This volume presents essays analysing the ambivalent history of the globally influential political and social concept of community and the paradigms it has engendered in academia and politics. While the term ‘community’ often evokes positive sentiments, it is also linked to oppressive regimes and exclusion.
A survey of the term’s use is followed by studies of the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies and of the use of the term in disciplines such as politics, applied linguistics, anthropology, literary theory, philosophy, and intellectual history. The volume concludes with an analysis of the application of the concept in politics in the UK, debates between liberals and communitarianists, utopianism, and African philosophy.
Contributors are: Niall Bond, Christopher Adair-Toteff, Daniel Alvaro, Alexander Wierzock, Sebastian Klauke, Antonin Cohen, Jan Buts, Stéphane Vibert, Rémi Astruc, Elisabeth Bouzonviller, Françoise Orazi, Andrew Vincent, Astrid von Busekist, Robert Kramm, and Thaddeus Metz.
Niall Bond, Ph.D. (1991), Albrecht-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Habilitation (2010), Ecole d'hautes études en sciences sociales, is an associate professor at University Lyon 2, where he is a historian of social and political thought at IHRIM and a research fellow at the Department of Sociology of the University of Johannesburg.
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Niall Bond
1 Community
The Career of a Concept between Compassion and Tribalism Niall Bond
Part 1 Classical Formulations of Community and Ferdinand Tönnies 2 Tönnies and Hegel on the Ethical State
Christopher Adair-Toteff
3 Notes on Community and the Common in Marx
Daniel Alvaro
4 Ferdinand Tönnies’ Emerging School
Academic Sociability and the Awakening of Gemeinschaft
Alexander Wierzock
5 Günther Rudolph – A Sketch of the Life and Work of a Tönnies Scholar in East Germany
On the Reception of Tönnies’ Work by the Left Sebastian Klauke
6 Ferdinand Tönnies and the French-Speaking World
Niall Bond
7 When the Dream (Almost) Came True
European Community from Ideology to Institutions Antonin Cohen
Part 2 Disciplinary, Literary, and Artistic Expressions of Community 8 Community between Horde and Herd
A Corpus Study Jan Buts
9 Community as a “Near-Concept”
Essay on Socio-anthropological Typology Stéphane Vibert
10 What Does a Constitution Look Like?
Community and the Powerful Narrative of Myth Rémi Astruc
11 Laughing Together as a Strategy of Survivance for Native American Communities
Elisabeth Bouzonviller
12 Community and Music
Niall Bond
Part 3 The Trajectory of the Notion of Community across the World 13 Community and the (Liberal) Individual
Françoise Orazi
14 The Anatomy of the People
Andrew Vincent
15 The Boundaries of Faith
How Religious Communities Negotiate Space Astrid von Busekist
16 Communal Life beyond the State
Radical Utopianism in South Africa, Japan, and Jamaica (1900–1950) Robert Kramm
17 Community in African Moral-Political Philosophy
Thaddeus Metz
Index
This book is especially relevant for specialists and students of sociology, history, philosophy, anthropology, political science, and economics.