ABSTRACT
It is difficult to discern much in the way of coherence among the multitude of definitions, descriptions and claims of community which occur in quotidian conversation as well as within a variety of scholarly work. Some fifty years ago, efforts to manage this cacophony analytically through competing definitions of community dominated the field of community studies, consigning it ‘for some time into an abyss of theoretical sterility’ (Cohen, 1985: 38). In 1955, G. A. Hillery was able to list numerous definitions of community which had by then appeared in the sociological literature, an inventory cited in more recent work as an illustration of the futility of such taxonomic approaches (ibid.; Lustiger-Thaler, 1994: 21; Baumann, 1996: 14), even of the dubious analytic utility of the concept of community altogether (Cohen, 1985 and this volume, Baumann, 1996: 14). So why, at this juncture, should we return our attention and analyses to such an ostensibly hackneyed term?
