This book defines the current identity of community studies, provides a critical but reliable introduction to its key concepts, and is an engaging guide to the key social research methods used by community researchers and practitioners.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction and User Guide
• Setting the Record Straight: What is Community? And What Does it Mean Today?
• Community as Theory
• A Theory of Community
• Hermeneutic Communities
• Liquid Modern Communities
• Postmodern Communities
• Community as Method
• Action Research
• Community Profiling
• Community Studies
• Ethnography
• Social Network Analysis
• Community as Place
• Cosmopolitanism, Worldliness and the Cultural Intermediaries
• Liminality, Communitas and Anti-Structure
• Locality, Place and Neighbourhood
• Virtual Communities
• Community as Identity/Belonging
• Community and Identity
• Imagined Communities
• The Symbolic Construction of Community
• Community as Ideology
• Communitarianism
• Imaginary Communities
• Nostalgia
• The 'Dark Side' of Community
• Community as Policy and Practice
• Community Action
• Community Development
• Community Partnerships
• Community Regeneration
• Community Youth Work
• Leisure and its Communities
• Political Community
• Social Capital