Communitarianism

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The theme of community has always had a central and prominent place in social theory. A number of connected problems are at the heart of social theory. These related problems are often thought of as variations of the key problems of the relationship between ‘the community’ and ‘the individual’. (Browning et al., 2000) Communitarianism is a philosophy that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. While the “community “may be a family unit, it is usually understood in the wider sense of interactions between the community of people in a geographical location, or who have a shared history or interest. (Wiki, 2014) Thus, this philosophy, in this period, has been said to be prominent in a number of distinctive and time-specific ways. Community is just the whole range of that sort of group or institution-not the individual, not the family, not the state, not the market, but all the ones in between: churches, neighbourhoods, schools, clubs, kinship networks, associations etc. The concept of community refers to both a particular class of social entities, and to a particular range of social relations. (Browning et al., 2000) Some characteristics of this philosophy includes the fact that it is related to older theories of community such as Marxism, pragmatism, romanticism, ethical socialism, and strands of theology from the Jewish, Christian and other religious traditions. Secondly, a number of government-sponsored social policies have brought the term ‘community’ to a new prominence in political and social discourses- policies such as community care, community policing and community regeneration. These programmes during the 1980s were introduced by right-wing governments who attempted to yoke them together with ... ... middle of paper ... ...ghts are often overly individualistic, and conduce to a picture of the individual as a kind of atom-autonomous, self-sufficient and essentially separate from everyone else. Secondly, although the acquisition of individual rights and freedoms historically is wholly admirable-it has ruled out barbaric practices like torture, the withholding of property rights from women, etc. Thirdly, a wholly undesirable and unintended upshot of a society which emphasizes too much rights and too little duty. Communitarians believe that ‘rights culture’ has now gone too far, to the extent that the emphasis on rights has squeezed out any emphasis on duty and judging by the most outcomes of present day, one has to agree with this. However, communitarians differ as to their interpretation of the value of community, and their criteria for the relation of community. (Browning et al., 2000)

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