Aiming for Clarity while Embracing Ambiguity: The LIFE Framework of Interactional Community

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite a rich history and continued popularity as an idea or term used for various purposes, the community concept remains nebulous and contested. Critics have long claimed that it is an outdated notion typically used in nostalgic fashion. Others, however, assert that the most important social science concepts are often the hardest to define, and that normative and analytically useful are not mutually exclusive. While community endures in the field, the environment is kept largely in the background in sociological applications. In this paper I argue that greater impact can be achieved through an extension of interactional field theory that grounds the concept in landscape and creates a framework built upon material, ideal, and practical elements of community. After delineating the proposed LIFE framework, I utilize illustrative examples to demonstrate its application to local development and society in practice.