The Concept of Community from a Global Perspective: (12 History of European Political and Constitutional Thought)

This volume presents essays analysing the ambivalent history of the globally influential political and social concept of community and the paradigms it has engendered in academia and politics. While the term ‘community’ often evokes positive sentiments, it is also linked to oppressive regimes and exclusion.

A survey of the term’s use is followed by studies of the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies and of the use of the term in disciplines such as politics, applied linguistics, anthropology, literary theory, philosophy, and intellectual history. The volume concludes with an analysis of the application of the concept in politics in the UK, debates between liberals and communitarianists, utopianism, and African philosophy.

Contributors are: Niall Bond, Christopher Adair-Toteff, Daniel Alvaro, Alexander Wierzock, Sebastian Klauke, Antonin Cohen, Jan Buts, Stéphane Vibert, Rémi Astruc, Elisabeth Bouzonviller, Françoise Orazi, Andrew Vincent, Astrid von Busekist, Robert Kramm, and Thaddeus Metz.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction   Niall Bond 1 Community The Career of a Concept between Compassion and Tribalism   Niall Bond Part 1 Classical Formulations of Community and Ferdinand Tönnies 2 Tönnies and Hegel on the Ethical State   Christopher Adair-Toteff 3 Notes on Community and the Common in Marx   Daniel Alvaro 4 Ferdinand Tönnies’ Emerging School Academic Sociability and the Awakening of Gemeinschaft   Alexander Wierzock 5 Günther Rudolph – A Sketch of the Life and Work of a Tönnies Scholar in East Germany On the Reception of Tönnies’ Work by the Left   Sebastian Klauke 6 Ferdinand Tönnies and the French-Speaking World   Niall Bond 7 When the Dream (Almost) Came True European Community from Ideology to Institutions   Antonin Cohen Part 2 Disciplinary, Literary, and Artistic Expressions of Community 8 Community between Horde and Herd A Corpus Study   Jan Buts 9 Community as a “Near-Concept” Essay on Socio-anthropological Typology   Stéphane Vibert 10 What Does a Constitution Look Like? Community and the Powerful Narrative of Myth   Rémi Astruc 11 Laughing Together as a Strategy of Survivance for Native American Communities   Elisabeth Bouzonviller 12 Community and Music   Niall Bond Part 3 The Trajectory of the Notion of Community across the World 13 Community and the (Liberal) Individual   Françoise Orazi 14 The Anatomy of the People   Andrew Vincent 15 The Boundaries of Faith How Religious Communities Negotiate Space   Astrid von Busekist 16 Communal Life beyond the State Radical Utopianism in South Africa, Japan, and Jamaica (1900–1950)   Robert Kramm 17 Community in African Moral-Political Philosophy   Thaddeus Metz Index

About the Author :
Niall Bond, Ph.D. (1991), Albrecht-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Habilitation (2010), Ecole d'hautes études en sciences sociales, is an associate professor at University Lyon 2, where he is a historian of social and political thought at IHRIM and a research fellow at the Department of Sociology of the University of Johannesburg.