Community, Locality and Social(ist) Transformation

Nettleingham, David (2018) Community, Locality and Social(ist) Transformation. The Sociological Review, 66 (3). pp. 593-607. ISSN 0038-0261. E-ISSN 1467-954X. (doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026117723251) (Access to this publication is currently restricted. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided)

Abstract

Community is elusive, desirable, rhetorical; something lost and something to be built; a relationship, a concept, a synonym, a place (real or imagined). This article explores the roles that the complexity of community’s conceptualisation has played in the development of political identities, goals and rationales for action. Drawing on the ways in which it has been conceptualised and utilised in sociological, historical and political understandings of social change, and a series of interviews with members of British socialist organisations, I examine the relationship and equation between ‘community’, and ‘location’, ‘local’ and ‘place’ that develop as these terms become drawn into a wider project for social transformation. I argue that ideas of location have not only framed how community is operationalised to imagine and enact this transformation, but that location itself is conceptualised in multiple, equally complex ways through this association. Social change becomes relatable, an articulable experience of large-scale processes, of social problems, of power and resistance. Community is reified, and change is made possible through a sense of locality.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled keywords:	activism, community, local, location, memory, place, political goals, projection, social change, socialism
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Divisions:	Faculties > Social Sciences > School of Social Policy Sociology and Social Research Faculties > Social Sciences > School of Social Policy Sociology and Social Research > Sociology
Depositing User:	Lucie Patch
Date Deposited:	27 Jul 2017 08:41 UTC
Last Modified:	18 Dec 2018 11:47 UTC
Resource URI:	https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/62401 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)
Nettleingham, David:	https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7282-9366