Concepts and meanings of community in the social sciences: a review

“社会科学中社区的概念和意义”项目负责进行概念回顾，将理论基础与实证研究中社区概念的使用联系起来，并描述这些概念在政府和非政府部门政策和实践中出现的方式。该综述绘制了自20世纪60年代以来9个学科和领域的主要学术文本。它回顾了关键概念出现在这些领域和学科的实证文章中的方式，也出现在政府、非政府组织和志愿部门的网站上，在这些网站上，社区是组织简介的一个明确方面。这篇综述表明，虽然在一些关键学科中有一段复杂的辩论和调查历史，但在实证研究、应用领域和政策网站中使用的概念一直很缺乏。其影响是使社区成为一个“喷雾剂术语”，其中很少涉及概念，但隐含的含义强调了社区作为一个对象的重要性，淡化了社会关系和经验的重要性。这对研究、政策和实践的影响是深远的：我们迫切需要研究，使社区作为行动能够以理解和支持社区成员的行动的方式概念化，这是地方主义议程的核心。

The project 'Concepts and meanings of community in the social sciences' undertook to produce a conceptual review, linking theoretical underpinnings with the usage of the concepts of community in empirical research and describing the manner in which these conceptualisations appear in government and non-government sector policies and practices. The review mapped key academic texts across 9 disciplines and fields since the 1960s. It reviewed the ways in which key conceptualizations appeared in empirical articles within these fields and disciplines and also appeared within government, NGO and voluntary sector websites, where community was an explicit aspect of the organisation's brief. The review showed that while there is a sophisticated history of debate and investigation within a few key disciplines, there has been a paucity of concepts used within empirical research, applied fields and policy websites. The impact of this is to make community into a 'spray-on term', in which there is little reference to concepts but in which implicit meanings emphasize the significance of community as an object and downplay the importance of social relations and experience. The implications of this for research, policy and practice are profound: we badly need research which allows community as action to be conceptualized in ways which understand and thus support action by community members, central to the localism agenda.