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

“社会科学中社区的概念和意义”项目承诺进行一次概念审查，将理论基础与社区概念在实证研究中的使用联系起来，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。自20世纪60年代以来，这项审查绘制了9个学科和领域的关键学术文本。它审查了关键概念如何出现在这些领域和学科的经验性文章中，也出现在政府、非政府组织和志愿部门网站上，在这些网站上，社区是本组织简报的明确方面。审查表明，尽管在几个关键学科中有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少。这样做的影响是使社区成为一个“喷雾术语”，其中很少提及概念，但其隐含的含义强调社区作为对象的重要性，而淡化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并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.