There are a variety of conceptions of community, drawn from arguments regarding tradition, the transformative power of civic association and collective mobilisation, social organisation and belonging, and symbolism (Delanty, 2003). Community can also represent a critique of the status quo and an alternative to society, or the state, that can be characterised as a nostalgic or pluralistic rejection of modernity (Delanty, 2003). At its most simplistic, community is a group of individuals with a common interest that can imply membership, influence, integration, needs fulfilment and shared
emotional connection (Freeman, 2006). Delanty provides a more sophisticated, contemporary conception arguing that:
the revival of community today is undoubtedly connected with the crisis of belonging in relation to place. Globalized communications, cosmopolitan political projects and transnational mobilities have given new possibilities to community at precisely the same time that capitalism has undermined the traditional forms of belonging. But these new kinds of community – which in effect are reflexively organised social networks of individuated members – have not been able to substitute anything for place, other than the aspiration for belonging (2003: 195).
According to Delanty (2003), community has become a normative term for designating that something is shared amongst a group, when it is generally assumed that nothing is necessarily shared amongst a group of individuals. Community can be looked at from the perspective of the local, political or cultural. When looking at community via the lens of the local, it is clear that one of the unintended effects of capitalism has been to strengthen the value of place, with a consequential, and potentially defensive, desire for community.
However, a community can also have a negative side representing exclusion, elitism and the voice of the most dominant member; a defensive community can be isolationist and authoritarian (Freeman, 2006; Young, 1990, 2000). In order to counter this exclusionary potential, Delanty suggests that one tactic is to promote trust and solidarity within and across communities, strengthening strategies that promote participation and self-sustainment in ecologically sustainable communities. Such a community can be formed around collective action based on place, and the raising of political consciousness, rather than being a reflection of an underlying cultural identity. A community formed around collective action, can be non-locational and individuals can negotiate membership of distinct but overlapping communities that coexist in place and/or space and/or time. These communities can also be virtual communities or communities of interest (Kearns, McCreanor, & Witten, 2006).
Dobson (2007) argues that some form of communitarianism is central to most descriptions of a sustainable society as in Eckersley’s depiction of homo communitas which suggests that the most revolutionary structures are those that support the development of self-help and community responsibility and are consistent with eco-
utopian ideas (Eckersley cited in Dobson, 2007: 123). However, a utopian perspective ignores other perspectives such as those of the ecological modernisers who have material interest in making profit from managing the environment. Environmental justice advocates such as Scandrett (2000) and Friends of the Earth Scotland (2007) argue that environmental degradation is not egalitarian, but directly linked to lack of political voice. The Limit to Growth Report (Meadows et al., 1974) states:
The majority of the world’s people are concerned with matters that affect only family or friends over a short period of time. Others look farther ahead in time or over a larger area – a city or a nation. Only a very few people have a global perspective that extends far into the future (Meadows et al., 1974: 19).
The very few people with a global perspective referred to above by Meadows et al., are likely to be those who already live in sustainable communities or adopt sustainable lifestyles, and it is arguably utopian to expect this lifestyle to have the required universal appeal. Dobson (2007) argues that a utopian political strategy of small community based experiments being used as examples to change people without changing their conditions, with an expectation of a universal acceptance of an interest motive, is counterproductive to green political strategy.
Delanty (2003) argues that communitarianism expects community to provide a normative based social integration via associative principles of a commitment to the collective good. However, the uniting factor between political and local perspectives on community is the importance of belonging consisting of desires, participation, solidarity, commitment and beliefs rather than territorial or institutional structures (Delanty, 2003; Selznick, 1992). Communitarians acknowledge the existence of multiple communities, which can, according to Etzioni, be visualised as ‘Chinese nesting boxes, in which less encompassing communities … are nestled within more encompassing ones … [as well as] nongeographic communities that criss-cross the others’ (1995: 32). In advocating for inclusive communities, communitarians work to three central propositions: cooperative enquiry, common values and mutual responsibility; and communitarian power relations where all those affected participate as equal citizens (Tam, 1998; Wood & Judikis, 2002).
As noted earlier, Young (1990; 2000) in common with Freeman (2006) and as a radical pluralist, argues that some forms of community can be repressive. She argues for a
form of community that is overlapping and contested around group difference within the wider society, and seeks to empower those marginal groups.
Another version of communitarianism can be expressed as the active citizenship concept of civic republicanism, which can be traced to Rousseau’s The Social Contract, and can be seen in the work of Putnam (2000) on social capital as a basis for a functioning democracy. Etzioni has been closely associated with the governmental communitarianism of ‘third way’ or NSD governments in Anglophone countries which stress personal proximity, locality, small groups and personal responsibility for society, and reflect the assimilation of the community discourse into policy-making (Delanty, 2003).
A radical dimension of community can be seen in the notion of communities of resistance or dissent, based around social action, such as new social movements (Delanty, 2003). Rather than focusing on individualism as detrimental to community, new social movement theorising regards individualism as a basis for community activity, and, as such, community can be a means of releasing cultural creativity that is not fully exploited by late modernity. Delanty holds that:
the culture of individualism and personal autonomy is something that has been the basis of Green politics in many countries and has been expressed in a sense of public responsibility that comes from a collective commitment and the valuing of each person’s contribution (2003: 121).
This is a view of community where people from diverse backgrounds can unite in communal activism, which according to Beck (2006) is personalised politics based on reflexivity and autonomy, further based on community as action.