The Sociological Study of Community: Definition, Classification, Evolution, and Territory (c.1945-c.1975).

This essay focuses upon the productions of knowledge, the techniques of discipline, and the various deployments of authority and desire referred to as "community". Community is a fundamental element of sociological analysis, but the meaning and importance of community has always been a problem for sociologists. The sociological discourse of community from c.1945 to c.1975 laid the ground for some of our current views. C.1975 presented a break in the sociological investigation of community. Before this date, the sociological investigation of community centered on the requirements of definition and classification, which entailed the creation of a systematic nomenclature and a descriptive terminology; the mapping of territories, as community was understood as being territorial; the tracing of the history of community as the evolutionary development of a particular human essence. Although this essay addresses the narrow question of the history of community in sociology, it suggests an alternative periodization of the history of sociology. The history of sociology, like the history of any science, is as much the history of errors and forgetting as it is the history of truths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]