Community

Community is one of those words that’s just hard to define. Like many concepts in social science, attempts to produce a concrete definition, with boundaries of what is and is not a community have proven extremely difficult. How many different types are there? How does one distinguish between a community of locality and a community of interest? Does one have to self-identify with a community? Classic models of explaining what a community is and is not seem useful, but fail to provide a constructive framework. Some writers have explored aspects of relationships to determine how communities are built. This thinking forms the groundwork for using a model of social capital.

Allan Friedman
January, 2002