Delanty, Gerard (2003) Community. Key Ideas . Routledge, London. ISBN 9780415236867

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Abstract

The increasing individualism of modern Western society has been accompanied by an enduring nostalgia for the idea of community as a source of security and belonging and, in recent years, as an alternative to the state as a basis for politics.

Gerard Delanty begins this stimulating introduction to the concept with an analysis of the origins of the idea of community in Western Utopian thought, and as an imagined primitive state equated with traditional societies in classical sociology and anthropology. He goes on to chart the resurgence of the idea within communitarian thought, the complications and critiques of multiculturalism, and its new manifestations within a society where new modes of communication produce both fragmentation and the possibilities of new social bonds. Contemporary community, he argues, is essentially a communication community based on new kinds of belonging. No longer bounded by place, we are able to belong to multiple communities based on religion, nationalism, ethnicity, life-styles and gender.

Item Type:	Book
Additional Information:	The book has been considered a significant work in re-orienting the idea of community around new conceptions of the social. It has been translated into Spanish and Japanese in 2006. Ray Pahl wrote an enthusiastic review in Urban Studies (2004 vol 41, no 8). 2nd edition 2010
Schools and Departments:	School of Law, Politics and Sociology > Sociology
Depositing User:	Gerard Delanty
Date Deposited:	06 Feb 2012 19:07
Last Modified:	15 Jun 2012 15:41
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/19325

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