ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Gerard Delanty's argument that community has an inescapable normative dimension that belonging is never finite and the longing for community can never be fulfilled. It focuses on a particular, liberal notion of community and in particular its relationship to property and ownership. The chapter focuses on how liberal ideas of community are inflected by property thinking, and at how that affects our notions of the public well, our connections to one another and how we deal with people beyond our borders. It lies in interrogating what it means to use the idea of community to draw barriers around ourselves to protect us from potentially harmful intrusions. The chapter explores some of the core ideas linked to community, and in particular to the idea of the community of value, structured by the state and the labour market, as well as by social relations of gender, race, nation and class.
