About the Book: Community: 3rd Edition
The increasing atomization 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. Far from disappearing, community
has been revived by transnationalism and by new kinds of individualism. Gerard
Delanty begins this stimulating critical introduction to the concept with an
analysis of the origins of the idea of community in Western utopian thought, and
as a theme in classical sociology and anthropology. He goes on to chart the
resurgence of the idea within communitarian thought and postmodern philosophies,
the complications and critiques of