Hi Ricardo!
I am a very concrete thinker. A community to me is a group that has some
binding feature: a common goal or passionate interest. I was a volunteer
fireman for several years and that certainly felt like a community to me.
Our family raised purebred dairy goats and the people we met at 4-H fairs
and other livestock shows formed something of a community for us. But I am a
member of many groups and collectives that do not "feel" like communities to
me. To give an odd example, I am a member of a collective that follows
traffic regulations when I drive a car, but I don't think of myself as a
member of a community of law-abiding automobile drivers. Even more common
uses of the word community seem problematic to me. I live in Bloomington,
Indiana, a "community", but by what criteria are we a community? The people
in this town have many interests. While I may prefer the opera, others love
the Friday night automobile races. What is our common goal, our shared
passionate interest?
I just realized that some of my examples might be U. S. specific so if they
are not clear, please let me know.........djc
-----Original Message-----
From: Ricardo Ottoni Vaz Japiassu [mailto:rjapias@uol.com.br]
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 3:47 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: LBE and 'community' category
Cunningham, Donald <cunningh@indiana.edu>
"what criteria did you use to judge some group to be a community? I
assume, in asking this, that not all groups or collectives are communities.
Is that a valid assumption?"
Mr. Cunningham,
your question/assumption cautch my attention while reading today's list
news. My understanding is that not all colletive is a group. And, also, that
a group almost always constitutes a community of practitioners.
What's your thinking on?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 01 2001 - 01:01:22 PDT