Building Community Through Communication: The Case For Civic Communion

Abstract

This essay makes the argument for the centrality of communication in studying and developing community. Following a discussion of general theoretical arguments affirming and advancing the case for communication's connection to community building, the essay moves to an examination of a specific type of community, communicative event: "civic communion." Civic communions are communicative and performative community events that function to draw people into a shared identity, shared visions of community, and codes of conduct. Civic communions are episodes of community interaction that function as rhetorical and performative civic sacraments bonding citizenry around the social and political structures of a specific locale. These powerful community moments offer community development practitioners a pragmatic and scholarly vehicle to assist and study the construction and maintenance of community.