The Trouble with Community

Vered Amit, Nigel Rapport

ISBN 10: 0745317464 / ISBN 13: 9780745317465

Published by Pluto Press, GB, 2002

About this Item

'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?

Seller Inventory # LU-9780745317465

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Trouble with Community
• Publisher: Pluto Press, GB
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745317464
• ISBN 13: 9780745317465
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Dimensions: 13.97W x 1.22H x 21.59D centimeters 13.97 centimeters width by 1.22 centimeters height by 21.59 centimeters depth
• Weight: 300 grams

About this title

Synopsis

'Community' is one of social science's longest-standing concepts. The assumption, of much social science, has been that it is in communities -- and to communities -- that human individuals, as social and cultural beings, belong. Communities are said to embody that interactive environment from which individuals' identities and senses of self derive, and in which they continue to dwell. 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 provocative new book, anthropologists Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport draw on their various ethnographic experiences to reappraise the concept and the reality of 'community', in the light of globalization, 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 on-going construction and the rightful expression of such migrant identities? Nigel Rapport and Vered Amit give their own answers to these questions before entering into dialogue to assess each other's positions.Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St. Andrews. He is author of Transcendent Individual (1997). Vered Amit is an Associate Professor at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the editor of Realizing Community (2002).

About the Author

C.W. Watson teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He is editor (with Roy F. Ellen) of Understanding Witchcraft and Sorcery in Southeast Asia (1994) and is the author of Kinship, Property and Inheritance in Kerinci, Central Sumatra (1994).