21 January 2026

Highlights

• Community is complex and contested: it is understood in multiple ways, from place-based ties to identity, political consciousness and global digital networks. 
• Community is fundamentally about belonging: because belonging is a core human need, community carries deeply positive connotations, which, for this very reason, means it can also be used cynically, to legitimise questionable actions.
• Community is largely symbolic: its power often lies in shared meanings, narratives and representations rather than purely physical or geographic realities.
• Aligning different dimensions of community (such as place, identity and democratic political consciousness) with its symbolic foundations creates opportunities for collective action toward fair and sustainable futures.

Imagine a village square, a WhatsApp group and a global climate march. At first glance, they seem worlds apart, yet they all share something similar and that is a sense of ‘community.’ But why exactly is that and why should we care?

Community is, at once, a very simple idea and a very complex one. On the surface, it seems quite straightforward: a standard definition might read something like ‘a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.’ So far, so simple.

But on closer inspection things become much less clear. Think about how often we use the word ‘community’: the local community, the hillwalking community, the national community, the international community. There are also more abstract terms like ‘community of place’, ‘community of practice’ and ‘community of interest’. Do all of these really share that much in common? And if not, how useful is the word?

The Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities (SISC) is an interdisciplinary research institute that works with people in creative and flexible ways, to explore pathways for fair and sustainable futures, where communities are represented, empowered and enriched. By sustainability we mean not only the longevity of the community itself, but also how communities contribute to, or undermine, the environmental systems they depend on, but also the longevity of the community itself.

In this blog, I argue that it matters how we both define and deploy the concept of community if we are serios about putting communities at the heart of the drive for sustainability. How we understand ‘community’ shapes the range of strategies for change and if we embrace a holistic idea of community, we are better able to unlock its real power.

Four ways of thinking about community

Different schools of thought have viewed community in very different ways. Sociologist Gerard Delanty (2010) provides a helpful overview of four key ways in which community has been considered:

1. Community as place
   This is the spatial view whereby a community is tied to a neighbourhood, village or town. It is the perspective that drives civic engagement (volunteering, local health initiatives regeneration projects) and is dominant in community planning and community development scholarship.
2. Community as identity
   What matters here are the social ties and shared values that bind people together. This aligns with anthropology and sociology and with concepts like ‘communities of interest’, where groups share characteristics, and ‘communities of practice’, where groups do things together, to cement bonds.
3. Community as radical democratic political consciousness
   From this view, community is a base for collective awareness and radical democratic action; a way of recognising shared struggles and mobilising around them. This perspective is informed by postmodern politics and radical democratic thought.
4. Community in a globalised, digital world
   From the earliest scholarly work on community, technology and modernisation were considered central; Tönnies, publishing what is considered the first great work on community in the 1887, argued technology was radically reshaping communities by laying the foundations for urbanisation (Tönnies, 2025 [1887]). A key feature of this strand of community research today is how modern technology has loosened the link between community and place. Communities now span continents, from migrant diasporas to online networks. Belonging takes on a cosmopolitan dimension.

In Delanty’s view, the key feature that connects all of these perspectives is that, however we frame it, community is always about belonging.

Community as an orienting and appropriating device

As social beings, our need for belonging is fundamental. And because the idea of community plays such a large part in capturing this feeling of belonging, it tends to carry deeply positive connotations. As Bauman (2000) puts it, community is something always seen as an unqualified good. “society can be bad; but not the community. Community, we feel, is always a good thing” (ibid: 1).”

The fact that the idea of community has such positive associations makes it a powerful word and never a neutral one (Anyidoho, 2010; Crow and Allan, 1995; Sihlongonyane, 2001). Elaborating on this idea, Tony Blackshaw (2009), in Key Concepts in Community Studies, goes beyond defining community and considers its use as a device, in other words, how it functions as a social or conceptual tool to achieve something beyond its literal meaning. He describes the term community as both an ‘orienting device’ and an ‘appropriating device’:

• As an orienting device, “community” is how people locate themselves socially and morally: “my community,” “our community.” It acts as a compass, helping people decide who they are, who they belong with and how to act.
• As an appropriating device, the word is used strategically. Label something “for the community” and it gains moral force. Governments, charities and businesses know this, which is why they deploy “community” so often to justify decisions, policies or even products.

This dual usage imbues ‘community’ with exceptional power. It is absolutely essential to social life, as it sits at the heart of our social identities. However, it is also sufficiently vague as a concept that it’s use can be used to mask inequalities and abuses of power (Anyidoho, 2010; Sihlongonyane, 2001). For example, when local authorities launch ‘community regeneration’ projects that promise to ‘empower the community,’ yet ultimately advance commercial or political interests rather than meeting residents’ needs. Or when commercial developers market developments such as shopping complexes as creating ‘community spaces’, creating the impression of inclusivity and shared benefit, while, in reality, access to these spaces is restricted to those who can afford to participate.

Symbolic vs. ‘real’ communities

Underlying the ‘vagueness’ of community is the idea of the symbolic community. The roots of the symbolic community idea are often traced to Benedict’s influential book Imagined Communities (originally published in 1983) (Anderson, 2006).

Anderson argued that nations are not ‘natural’ entities but rather imagined constructs: people who will never meet each other still come to feel that they belong to the same national community. What binds them together is not face-to-face interaction but shared symbols, institutions and narratives, such as national flags, anthems or histories.

This argument was groundbreaking because it shifted attention away from treating communities as self-evident, bounded groups and instead invited us to see them as socially constructed through imagination and representation. Nations were Anderson’s focus, but the insight extends much further.

This is because if nations can be imagined into being, then why not other kinds of community? Online groups, activist networks or even professional associations often rely more on shared symbols, stories and practices than on geography or daily interaction. This leads us to a critical question: to what extent is any community ever truly ‘real’?

The answer, of course, is complex. Communities do exist in tangible ways: people meet, cooperate and build relationships. But communities are also always interpretive spaces, meaning that they are subjective and socially constructed and can only be understood through the lived experiences and perspectives of those involved. For example, different members of a community may hold very different perceptions of what the community is, what its members stand for and who belongs to it. Indeed, residents of the same neighbourhood may disagree about whether they see themselves as a ‘community,’ and if so, what values define it.

In this sense, the symbolic dimension is not a weakness but a defining feature of all communities. Symbols and imagination provide the glue that binds people together. But they can also become contested, fragile or exclusionary. Recognising this duality helps us understand both the power and the limitations of community as a concept and as a lived reality.

Unlocking the power of community: towards a more holistic concept and approach

Can drawing these different ideas together inform a strategy for unlocking community action for sustainable futures?

In short, yes. When the dimensions of community, identified by Delanty, combine with an understanding of the symbolic foundations of belonging, the potential for community mobilisation begins to emerge.

We outline some examples below.

From place to identity

Sharing a locality provides a basis for creating bonds between people, building trust and fostering social relations. In a basic sense, proximity aids social relations, because it is simply often easier to interact with people who are closer to us and because this interaction builds trust and creates bonds (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006).

But there is more to it than this. Bone (2024) argues that there is a profound connection between communities of place and social identity; rooted, not just in any common characteristics or experiences people might share in a place but, also, in the fact that the same mental processes that create a mental ‘physical map’ of the world also generate a ‘social map’, i.e. a mental representation of where we fit within wider society. This interplay between physical and social mapping suggests that our sense of belonging is not only shaped by geography but by deeply ingrained cognitive processes that link the symbols of place to identity.

In terms of unlocking grassroots action, as Bagguley (1991) argues, the symbolism of place is an important factor in improving the impact of a community; identification with place helps with both the structure and motivation of community action.

From identity to place

While identifying with a place can be a powerful force for action, so too can action be a powerful force for building a sense of place. Central to community identity is the social relations between people. And, as Blackshaw (2009) stresses, this is sustained by active participation: it emerges through the active process of building and maintaining relationships, what sociologist Viviana Zelizer calls ‘relational work’ (Zelizer, 2012).

It is because of the need to build and sustain communities through active participation that developing the quality of the local relationships is a widely recognised starting point for strategies for the development, or regeneration, of a place (Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993).

From democracy to identity and place

Many people identify a place through its political or administrative boundaries, most obviously with nation states, but the same can apply to regions and cities. However, as the above discussion implies, the strength of that identification depends greatly on the depth of participation.

Local decision-making is a crucial form of participation without which community risks being little more than symbolic. As Goodwin puts it:

“Flag waving is just not enough. Symbolic acts implicitly promise subsequent action and the symbolism will rightly be regarded as empty if the implied follow up is never forthcoming” (Goodwin, 1986).

Democratic decision-making is a form of action, giving people both a reason to come together and ensure a focus on any ‘follow up’ is maintained. It is therefore important to both create and sustain community. Mosley put this well when he wrote:

“Communities do not arise by magic, but out of necessity. Self-government leads to active participation and to community” (Mosley, 2013).

A concrete example of how enhancing local democracy supports the building of social relations within a place is the growth of local community organisations from 180 community groups in 1986, to 600 by 2000 in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, attributed to the democratic innovation of Participatory Budgeting, which began in 1989 (Bregman, 2024).

From means of communication to identity and democracy  

Communication and the technologies we use to undertake it are fundamental to both the symbolic and relational dimensions of social life. Communicating face-to-face or via text is a different experience and choosing one over the other has different implications for the relationships involved. For example, a heartfelt apology delivered face-to-face can build trust, while the same words sent by text may feel impersonal or even ambiguous.

Technology, then, shapes not only what is communicated but also how connections are formed. Digital technologies illustrate some of the complexities for community mobilisation around communications technologies. Communications technologies can be a double-edged sword (Asimakopoulos et al., 2025). There is real concern about how social media can amplify misinformation and undermine trust between communities. On the other hand, social media may strengthen group identity, while digital voting and e-participation platforms can expand democratic engagement and foster solidarities that transcend geographic boundaries.

Next steps for researchers and practitioners

Recognising that the different perspectives on community as identified by Delanty can be mutually reinforcing has important implications for harnessing its power for sustainability efforts. It prompts us to consider questions, relevant for researchers and practitioners alike, such as:

• How might the social relationships of a place better facilitate intra- and inter-community communication, foster a sense of place or support democratic engagement?
• How can attachment to a specific place improve democracy, social ties and communication within that place?
• What kind of democratic structures can best reinforce the social relations, place-based identity and communication within a community?
• How can different forms of communication be used to deepen democracy, strengthen relationships and build attachment within a place? And how can we avoid the pitfalls of communications technologies?

Recognising that communities are always to a certain extent symbolic also prompts several questions on the role of symbolism might play in driving sustainability. Chief amongst these are:

• Do the key symbols that characterise the community serve it well? For example, does the local mix of landmarks, festivals, narratives and visual representations, etc. associated with the community do justice to local people and their needs?
• Where these symbols may be counterproductive or even damaging, might these be challenged and disregarded? Can the ambitions of local people be better served by building and embracing new symbols and, as a result, a new more engaged and active sense of itself?

Conclusion

In sum, mobilising a community for sustainability requires considering what we actually mean when we use the word ‘community’. It requires grounding symbolic belonging in tangible practices, building democratic structures that create and sustain participation, strengthening place-based ties through developing local means of communication while embracing connections with others outside our locality and, potentially, with others around the world. It must also mean that we use the moral authority of ‘community’ responsibly, rather than manipulatively.

So what does this mean for the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities? At SISC, we take these questions forward by working closely with communities and the organisations that support them. We begin by thinking carefully and sensitively about how we engage, always respectful of the time, energy and resources that communities may already have invested in sharing their experiences and shaping these issues. In our engagements, we co-design innovative and place-based approaches to sustainability, whether through examining grassroots governance, supporting community led ownership models or understanding what enables or frustrates local action for fairer futures. Our projects, including research on systems approaches for accelerating a just transition, the governance of renewable energy community benefit funds or frameworks to drive the uptake of energy efficiency in tenements, translate these conceptual insights into practical pathways aimed at empowering communities as they navigate sustainability transitions.

Community will always be a contested, complex idea. But that is exactly why it can be so powerful. If we take the concept seriously and use it thoughtfully, it can offer one of the strongest tools we have for building a sustainable future.

Thanks for reading this blog, we hope you found it thought-provoking. Any comments or feedback? Please feel free to email us at sbs-sisc@strath.ac.uk and continue the conversation!