Re: what is community?

From: Diane Hodges (dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Sun Mar 05 2000 - 14:41:48 PST


moke writes
>Diane-- While I don't doubt that one can use the term community in
>a faux, controlling fashion, what makes that normative and why
>go along with it?
>
>you wrote:
> the model
>of community
>belongs to a patriarchal ideal, a way of keeping control by creating
>myths of utopias where none can exist so long as a community is based
>on some sort of faux shared practice/identity.
>
>THE model? Whose THE?
>mike

any conception of community is premised on the pretext of "commune" - or
shared space/activity/practice - in order for this to exist, as a
community, it is necessarily normative; otherwise it would not be a
community is would be an anarchic gathering of folks - the word
"community" is increasingly troubling to me, because of the assumptions
that are built in, historically, traditionally, -

perhaps another
way of describing what it is you/i/we imagine when we want to talk about
social contexts would open some of the assumptions that lurk here - "THE"
model certainly exists beneath the talk of community,

yes we all socio-cultural lalala and desribe differing examples of
"community" based activity, but there is a THE beneath it,

just as there is a "majority rules" beneath democracy,
as opposed to the notion that in a democracy, the role of the majority
is to look after the interests of the minority, say ....(HAHAHAHAHA)

...buuuut seriously, i think there is a
"THE" in these exhanges of community, and i wonder if it might not be
worthwhile
reconceptualizing what it is we imagine when we think of community?
diane

   **********************************************************************
                                        :point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.

(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************

diane celia hodges

 university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
 university of colorado, denver, school of education

Diane_Hodges@ceo.cudenver.edu



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