ABSTRACT
This chapter derives our understanding of community by tracing meanings of community and physical cultural concept across a variety of scholarly fields, first through conceptualizations of community as anchored to philosophy and sociology, and in particular in regards to spatial and social relations. It contextualizes community within the lineage of cultural studies, as well as literature relevant to human movement and the active body. As a philosophical and sociological concept, community is often initially associated with the work of Ferdinand Tonnies. A focus on the practices, experiences, and representations of different forms of community has also been evident in the lineage of cultural studies, extending back to the development of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham in the 1960s. In the late 1970s, cultural view of community was articulated through the work of Dick Hebdige, which specifically focused on the notion of 'subculture' as a particular formation or interpretation of intra-personal interaction and identification.
