The Trouble with Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity
Aug 2002 · Pluto Books
Ebook
192
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
'Community' is one of social science's longest-standing concepts. The assumption of much social science has been that humans belong in communities, as social and cultural beings.
The trouble with 'community' is that this is not necessarily so; the personal social networks of individuals' actual experience crosscut collective categories, situations and institutions. Communities can prove unviable or imprisoning; the reality of community life and identity can often be very different from the ideology and the ideal.
In this book, the authors draw on their ethnographic experiences to reappraise the concept and the reality of 'community', in the light of globalisation, religious fundamentalism, identity politics, and renascent localisms. How might anthropology better apprehend social identities which are intrinsically plural, transgressive and ironic? What has anthropology to say about the way in which civil society might hope to accommodate the ongoing construction and the rightful expression of such migrant identities?
The trouble with 'community' is that this is not necessarily so; the personal social networks of individuals' actual experience crosscut collective categories, situations and institutions. Communities can prove unviable or imprisoning; the reality of community life and identity can often be very different from the ideology and the ideal.
In this book, the authors draw on their ethnographic experiences to reappraise the concept and the reality of 'community', in the light of globalisation, religious fundamentalism, identity politics, and renascent localisms. How might anthropology better apprehend social identities which are intrinsically plural, transgressive and ironic? What has anthropology to say about the way in which civil society might hope to accommodate the ongoing construction and the rightful expression of such migrant identities?
About the author
Vered Amit is Professor of Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Her recent publications include, as co-author with Nigel Rapport, Community, Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Human Commonality (Pluto, 2012), and as editor Thinking through Sociality: An Anthropological Interrogation of Key Concepts (2015).
Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St Andrews. He is author of Community, Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Human Commonality (Pluto, 2012) and The Trouble with Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity (Pluto, 2002).
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
