Editing Community (section)

==Types==
[[File:Community Circle at OUR Ecovillage.jpg|thumb|upright|Participants in Diana Leafe Christian's "Heart of a Healthy Community" seminar circle during an afternoon session at O.U.R. [[Ecovillage]]]]

A number of ways to categorize types of community have been proposed. One such breakdown is as follows:

# '''Location-based''': range from the local [[neighbourhood]], [[suburb]], [[village]], [[town]] or [[city]], region, nation or even the planet as a whole. These are also called '''communities of place'''.
# '''Identity-based''': range from the local clique, sub-culture, [[ethnic group]], [[religious]], [[multiculturalism|multicultural]] or [[Pluralism (political philosophy)|pluralistic]] [[civilisation]], or the [[globalisation|global]] community cultures of today. They may be included as ''communities of need'' or ''identity'', such as [[disability|disabled persons]], or [[Senior Citizens|frail aged]] people.
# '''Organizationally-based''': range from communities organized informally around [[family]] or [[Social network|network]]-based guilds and associations to more formal [[Incorporation (business)|incorporated associations]], [[politics|political]] [[decision-making]] structures, [[economics|economic]] enterprises, or professional associations at a small, national or international scale.
# '''[[Intentional community|Intentional]]''': a mix of all three previous types, these are highly cohesive residential communities with a common social or spiritual purpose, ranging from [[monastery|monasteries]] and [[ashram]]s to modern [[ecovillage]]s and [[housing cooperative]]s.

The usual categorizations of community relations have a number of problems:<ref>Gerhard Delanty, Community, Routledge, London, 2003.</ref> (1) they tend to give the impression that a particular community can be defined as just this kind or another; (2) they tend to conflate modern and customary community relations; (3) they tend to take sociological categories such as ethnicity or race as given, forgetting that different ethnically defined persons live in different kinds of communities—grounded, interest-based, diasporic, etc.<ref>{{Cite book|last=James|first=Paul |author-link=Paul James (academic)|title=Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In – Volume 2 of Towards a Theory of Abstract Community |url=https://www.academia.edu/1642214|year=2006|publisher=Sage Publications|location=London }}</ref>

In response to these problems, [[Paul James (academic)|Paul James]] and his colleagues have developed a [[taxonomy]] that maps community relations, and recognizes that actual communities can be characterized by different kinds of relations at the same time:<ref>{{Cite book|last1=James|first1=Paul|author-link=Paul James (academic)|last2=Nadarajah|first2=Yaso|last3=Haive|first3=Karen|last4=Stead|first4=Victoria|title=Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development: Other Paths for Papua New Guinea (pdf download)|url=https://www.academia.edu/3230875|year=2012|publisher=University of Hawaii Press|location=Honolulu}}</ref>

# '''Grounded community relations'''. This involves enduring attachment to particular places and particular people. It is the dominant form taken by customary and [[tribal communities]]. In these kinds of communities, the land is fundamental to identity.
# '''Life-style community relations'''. This involves giving primacy to communities coming together around particular chosen ways of life, such as morally charged or interest-based relations or just living or working in the same location. Hence the following sub-forms:
## community-life as morally bounded, a form taken by many traditional faith-based communities.
## community-life as interest-based, including sporting, leisure-based and business communities which come together for regular moments of engagement.
## community-life as proximately-related, where neighbourhood or commonality of association forms a community of convenience, or a [[community of place]] (see below).
# '''Projected community relations'''. This is where a community is self-consciously treated as an entity to be projected and re-created. It can be projected as through thin advertising slogan, for example [[gated community]], or can take the form of ongoing associations of people who seek political integration, [[communities of practice]]<ref>Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.</ref> based on professional projects, associative communities which seek to enhance and support individual creativity, autonomy and mutuality. A [[nation]] is one of the largest forms of projected or [[imagined community]].

In these terms, communities can be nested and/or intersecting; one community can contain another—for example a location-based community may contain a number of [[ethnic communities]].<ref>Tropman John E., Erlich, John L. and Rothman, Jack (2006), "Tactics and Techniques of Community Intervention" (Wadsworth Publishing)</ref> Both lists above can be used in a cross-cutting matrix in relation to each other.