Are community studies still ‘good to think with’?

There are numerous ways of defining or approaching the idea of ‘community’ and a common move in writings on the subject is to list these diverse definitions. (For some of these definitions and guides to recent discussions see Bauman 2001; Crow and Allan 1994; Delanty 2003). It is perhaps slightly easier to identify some of the core concerns linked with the study of community: boundaries, belonging and identity, inter-connectedness, density, embeddedness, and so on. These concerns, with different emphases, reoccur within the more extended discussions.