The nature of a community

‘Community’ may seem to be a fairly vague idea. In a well-known article, Hillery identified 94 different definitions of the term. ‘All the definitions deal with people. Beyond this common basis, there is no agreement.’ Much of the scepticism about the idea of community has arisen because early ideas about it were tied to an idealised model, based on social relations in a local neighbourhood. Many of the definitions of community considered and rejected by Stacey in the 1960s were territorial; she argued for a focus on a ‘local social system’ instead. Some communities are local, but many are not; to understand what community really means, it helps to move away from a territorial model altogether.

A community, like a society, is a set of networks. The idea of a society refers to a range of interconnected, overlapping networks, institutions and social groups; the term generally refers to the full range of those networks. A ‘community’ is also a set of networks, but the term is used across the full range of such systems, from the smallest to the largest. Communities range from microcosms of society – for example, the identification of a community with a school or a neighbourhood – all the way to national and international networks. The term could refer to the networks of a local area, to a segment of the population (such as the ‘Muslim community’ or the ‘business community’), possibly to the whole society itself, perhaps extending to relationships across social boundaries (such as the Jewish diaspora or the scientific community). There are communities that are based on location – neighbourhoods, towns, regions – but others are based on other types of connection between people, such as tribal identity, religion, common activities, patterns of interaction or mutual responsibility. There can be a community of students, or nurses, or activists, or former members of the armed forces. People can belong to many communities at the same time.

A ‘community’ is not necessarily a description of the full range of social relationships, but nor is it an organisation or group in itself. From the point of view of a single person, a community is experienced through a range of linkages and networks with other people and groups. ‘Network analysis’, Craven and Wellman explain, works by tracking the personal linkages of people within complex settings.