Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes about the notion of community as an ideal and as a particular kind of social reality. It offers a comprehensive survey of the literature on community across a range of disciplines. The book discusses some of the historical expressions of community in Western thought and politics. It focuses on the idea of community in classical sociology and anthropology, especially around debates on the decline of community with the coming of modernity. The book deals with the theme of local community in the Chicago School approaches and in more recent urban social theory, including networks. It presents a critical discussion of the main postmodern theories of community, and explores the idea of community beyond unity, as in the work of Nancy, Blanchot, Esposito and Agamben. The book focuses on one of the most important conceptions of community today, namely virtual community.