What is a Community?

Metaphysics & Epistemology
1

Although for the sake of convenience I use the term “community” often enough, I don’t think it would be that difficult to put forward the argument that there is no such thing, and so claims that we are a member or part of one is transparent nonsense.

Then again I struggle with the term as much as I struggle to find people who agree with me. For some reason “community” means a lot to them. Perhaps I am not metaphysician enough to get a very clear idea of how it is the case; or in some universe scholastic realism was triumphant, methodological holism was a complete success, and collectivism’s crimes against humanity never left a bad taste in anyone’s mouth. Maybe I am missing something entirely.

It doesn’t help that the term “community” is as muddled now as it was when the German sociologists tried to define it over a century ago, probably longer. Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft? It’s all the same to me. Maybe the overuse of an umbilical metaphor to describe how each part is related to the whole, with social “ties”, “bonds”, “connections”, and other rubber-bandy things fusing each of us to one another makes the concept more difficult to imagine, let alone to see. One simple look proves that none of us are “connected” save for the conjoined. None of us are “sharing” anything, like the land, a language, or set of values. All these metaphorical descriptions lack the force to make the community extant.

What community am I a part of, exactly? the neighborhood? the city? the state? Where does each community begin and end, and how long must I scuttle in the wild in search of their borders? How many parts are required to form a whole one? And so on.

After all, there are local communities, national communities, virtual communities, religious communities, racial communities, communities of sexual orientation, or even communities of medical conditions. Which, if any, should I subordinate myself for, and why?

When someone claims in all confidence that each of us are a member of some community, perhaps the basic ontology doesn’t matter that much. The underlying threat of violence does most of the heavy lifting wherever conformity and obedience are concerned. Individuals are each a part or “member” of a community, maybe multiple of them, and we ought to emphasize the importance of the whitespace and artifacts existing between individuals, over and above the individual, human-shaped parts of these amorphous corporate units. That’s the only way I can make sense of it, anyway.

Perhaps the members of this community could help to answer the question “What is a community?”

To What Extent Can Good and Evil be Viewed as Opposites?
2

Community might include a) your kith and Kin or more broadly your in group or b) the people you contract with and to whom you exhange loyalties

3

Im not sure why there is always a whining tone attached to your posts, whether there a community or not you still have to deal with other people.

4

Given that I don’t you, the only answer I can give is “The Philosophy Forum”. I’m unsure where your problem lies. It’s true that there’s a lot to talk about with the term, but the idea that you have to be connected by something physical like an umbilical cord is… weird to me. I don’t know what to say.

I can talk about Tönnies (“Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft”) and his influence on Weber (“Vergemeinschaftung”, “Vergesellschaftung”) a little, though I don’t know the English translations. (I’m an Austrian with a degree in sociology.) But I feel that would be besides the point.

Not every social grouping is a community. A neighbourhood? Sometimes. A city? Likely not. Too big. A State? Definitely not. And so on. But again, these, are formal definitions within sociology that you may not care about.

You certainly don’t have to subordinate yourself to anything to be part of a community. But you’ll have to live with how other people react. And of course that might include “banishing” (in terms of the Philosophy Forum this means you can do as you like, but might be banned).

A community consists of people not space, so a spatial metaphor isn’t all that useful. But it’s true that it’s not always easy to say who’s part of a community and whose not. There a semantic problems (about the word, the concept, not the “thing”): is a guest a temporary memeber, or are guests specifically not part of a community? And so on. Or think of banned members on the Philosophy Forum; they certainly can’t make new posts, but their old posts are available. Some are missed, others entirely forgotten. And so on.

Are you arguing that the Philsophy Forum is not a community, because it’s hard to answer questions of this kind?

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5

My guess is that community is simply a group of people who have the same appearance, beliefs, interests, and so on. We have Chinese communities, atheistic communities, mathematical communities and so on. In my college days when people said do something for the community it meant things like building a recreational center or a library at a certain location.

6

You refer here to PHYSICAL connection, within the resolution of the human eye.

There are connections that you seem to neglect, though. Any two scraps of matter are connected by the gravitational attraction between them. Our component quarks, atoms and molecules are electrochemically connected. We are, in addition, all culturally connected, assuming our human culture is as global as it seems to be. More personal connections exist too. Everything is multiply connected. Everything.

7

Your point of view is not unique. There is M. Thatcher saying: “society does not exist, there is only family and who you care about.”

There is Ayn Rand, saying there is only the sovereign individual.

So, is your OP a departure from these kinds of claims?

And how you answer might put you together with other people.

8

I don’t find this hard. We live amongst and share the world with a range of intersecting communities. The area we live in, the people we interact with, virtual communities, clubs, affiliates, work, church, social groups. My community isn’t just people I agree with, but we may have something in common that connects us like some political views, or a region or some other interests.

9

Yes, there are some political types who see in community an uncomfortable connection with communism or some other boogeyman.

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10

In contemporary social science, a community is not defined as a mysterious “whole” over and above individuals, but as something more like:

A socially recognizable pattern of interaction among a set of actors, sustained by 1) repeated relations, 2) some shared orientations (meanings, norms, goals, identities, etc.), and 3) boundaries that distinguish members from non‑members (even if those boundaries are fuzzy and/or overlapping).

By this view, it’s a real social pattern constituted by individual actions and mutual recognition.

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11

Why would you feel an obligation to some just because you shared an interest. You might show them basic courtesy but would you be motivated to build good works on their behalf. Surely that requires some shared commitment or mutial advantage

12

Do you think having something in common is sufficient for something that might be called a community. We have something in common with nearly everyone but surely that doesnt make us part of a community.

13

Fundamentally, we might say that recognising our shared humanity is the first step towards community. Can we share anything more important than this? I guess it may be easier to bond if you have a further quotidian common interest, whether that is Taylor Swift, breeding collies or trying to change local building laws. I tend to see community all about me - my street, my local shops, my work, my country, this forum…

14

Oh, and I nearly forgot, community also contains people we don’t get on with and perhaps even avoid. I think a community is a diversity.

15

Thanks Tom

I dont think thats sufficient in itself.

Sceptics about humanity as a concept and about communities are unlikely to be persuaded by the argument that we are similar.

The point made elsewhere that we are “connected” also suffers from the same vagueness.

We may be similar but we are also different and we may have conflicting impulses and interests.

I think we need reasons to create communities. I suggested two or three. They are not exclusive. There are others.

Those reasons do not negate the broad psychological preference we may have for shared belonging and empathy but need to go beyond that.

16

There are many reasons why a community becomes/is. You’ve mentioned a few of them. I enumerated a few well-known ones. There’s much to discover about communities. Why would someone build a library or a park in his community? What’s the reason? To answer your question would require one to be part of community, to understand the ins and outs of group dynamics and so on.

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A real social pattern. What does this pattern look like, in your view? The sociological view fails to conjure any image of a community.

18

Not at all. The people you mentioned get quite a ribbing for those claims, especially where the large majority of those claims are conveniently left out for political reasons.

She was channeling Hayek at the time, who said “society” was a word people use for when they don’t know what they’re talking about. That appears to be the case.

19

Absolutely right. And also the “sharing” metaphor, as I mentioned. As you can see it quickly rears its head, as if we were sharing food or something. “Shared humanity” and other bogus phrases.

20

If someone harbours strong antisocial traits or is a libertarian ideologue, no argument is going to work.

But you’re right I was not offering an argument, my point being that people either understand this or don’t and if an argument needs to be made that people are connected, it’s probably already over.