional development of the communities in which [they] operate" and by the Australian Minerals Industry Code of Environmental Management. Yet, apart from two studies of limited scope undertaken for the Australian component of the MMSD project (Cheney et al. 2002; URS Consulting 2002), the issues surrounding the concept of community have not yet attracted much research attention. The joint ARC research project of the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining and the UQ Business School has provided an opportunity to consider the notion of community theoretically and empirically. Under closer scrutiny, 'community' seems to operate well as warm and nostalgic notion (Burkett 2001). However, our research finds some problems with this comfortable notion. For example, empirical research so far suggests that 'communities of interest' is more appropriate. Implicated in this notion are relations of power (Whiteman and Mamen 2002) and social identity (Abrams and Hogg 1990; van Dick 2001). This paper uses empirical and theoretical perspectives to devise appropriate communication responses in the light of a fuller concept of community.

Unimaginable Community: On networks as non-institutional forms of the social

Our studies of society depend on a number of central concepts: the (social) institution or organisation, the idea of the public and political community, the idea of social action, and the ideas surrounding the notions of empirical sociology that entail countability and the statistical distribution. Without these fundamental concepts, social sciences would not be possible. Yet, they have obscured forms of the social that go beyond what can be comprehended in terms of these concepts. To understand these forms we must go beyond ‘society’. The study of AIDS and sexuality, and on the organisation of African traditional healers in South Africa has led me to the ‘discovery’ of forms of ‘the social’ that are not comprehended by what we generally think of as ‘society’. The forms that I have in mind are what are often called ‘networks’. The idea of social networks is not new. What is, I think, different however, is to think of them as ‘social structures’ rather than—as has been customary—the ‘links’ between social structures (conceived as institutions) that make social structures ‘work’, or that merely constitute informal ‘arrangements’ around and between the ‘normal’, ‘legitimate’ and ‘established’ part of society. Paradoxically, networks of the sort that I have mentioned—sexual networks and trade networks, especially those that transact illicit goods—are ‘hidden’ from cultural representations that create and sustain other forms of social organisation. In social theory generally and in anthropology in particular, we have focused primarily on those social forms that we could understand as institutions. These types of social formation are significant precisely because they are not comprehended, or adequately theorised (that is, understood) by conventional social theory.

Mediated Communities in the Age of Electronic Communication

KOME, 2012

The electronically mediated communication has transformed our notion of the relation between place and community. With a greater proportion of our communicative acts taking place via electronic media, physical co-presence, the co-located interpersonal relations are diminishing as determinants of the nature of human interactions. This paper argues that the electronically mediated communication contributes to the construction of new, mediated forms of communities which are based on the interaction or operational synthesis of virtual and physical communities. The appearance of these new forms of communities leads to a new conceptualization of the relation between self and community. The aim of this paper is to show that the medium of the mediatization and new conceptualization of community is a specific pictorial language of electronically mediated communication, the semantic structure of which offers new opportunities to grasp and understand the complex notion of new mediated communities and to adopt the idea of a new global, community building language in local and national communities. 1

Two Concepts of Community

Social Philosophy Today, Vol. 28, 2012

Communities play an important role in many areas of philosophy, ranging from epistemology through social and political philosophy. However, two notions of community are often conflated. The descriptive concept of community takes a community to be a collection of individuals satisfying a particular description. The relational concept of community takes a community to consist of more than a set of members satisfying a particular trait; there must also be a relation of recognition among the members or between the members and the community as a whole. The descriptive concept is simpler, however, it does not provide a sufficiently robust concept of community. I argue instead that the relational notion is philosophically richer and more accurately captures the true nature of a community.

Rethinking Community in the Global Age

Iris, 2010

The re-emergence of a diffuse need for community in the context of the global age compels us to rethink the concept of “community” in the light of the changes and transformations that are unfolding today. The community cannot be considered as a residual phenomenon of resistance to the processes of modernization, but must be recognized as a new phenomenon which accompanies the processes of globali- zation. The following contribution investigates the fundamental sources of the need for community in the world today, and identifies principally two: 1) community as a response to the pathologies of individual- ism (insecurity, loss of meaning, atomism, loss of solidarity); 2) community as a response to the dynamics of exclusion that affect societies that are ever more multicultural in character. Also if community largely tends today to assume pathological forms that harbour the potential for conflict and violence, the need for community is legitimate insofar as it expresses a need for belonging and solidarity, and a need for the affirmation of identities and a demand for recognition. In my view, the global era offers the bases for shar- ing in this sense insofar as it gives rise to the idea of the community of the human species, a community united by interdependence of processes and events, brought together by its shared vulnerability in the face of the new risks and challenges that are produced by globalization.

Imagining Communities: Anthropological Reflections

Kyoto University, The goal of this paper, whjle looking back at my own re$earch, is to consider the processes of how people canstruct communities thraugh imaginative and reflexive practice. Community is here not thought to be something that already exists, but to be something that is on-goingly created in practice, through the development of people's desires, innaginings or thoughL FIrst, whi)e eritically examining the practice theory or BouRDaEu, LAyE and WENGER and others, 1 note that connmunities are formed through diverse effects of power.