[Air-l] community

[Barry Wellman]

I daresay that most of people think of "community" -- however defined --
as a positively valued term.

As Sr Postill notes, in some places it ain't. I'll give you 2 additional
examples.

Edward Banfield wrote a (in)famous book in the early 1960s, _The Moral
Basis of a Backward Society_ that claimed that southern Italians had no
community-mindedness, but related only to their households. (A key
informant was a guy named Antonio Soprano;-)

In 1996, I lectured on community at the Indian Statistical Institute. When
I was done, a perplexed scholar wondered why I was so happy about
within-caste preferences, communalism, a particularism which enlightened
Indians were arguing again.

BTW, the American Sociological Association has a large section, "Community
and Urban Sociology" (N > 600), including a nice journal, _City &
Community_. At its annual meeting this year, my wife's favorite
sociologist is getting their Lifetime Achievement Award. And my career
isn't even half over !

 Barry
 _____________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman         Professor of Sociology        NetLab Director
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman

  Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162

      You're invited to visit & contribute to the new version of
 "Updating Cybertimes: It's Time to Bring Our Culture into Cyberspace"
             http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
 _____________________________________________________________________