>sheeeeeeeeeeeeit. I was involved in two community research programs.
>teams of researchers crawling all over said community. on one, the
>director of the research program was a high-minded intellectual
>type. we spent two years asking, "what is a community?" and once you
>answer that question, "how, exactly, do you study it in good
>faith?". there's no clear cut answer, but one thing: simply pointing
>out disagreements within a so-called community isn't enough to claim
>there's no such thing. to have a disagreement at all pressupposes
>that something is shared among those who disagree. and there, you
>have a place to start. community are imaginary. and there's nothing
>wrong with that. you, of all people, should appreciate that.
Where did I point to disagreement as fatal to the notion of community in that passage? I said that the use of "community" is often performative, in that it tried to summon something into being merely by naming it. It has to be imagined by its participants, not its namers.
Doug