I daresay that most of people think of "community" -- however defined -- as a positively valued term. As Sr Postill notes, in some places it ain't. I'll give you 2 additional examples. Edward Banfield wrote a (in)famous book in the early 1960s, _The Moral Basis of a Backward Society_ that claimed that southern Italians had no community-mindedness, but related only to their households. (A key informant was a guy named Antonio Soprano;-) In 1996, I lectured on community at the Indian Statistical Institute. When I was done, a perplexed scholar wondered why I was so happy about within-caste preferences, communalism, a particularism which enlightened Indians were arguing again. BTW, the American Sociological Association has a large section, "Community and Urban Sociology" (N > 600), including a nice journal, _City & Community_. At its annual meeting this year, my wife's favorite sociologist is getting their Lifetime Achievement Award. And my career isn't even half over ! Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 You're invited to visit & contribute to the new version of "Updating Cybertimes: It's Time to Bring Our Culture into Cyberspace" http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________