A Meta-narrative review of conceptualisations and meanings of 'community' within and across research traditions

社区是一个有争议的概念，难以简单分类。我们的目标是系统地收集社区在研究传统内部和跨研究传统被理解的关键方式。为此，我们使用了元叙事方法，试图解开研究的“故事情节”。我们在社会学、人类学和政治理论中确定了一套元叙事。这些包括从早期人类学家对遥远的“他人”的研究所体现的前现代社区方法到后现代概念化，后者强调全球化和超现代时代的共同性，差异性和互动性的新形式。我们发现元叙事之间存在相当大的差异，特别是在“真实的”和“想象的”社区之间，以及在构建社区的重要性时个人和集体政治立场之间的持续紧张关系。从这次审查的结果提供了一个框架，从更深入地思考“社区”。这一框架可用于促进学术界和决策者之间的对话，讨论不同的概念如何转化为不同类型的干预措施，还可帮助指导决策者考虑他们对社区的假设。最后，我们提出了一些建议，为未来的研究使用交叉的方法来研究个人属于不同的社区。

Community is a contested concept that defies easy categorisation. We aimed to collect systematically the key ways in which community has been understood within and across research traditions. To do this, we used a meta-narrative methodology which attempts to unravel the 'storylines' of research. We identified a set of meta-narratives in sociology, anthropology and political theory. These ranged from pre-modern approaches to community as exemplified by the study of distant 'others' by early anthropologists to post-modern conceptualisations which emphasise new forms of commonality, difference and interaction in an era of globalisation and hypermodernity. We found considerable variability amongst the set of meta-narratives, particularly between 'real' and 'imagined' communities, and the ongoing tension between individual and collective political positions in framing the importance of communities. The findings from this review provide a framework from which to think more insightfully about 'community'. This framework could be used to facilitate a dialogue between academics and policy-makers on how different conceptualisations might translate into different types of interventions and might also help to guide decision-makers to consider their assumptions about community. Finally, we suggest some implications for future research around the use of an intersectional approach to study individuals' belonging to different communities.