Understanding Community Today

Book excerpt: Today that it has become customary to refer simultaneously to both the global and ethnic entities as a community, it has become necessary to reexamine the meaning of this belabored concept. That is exactly the burden of this book. It intends to find a meaning for a community that bridges the parallel trends of globalization and ethnic awareness to thereby enrich all parties. I believe I found a reliable metaphor for community in another concept: the “person.” The search for this new understanding of community entails considering it vis-à-vis society. Both terms are usually used interchangeably, but as will soon be clear to us and as shown by research studies, they are not exactly identical. Effort is made in this work to avoid the limitations of the traditional application of the term “community.” Its features are reappreciated with this in view, taking into account also the multiethnic interest of this study. I incorparate the concept of “community of communities” to depict both the diversity among component communities and the unity that binds and characterizes them as a political entity.