ABSTRACT
After a brief period of popularity, conventional community studies were subjected to two distinct lines of attack, which often became entangled with one another. The first was that the accounts they had provided were invalid, because they left out significant details, or misinterpreted the observed reality. The most insistent version of this criticism was that they neglected to consider crucial gender differences within communities, presenting instead a relentlessly masculine point of view (Frankenberg 1976); but they were also accused of playing down other key social divisions and conflicts, to offer a generally over-optimistic, bland view of community relations. Although damaging, this was a criticism that could be met potentially by more reflective forms of research, showing greater sensitivity to developments in social theory. The second contention was that, regardless of whether or not their descriptive accounts were accurate, investigations carried out in such communities were becoming simply irrelevant. No matter what their historical value might be, they no longer corresponded to contemporary social realities. This was harder to rebut, because apparently it left students of community without anything worthwhile to study.
