Deconstructing Community

Abstract

This article develops a conceptual framework for the analysis of community that is designed to explain the complexity, diversity and changes that account for comparative community differentiation in the modern world. The concept is deconstructed into a number of constituent dimensions and dynamic processes, revealing the interrelationships between interest, normativity and identity. Contradictory processes associated with solidarity and exclusion are shown to push and pull at each other through the different dimensions. These processes are manifested in people's everyday lives, often simultaneously. This complexity is a source of both the vulnerability and the strength of communities. The article concludes with a number of diagnostic tools for deconstructing community and a three‐pronged approach for community revitalisation.

Entrepreneurship as a community phenomenon; reconnecting meanings and place

“…Place is almost synonymous with community, in that places are where community persists. As a founding concept in sociology, community has an intrinsic association with place (Barrett, 2014) and has the characteristics of propinquity, population stability and continuous interaction patterns. Consequently places have structural qualities that shape agency in these communities.…”

The planning and building of a new residential community

“…Voices of dependency in regard to the surrounding housing areas emerged in the media as well. The first signal of opposition appeared when local journalists began to criticise the building of Ritaharju in re gard to public services, e.g., libraries and schools closed in the neighbourhood, the vulnerable neighbouring communities being contested (Barrett, 2015). Finally, when the area was already in use, a counter-dependency was expressed by local politicians and some officials, concerned with the new area as a threat to the development of the city centre and the wider urban structure.…”

Local Ambivalence to Diverse Mobilities – The Case of a Norwegian Rural Village

“…Barrett refers to normativity as embodied standards of conduct propagated through long‐standing everyday interactions. These are governed by civility and sociability, respect, contempt or deference, superiority or subservience, neighbourliness, service, and conflict avoidance or codes of silence, which facilitate smooth interactions (Barrett , p. 189). In homogeneous communities with long‐standing settlement, Barrett () argues, people are likely to be backward‐looking and invoke a sense of nostalgia for lost traditions, while heterogeneous communities (exemplified by in‐migration into established neighbourhoods or villages and new multicultural communities) are likely to invoke pluralistic sources of identity.…”