Rethinking Community in the Global Age

IJARW, 2020

As the cultural dimension of globalization continues to intensify the cultural flows across the globe, the notion of community and identity becomes increasingly vital in the understanding of ourselves as individuals and communities. Alongside globalization is increasing recognition of the importance of community, identity, and culture in dealing with the perennial challenges that arise from human interactions both at the local and global levels. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of globalization on the concepts of community and identity in the context of bridging peoples and cultures across the globe. As globalization challenges the traditional boundaries of communities, localities, and states-nations through trade, travel, communication, and international relations, we find ourselves faced with the task of maintaining our identity while adapting to a globalized world. The interconnectivity caused by globalization challenges parochial values and undermines the bonds that connect cultural identity to the fixity of location. It is of vital importance to assess how communitarianism adapts to the impact and implications of globalization on cultural identity.

Chicago Journal of International Law, 2012

Under the impact of globalization, the international community is in the process of evolving into a new community made up of new members, inspired by new principles, and based on new ideas. The first part of this Article aims to justify the existence of this emerging community using four arguments that can be summarized by the Latin terms dignitas, usus, necessitas, and bonum commune. The second part argues that the new global human community has four features: that it comprises persons, not nation-states; that it is universal in nature; that membership in it is compulsory; and that it is incomplete but complementary to other forms of community. These features of the new global human community will determine both the structure of its legal system and its legal authority.

2013

The Common Growl, 2016

The endeavour of critical theory is to endorse self-reflexive examinations of the experiences we have and the ways in which we make sense of ourselves, our cultures, and the world. Critical theory refuses to identify freedom with any fixed forms of thought or institutional arrangements. It focuses scrutiny on the effects of power on the differential ability of actors to control their own circumstances. The theory goes beyond that theoretical contribution to provide momentum for realistic political action in challenging, resisting, and disrupting existing relations of power. Thinking about the theories of International Relations (IR), critical theorists also raised questions concerning how rationalists (both neo-realists and neo-liberals) IR serve the interests of dominant elites. Therefore we must re-imagine critical theory in international relations because it is ultimately concerned with what is possible to know, given that the ontological status of neither the subject, nor the object of theory, can be taken for granted. Critical theorists elucidate how international relations among states make possible (and tend to conceal) the unfairness of a global capitalist system. They are interested in the relation between freedom and power. One part of this paper will critically address how Karl Marx's critique of ideology is linked with immanent critique and how it assists us in re-imaging critical thinking in conjunction with international relations in the contemporary era. Further, the paper will critically analyze how Jurgen Habermas and critical theory stand explicitly in the line of development, reaction and counter-reaction to the philosophy of Hegel and Karl Marx.

Analyse & Kritik, 2004

Although community is a core sociological concept, its meaning is often left vague. In this article it is pointed out that it is a social form that has deep connections with human social nature. Human social life and human social history can be seen as unflagging struggles between two contradictory behavioral modes: reciprocity and status competition. Relative to hunter-gatherer societies, present society is a social environment that strongly seduces to engage in status competition. But at the same time evidence increases that communal living is strongly associated with well being and health. A large part of human behavior and of societal processes are individual and collective expressions of on the one hand succumbing to the seductions of status competition and one the other hand attempts to build and maintain community. In this article some contemporary examples of community maintaining, enrichment and building are discussed. The article concludes with a specification of structura...

Although community is a core sociological concept, its meaning is often left vague. In this article it is pointed out that it is a social form that has deep connections with human social nature. Human social life and human social history can be seen as unflagging struggles between two contradictory behavioral modes: reciprocity and status competition. Relative to hunter-gatherer societies, present society is a social environment that strongly seduces to engage in status competition. But at the same time evidence increases that communal living is strongly associated with well being and health. A large part of human behavior and of societal processes are individual and collective expressions of on the one hand succumbing to the seductions of status competition and one the other hand attempts to build and maintain community. In this article some contemporary examples of community maintaining, enrichment and building are discussed. The article concludes with a specification of structura...

Theory. The Newsletter of the Research Committee on Sociological Theory of The International Sociological Association, 2013

The article aims to contribute to a multidimensional ´sociological theory of community´ , by identifying some relevant aspects that appear throughout the history of our discipline, from the classics to the present. In the context of an historical-conceptual and comparative study, a number of analytic dimensions of community have emerged, which we have called ´registers´, ´uses´ or ´meanings´ of community. The article presents five of them: 1) Community as historical predecessor of modern society; 2) Community as ideal type opposed to society; 3) Community as utopian solution to the pathologies of the present; 4) Community as technological device for the reconstitution of the social bond; 5) Community as the substrate of life in common. In this way, we offer not only certain interpretations of the past of our discipline, but we also see the emergence of an exuberant landscape of possibilities for the continuation of theoretical investigation.