ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the contemporary community literature relative to local action. It presents a reason for the popularity of the community decline and/or lost position and points to the failure of those adopting such a framework to recognize the limits of institutions and boundaries. The chapter argues that the community lost hypothesis has diverted attention away from the very real question of how communities act and provides a context for examining the role of human volition in the daily commerce of community. The chapter deals with both the impacts of mass society on small communities and the resiliency of such places in the American landscape and mindset. The typological shared meanings approach and the interactional approach to the study of community start from a different perspective than either social systems or ecological theory. A held theoretical perspective affords the community researcher an opportunity to utilize structure and process measures in a synthesized and coherent manner.
