Towards a Social Psychology of Community: A Social Representations Perspective

If one attends to the social world in which we live one is likely to acknowledge that communities are highly contested social phenomena. We argue over them, we claim the right to speak for them, we reject them, we shed blood over them. Community conflicts make up the terrain of the assertion of identity, meaning, value and loyalty in our localglobal age. Most often we find that community is not a latent, abstract concept; instead, we find communities that give our daily practices, our political differences and our understanding of ourselves significance. If social psychologists are to understand these conflicts they need to engage with "the changing social patterns of our times", as Bruner (1996, p. vi) has advocated. We must, that is, explore the psychological significance of communities.