Includes bibliographical references (pages 196-218) and index.

"The increasing individualism of modern society has been accompanied by an enduring nostalgia for the idea of community as a source of security and belonging in an increasingly insecure world and, in recent years, as an alternative to the state as a basis for politics. Far from disappearing, community has been revived by globalization and by individualism." "Gerard Delanty begins this introduction to the concept with an analysis of the origins of the idea of community in western utopian thought, and as an imagined pristine condition equated with traditional societies in classical sociology and anthropology. He goes on to chart the resurgence of the idea within communitarian thought and postmodern theory, the complications and critiques of multiculturalism, and new manifestations of community within a society where changing modes of communication produce both fragmentation and the possibilities of new social bonds. Contemporary community, he argues, is essentially a communication community based on new kinds of belonging. No longer bounded by place, we are able to belong to multiple communities based on religion, nationalism, ethnicity, lifestyles and gender."--Jacket.

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