I am going in a similar direction! My way will be Ferdinand Tönnies, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber and Helmuth Plessner - but I am a bit lost considering more modern texts...

In philosophy, certianly, the so-called communitarians (like A. MacIntyre, C. Taylor, M. Sandel and Walzer) is worth to look at.  In nationalism studies, a recent classic is Benedict ANderson's Imagined communities. In cultural anthropology Victor Turner is a good reference point. Anthony P. Cohen is also worth looking at. In social psychology Jerome Bruner is a favourite of mine.

Hello,

here is one link maybe not exactly matching your question but somehow connected. 

It is about festivals and its role in the development of social capital and community links. I think that it might be a good start for a disscussion about the role of festivals and events in the communities. link:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J452v08n02_01#.VJ1A5V4AE  

Hi Emanuel,

I am at work on night shift at the moment, but I will try to answer your question of the top of my head. But for a fundamental answer as to the concept of community, I would be looking at agencies such as the WHO or UN. However, your question in-itself is interesting as to the concept of community from a post structuralist sense is nebulous, as its meaning will be varied as to the individuals who are composed within a community. This is that any given community will construct their own subjective realities throughout their unique social bonds as dependent upon multivariate institutional, structural, social, and genetic determinants. Though, on objective terms of course their does exist an undeniable physical reality that is experienced by each individual, though it is through the community and individual body that all of these elements acts as figuritive paint upon a canvas from which the observer can view the uniqueness or commonality of the collage. I have found Foucault and Derrida both informative and challenging on this 'concept.'

My suggestion are:

Tonnies, F, (1957), Community and society

Liberalism, Community and Culture. Will Kymlicka. Oxford University Press (1989)

The prosperous community: social capital and public life. R. Pugnan (1993)

Sense of community: A definition and theory. DW McMillan, DM Chavis (1986)

Symbolic construction of community. AP Cohen (2013)

P. Bourdieu in social capital theory

A. Guiddens in discussions about modernity concept

best,

jair Vega

And then there is always this:

Against The Romance Of Community

Ciao Emanuel

Vorrei proporti anche un altro autore, che creo possa interessarti.

Si tratta di Jan Servaes. Nei suoi libri potrai trovare una serie di analisi e riflessioni interessanti ed originali riuardo il concetto di comunità. Nonostante il suo campo di studi siano gli studi sulla comunicazione, il suo sguardo è sufficientemente poliedrico e pluridisciplinare. Ti consiglio i suoi testi precenti al 2007 (negli ultimi anni il suo sguardo si è spostato verso l'analisi delle politiche pubbliche).

Molti dei suoi articoli sono disponibili gratuitamente on-line sui server di ResearchGate e Academia.edu.

Una serie di definizioni del concetto di "comunità" le troverai nel suo libro "Communication for Development and Social Change", pubblicato da SAGE.

Questa è la sua pagina su ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jan_Servaes/publications 

Questa è la sua pagina su Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DRCZyOYAAAAJ&hl=en

Spero di averti potuto aiutare.

Un saluto

Mao

"Imagined Communities", by Benedict Anderson.

Dear Valentin,

could be useful to reconsider Edward C. Banfield, The moral basis of a backward society, 1958 (Il Mulino 2010)

Un saluto

FS

Peter Block's book brings up some interesting thoughts on community.

http://www.amazon.com/Community-Structure-Belonging-Peter-Block/dp/1605092770/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419915214&sr=1-1&keywords=community

Hi,

I am currently looking at works of community based organization in promoting health to young people in the community. I had come across these resources: 

Hawtin Murray, Hughes Geraint & Percy-Smith Janie (1994). Community Profiling: Auditing Social Needs. Open University Press.

Heitman, Elizabeth, Mckieran, Laura C., Centro, El & Antonio, San (2001) MODULE 4 Community-Based Practice and Research : Collaboration and Sharing Power. 103–131.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes.

Itodo.

Dear Emanuel:

I recommend you Bauman, Bonald, Comte, Durkheim, Etzioni, Fustel de Coulanges, Le Play, Maine, Nisbet, Sandel, Simmel, Tönnies, Von Gierke, Weber.

Good luck!!!

Hi Emanuel,

sorry for being late. Quite a tricky question. I tried to read through the literature when I was dealing with scientific communities. The question is tricky because there has been a major fallacy in the sociology of community since Tönnies, namely sociologists assuming they know 'what communities really are' and trying to fit the definition to that understanding (also assuming that community is something 'good').

For the emergence of the concept, you would want to look at Tönnies (the common reference) and Cooley, who independently developed a similar concept:

Tönnies, Ferdinand (1991 [1887]). Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

Cooley, Charles Horton (1911). Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind. New York: CharlesScribner's Sons.

The concept deveoped by Tönnies was soon eroded by empirical studies (which is of course possible only due to the above-mentioned fallacy, from a nominalist perspective you would say it was discovered that no empirical phenomenon actually fitted Tönnies' definition). In my opinion, two important contributions were Janowitz ("communtiy of limited liability") and Webber, who proposed the distinction between "communities of place" and "interest communities":

Janowitz, Morris (1952). The Community Press in an Urban Setting. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press.

Webber, Melvin M. (1963). "Order in Diversity; Community without Propinquity". In: Lowdon Wingo (Ed.), Cities and Space: The Future Use of Urban Land, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 23-54.

Thse contributions marked the extension of the community concept to actively shaped (rather than primordial) communities and to "thin" rather than "thick" relationships between community members. Since then, the sociology of community expanded by including 'virtual' and 'posttraditional' communities. An argument that often remains implicit to the discussion concerns the constituting feature of community: is it emotional bond, solidarity, shared valued and norms, or is it a shared collective identity that shapes members' actions. I argued for the latter but spare you my own publication, not least because they are in German anyway :). Some more recent publications I foun interesting (although I do not share the authors' views) include:

Wellman, Barry (1979). "The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers." American Journal of Sociology 84(5): 1201-1231.

Brint, Steven (2001). "Gemeinschaft revisited: A critique and reconstruction of the community concept." Sociological Theory 19(1): 1-23.

Cerulo, Karen A. (1997). "Reframing Sociological Concepts for a Brave New (Virtual?) World." Sociological Inquiry 67(1): 48-58.

Hope this helps

Cheers, Jochen