Communitas
Encyclopedia
Communitas is a Latin
noun
commonly referring either to an unstructured community
in which people
are equal, or to the very spirit of community. It also has special significance as a loanword
in cultural anthropology
and the social sciences
.
Communitas is an intense community spirit, the feeling of great social equality
, solidarity, and togetherness
. Communitas is characteristic of people experiencing liminality
together. This term is used to distinguish the modality of social relationship
from an area of common living. There is more than one distinction between structure
and communitas. The most familiar is the difference of secular and sacred
. Every social position has something sacred about it. This sacred component is acquired during rites of passages
, through the changing of positions. Part of this sacredness is achieved through the transient humility learned in these phases, this allows people to reach a higher position.
Communitas is an acute point of community. It takes community to the next level and allows the whole of the community to share a common experience, usually through a rite of passage. This brings everyone onto an equal level: even if you are higher in position, you have been lower and you know what that is.
Turner (1969, Pg.132) distinguishes between:
Communitas as a concept used by Victor Turner
in his study of ritual
has been criticized by anthropologists. See John Eade & Michael J. Sallnow's Contesting the Sacred (1991)
Communitas is also the title of a book published in 1947 by the 20th-century American thinker and writer Paul Goodman
and his brother, Percival Goodman
, who is less well-known, but a thinker in his own right. Their book examines three kinds of possible societies: a society centered around consumption, a society centered around artistic and creative pursuits, and a society which maximizes human liberty. The Goodmans emphasize freedom from both coercion by a government or church and from human necessities by providing these free of cost to all citizens who do a couple of years of conscripted labor as young adults.
In 1998, Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito
published a book under the name Communitas challenging the traditional understanding of this concept. It was translated in English in 2010 by Timothy Campbell
. In this book, Esposito offers a very different interpretation of the concept of communitas based on a thorough etymological analysis of the word: "Community isn't a property, nor is it a territory to be separated and defended against those who do not belong to it. Rather, it is a void, a debt, a gift to the other that also reminds us of our constitutive alterity with respect to ourselves." He goes on with his "deconstruction" of the concept of communitas:
For more on this perspective, see also Jean-Luc Nancy
's paper "The Confronted Community" as well as his book The Inoperative Community. See also Maurice Blanchot
's book The Unavowable Community (1983) which is an answer to Jean-Luc Nancy
's Inoperative Community. Giorgio Agamben
engages in a similar argument about the concept of community in his 1990 book The Coming Community (translated in English by Michael Hardt
in 1993). Finally, on the American side, see The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common by Alphonso Lingis
.
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
commonly referring either to an unstructured community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
in which people
Person
A person is a human being, or an entity that has certain capacities or attributes strongly associated with being human , for example in a particular moral or legal context...
are equal, or to the very spirit of community. It also has special significance as a loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
in cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...
and the social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
.
Communitas is an intense community spirit, the feeling of great social equality
Social equality
Social equality is a social state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same status in a certain respect. At the very least, social equality includes equal rights under the law, such as security, voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, and the...
, solidarity, and togetherness
Togetherness
__FORCETOC__Togetherness is the feeling of being close to another person emotionally and physically. It is an emotion which cannot be definitive outside of its current sociological meaning, and the reality of such a term is not "knowledge." It is well symbolized by the gesture of holding both hands...
. Communitas is characteristic of people experiencing liminality
Liminality
Liminality is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology and in the anthropological theories of ritual by such writers as Arnold van...
together. This term is used to distinguish the modality of social relationship
Interpersonal relationship
An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring. This association may be based on limerence, love, solidarity, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the...
from an area of common living. There is more than one distinction between structure
Structure
Structure is a fundamental, tangible or intangible notion referring to the recognition, observation, nature, and permanence of patterns and relationships of entities. This notion may itself be an object, such as a built structure, or an attribute, such as the structure of society...
and communitas. The most familiar is the difference of secular and sacred
Sacred
Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy or sacred...
. Every social position has something sacred about it. This sacred component is acquired during rites of passages
Rite of passage
A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person's progress from one status to another. It is a universal phenomenon which can show anthropologists what social hierarchies, values and beliefs are important in specific cultures....
, through the changing of positions. Part of this sacredness is achieved through the transient humility learned in these phases, this allows people to reach a higher position.
Communitas is an acute point of community. It takes community to the next level and allows the whole of the community to share a common experience, usually through a rite of passage. This brings everyone onto an equal level: even if you are higher in position, you have been lower and you know what that is.
Turner (1969, Pg.132) distinguishes between:
- existential or spontaneous communitas, the transient personal experience of togetherness
- normative communitas, communitas organized into a permanent social system
- ideological communitas, which can be applied to many utopian social models
Communitas as a concept used by Victor Turner
Victor Turner
Victor Witter Turner was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals and rites of passage...
in his study of ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
has been criticized by anthropologists. See John Eade & Michael J. Sallnow's Contesting the Sacred (1991)
Communitas is also the title of a book published in 1947 by the 20th-century American thinker and writer Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman (writer)
Paul Goodman was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement...
and his brother, Percival Goodman
Percival Goodman
Percival Goodman was an American urban theorist and architect who designed more than 50 synagogues between 1948 and 1983. He has been called the "leading theorist" of modern synagogue design, and "the most prolific architect in Jewish history."-Biography:Percival Goodman was born in New York City...
, who is less well-known, but a thinker in his own right. Their book examines three kinds of possible societies: a society centered around consumption, a society centered around artistic and creative pursuits, and a society which maximizes human liberty. The Goodmans emphasize freedom from both coercion by a government or church and from human necessities by providing these free of cost to all citizens who do a couple of years of conscripted labor as young adults.
In 1998, Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito
Roberto Esposito
Roberto Esposito is an Italian philosopher, who is important for his work in biopolitics and his book Communitas. He was featured in the Summer 2006 issue of the journal Diacritics.-Bibliography:...
published a book under the name Communitas challenging the traditional understanding of this concept. It was translated in English in 2010 by Timothy Campbell
Timothy Campbell
Timothy "Tim" Campbell is an English businessman best known as the winner of the first series of the British version of The Apprentice, a BBC TV reality show in which contestants battle to win a £100,000-a-year job working for businessman Alan Sugar...
. In this book, Esposito offers a very different interpretation of the concept of communitas based on a thorough etymological analysis of the word: "Community isn't a property, nor is it a territory to be separated and defended against those who do not belong to it. Rather, it is a void, a debt, a gift to the other that also reminds us of our constitutive alterity with respect to ourselves." He goes on with his "deconstruction" of the concept of communitas:
"From here it emerges that communitas is the totality of persons united not by "property" but precisely by an obligation or a debt; not by an "addition" but by a "substration": by a lack, a limit that is configured as an onus, or even as a defective modality for him who is "affected", unlike for him who is instead "exempt" or "exempted". Here we find the final and most characteristic of the opposition associated with (or that dominate) the alternative between public and private. those in other words that contrast communitas to immunitas. If communis is he who is required to carry out the functions of an office―or to the donation of a grace―on the contrary, he is called immune who has to perform no office, and for that reason he remains ungrateful. He can completely preserve his own position through a vacatio muneris. Whereas the communitas is bound by the sacrifice of the compensatio, the immunitas implies the beneficiary of the dispensatio."
"Therefore the community cannot be thought of as abody, as a corporation in which individuals are reflected in each other so as to confirm their initial identity; as a collective bond that comes at a certain point to connect individuals that before were separate. The community isn't a mode of being, much less a "making" of the individual subject. It isn't the subject's expansion or multiplication but its exposure to what interrupts the closing and turns it inside out: a dizziness, a syncope, a spasm in the continuity of the subject.
For more on this perspective, see also Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher.Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre , a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe...
's paper "The Confronted Community" as well as his book The Inoperative Community. See also Maurice Blanchot
Maurice Blanchot
Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.-Works:...
's book The Unavowable Community (1983) which is an answer to Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher.Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre , a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe...
's Inoperative Community. Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben is an Italian political philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer....
engages in a similar argument about the concept of community in his 1990 book The Coming Community (translated in English by Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000...
in 1993). Finally, on the American side, see The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common by Alphonso Lingis
Alphonso Lingis
Alphonso Lingis is an American philosopher, writer and translator, currently Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University...
.
External links
- Communitas.org - The Communitas Group, Bremerton WA.
- Communitas - Wikipedia community development journalAcademic publishingAcademic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted is often called...
at Meta - Communitas and classical Greek ritual theatre on www.mysticism.nl
- Creating Communitas, a project at www.wechange.org, including two books by Forbes Leslie: Communal Sustainability and Forming Tribalized Communities.
- Read the introduction from Roberto Esposito's book Communitas. The Origin and Destiny of Community : Introduction: Nothing In Common