Others and the Problem of CommunityLYNN FENDLERMichigan State UniversityEast Lansing, MI, USA

ABSTRACT

Community building has been a key concern for a wide array of educationalprojects. Recently, educational theories concerned about social justice have begunto challenge assumptions about community in U.S. education by criticizing itstendencies toward assimilation and homogeneity. Such theories point out that acommunitarian agenda excludes the Other, the stranger, or the person of differ-ence. This paper analyzes various conflicting constructions of community in currentU.S. education literature, including the establishment of common values in schools,the attempt to integrate racially diverse views into educational discourse, and theexhortation for political solidarity within underrepresented groups. I analyze theconstruction of community and suggest that community has three distinct strandsof meaning: the appeal to “third way” kinds of compromise, the appeal to solidarityfor empowerment, and the appeal of emotional bonding. After providing examplesof these three strands, I argue that current definitions and assumptions aboutcommunity building can be politically dangerous insofar as differences areappropriated, assimilated, or excluded. Finally, by bringing some examples fromfeminism and postcolonialism into conversation with education, I suggest thatproblematizing the idea of community allows for critical appraisal of the meaningsof community and difference, commonality, and diversity.

Community building is all the rage. From broad curriculum theories toclassroom micro-practices, educators are exhorted to build community aspart of the curriculum to promote democracy, moral development, betterlearning, and citizenship. Terms like community tend to be used so looselythat their meanings become vague and muddy. Generally speaking,however, U.S. educational literature uses community to mean sharedvalues, unified purpose, and/or common beliefs. In other words (and notsurprisingly given the etymology of the word) most educational literatureassumes that community is based on some sort of commonality.1 Commu-nity building has been advocated for various kinds of professional develop-ment: to counteract the divisive effects of racism, sexism, and otherprejudices;2 to promote constructivist learning;3 and to encourage activeparticipation in a group.4 I recognize the importance of the idea of com-munity for these reasons. At the same time, the purpose of this paper is to

© 2006 by The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.Curriculum Inquiry 36:3 (2006)Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

contribute a critical perspective on the discourse of community in educa-tion. This is a critical review of recent literature on community.5

Community is a notion that is widely celebrated in education and otherfields; we do not find literature that says, “We must resist the forces ofcommunity building!” Williams (1976/1983) remarks on this when hewrites, “unlike all other terms of social organization (state, nation, society,etc.) [community] seems never to be used unfavorably, and never to begiven any positive opposing or distinguishing term” (p. 76). I am notopposed to community either, but I am concerned to find out the waysassumptions about community may have undesirable effects like assimila-tion and homogenization.

My studies in political philosophy suggested to me that community canhave unintended effects like excluding diversity, perpetuating the norms ofthe already privileged, and reducing questions of freedom and liberation tovoting procedures.6 The problem with community is that its assumptionsmay serve to exclude Others. From that perspective, this critical review isdesigned to make sense of the different ways the discourse of communitycan have limiting and/or exclusionary effects, despite efforts to thecontrary.

My inquiry joins other research in education that allows for criticalperspectives on community. For example, Furman (1998) writes:

Community is assumed to be based in commonalities, the shared values, visions, andpurposes typically mentioned in the education literature. Yet, school populationsare increasingly diverse. Efforts to build community schools that focus on articulat-ing and advocating certain values over others may have the perverse effects of alienatingsegments of the school population who do not share those values, thus defeating theintended purpose of community. (pp. 298–299, emphasis added)

As a critical strategy for understanding the assumptions embedded inthe discourse on community, my line of inquiry is shaped by the followingquestions: “What is assumed or stated to be the purpose of community?”and “How is community justified?” In my analysis I do not seek the essentialdefinition of community or the meaning of authentic community. Rather,by extending the arguments of Shields (2000), Abowitz (2000), and Nod-dings (1996), I try to understand the complex historical relations that cometogether to constitute the discourse of community in educational litera-ture. As Rose (1999) writes:

To analyse, then, is not to seek for a hidden unity behind this complex diversity.Quite the reverse. It is to reveal the historicity and the contingency of the truths thathave come to define the limits of our contemporary ways of understanding our-selves, individually and collectively, and the programmes and procedures assembledto govern ourselves. By doing so, it is to disturb and destabilise these regimes, toidentify some of the weak points and lines of fracture in our present where thoughtmight insert itself in order to make a difference. (pp. 276–277)

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For purposes of this paper, I examined the term community as it is beingused to talk about classroom community, teacher-learning community, andcommunities of practice. I excluded from the analysis the use of commu-nity when it referred to the place outside the school, as in “school andcommunity relations.” The meaning of the term community has changedover time, so I focused only on recent literature in order to make theinquiry historically specific. I approached the analysis with the assumptionthat the definition of community has been produced from the interweavingof divergent political projects and intellectual traditions.

I expected that the term community would have a political meaning, and,in fact, much debate about community is conducted in traditional politicalscience terms like liberal and communitarian (see, e.g., Abowitz, 2000;Etzioni, 1995, 2000). Surprisingly, however, I found that the current dis-course of community in education is not only about politics. Instead, Ifound that the discourse of community in educational research is inextri-cably intertwined with psychological notions of identity and affect, and alsowith leadership and policy issues of accountability. The discourse of com-munity is not just an argument about communitarian versus liberal forms ofassociation; it entails moral regulation, emotional management, and behav-ior practices that normalize forms of participation and specify particularrelations among people.

In this paper I suggest two things: (1) there are three discursive strandsin educational literature that support the appeal of community and makecommunity seem like a good thing, and (2) these same strands of commu-nity perpetuate assumptions about assimilation and normalization.Assumptions about community are not necessarily bad, but these assump-tions may be dangerous if we are unaware of them. Community in educa-tional literature is a construct that both embodies and constitutes what it ispossible to think about who we can be and what we can (and cannot)belong to. In this analysis I make no claims about what community shouldbe, could be, or necessarily is. Rather, I am doing historical inquiry in thesense that I refer to discourses of community that are specific to U.S.educational literature in the last 10 years.

In brief, the first discursive strand supporting the idea of community isits third-way appeal. As popularized by Tony Blair, Anthony Giddens, andAmitai Etzioni, community is theorized as an alternative to the two unsat-isfactory options of state control (communitarianism) and free-market indi-vidualism (liberalism).7 The second strand infusing community discourse isthe trope of solidarity. Based in the assumptions of labor union activism,community is theorized as a strategic weapon that promises empowermentand ability to effect change. Interestingly, community-as-solidarity isassumed by both mainstream and leftist community advocates. The thirdstrand is an appeal to emotion, a provision that is often couched in termsof safety. Community is advocated on the grounds that it makes people feelwelcome and comfortable. In my critical appraisal of the discourse of

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community, I am not arguing that community is a bad thing or that itshould be avoided in educational projects. Rather, I am arguing thatassumptions about community are dangerous when they function to per-petuate existing inequities and censor possibilities for differences.

COMMUNITY AS A THIRD WAY

Third-way thinking is fashionable in many circles (perhaps more in theUnited Kingdom than the United States), and educational research circu-lates third-way logic in some constructions of community. In this section Iargue that when community building is advocated as a compromisebetween commonality (which does not allow for diversity) and individual-ism (which does not allow for unity), then that is an example of third-waythinking. Community-as-third way is an attempt to avoid both too muchcentralization and too much decentralization. In this section I provide fourexamples from educational literature that illustrate community as a kind ofthird-way thinking. Following those examples, I draw from Rose to suggestways in which community-as-third way may have unintended normalizingconsequences.

Examples of Third-Way Thinking. An example of third-way thinking in edu-cational literature is Abowitz (2000) who divides models of communitybetween liberalism, “a theoretical commitment to extensive individual liber-ties,” and communitarianism, which is “more concerned with issues of socialcohesion” (p. 12). In the spirit of pragmatism, Abowitz rejects both sides ofthis dualism and proposes instead that we form alliances: “Through theparticular brand of philosophical praxis utilized in this inquiry, we canunderstand new languages of public life, languages that lie outside of thedualisms of justice and community as historically created, and which enableus to continue the endless quest for community but with the existentialwatchfulness required for community maintenance and construction” (p.185).

In another example, Furman (1998) refers to this dualism as a paradox.Furman frames her perceptive analysis as a dissonance between modernistand postmodernist concepts of community. She clearly outlines what shesees as the benefits and drawbacks of modernist and postmodernist con-cepts of community, and she strives to reconcile the paradox of communityby combining the constructive normativity of modernism with the decon-structive political challenges of postmodernism. She argues in favor of apostmodern notion of community because “community . . . continues to beused in a modernist sense, in ways that are a poor match with postmodernconditions, and in ways that serve the interests of the powerful” (p. 309).

In a third example, Redding (2001) expresses third-way thinking whenhe writes:

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community . . . has been idealized as a counterbalance to: a) excessive individual-ism, b) the family’s limiting strictures on the individual, and c) the remote, imper-sonal, and inexorable forces of mass society. (pp. 1–2)

After providing a historical overview of the term, Redding continues bysuggesting ways to “restore connections” in modern schools. He recom-mends that common experiences be built into policy events, instructionalstrategies, and curriculum. Redding concludes by saying, “common expe-riences define the meaning, the distinct character, and the central purposeof a school community” (p. 23).

A fourth example of community that inscribes the third-way appeal isWenger’s (1998) Communities of Practice. Perhaps the most widely citedreference on community in U.S. educational research, Wenger’s bookdevelops a line of inquiry that he and Jean Lave inaugurated in SituatedLearning (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Community as constructed in Wenger’stext is less normatively defined than in most other research, and Wengerdoes not assume that communities are a good thing: “Communities ofpractice are not intrinsically beneficial or harmful. They are not privilegedin terms of positive or negative effects” (Wenger, 1998, p. 85). Rather,Wenger’s analysis posits that communities are inevitable among peoplewho work together, but that the presence of certain criteria—engagement,imagination, and alignment—can transform those communities of practiceinto sites of learning (see especially pp. 173–187).

Wenger’s argument is an example of third-way thinking because itsoverall project negotiates a middle ground between the individualism ofpsychology and the collectivism of sociology. Lave and Wenger’s work oncommunities was innovative in educational psychology because it proposedan alternative to the transfer theory model of learning. Transfer theoryexplains learning as a set of cognitive skills that can be applied, transferredto an array of disparate tasks. As such, transfer theory explains learning inhighly individualistic terms, without regard to social circumstances. Incontrast, Wenger’s theory of learning in communities of practice does notrest on assumptions of individualism, and it explains learning as a productof social interaction. At the same time, communities of practice are notunderstood as collectivities or sociological structures. In that sense, com-munities of practice constitute a third way between collectivism and indi-vidualism, just as Abowitz’s pragmatism constitutes a third way betweencommunitarianism and liberalism.

Critique of Third-Way Thinking. Even while recognizing the potentialdangers of community building, the theories of community in theseexamples ultimately resolve into normative frameworks. The fundamentaltension between seductive and threatening conceptions of community isevident in Abowitz’s (2000) concluding thoughts:

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As a society, we must agree on educational systems that reproduce the best of ourculture. Community rhetoric, although often misguided in popular discourses bynostalgic romanticism, may have at its core this recognition of interdependence.The nostalgia can too frequently evoke, however, tyrannical structures and rela-tions. (p. 183)

The traditional political debates about community provide the terms ofAbowitz’s analysis. At the same time, the mandates of educational policyformation and leadership form the matrix for understanding the debate. Inthe end, community is constructed as a privileged and normative conditionthat can address administrative concerns: “But disparaging or ignoringcommunity ideals, per se, in the name of justice, will not wish away thehuman needs for companionship and solidarity with others” (Abowitz,2000, p. 183).

A similar tension is present in Furman’s (1998) notion of paradox:“Indeed, even postmodernist educational critics recognize that the humanneed for community transcends the negations of a postmodernist critique”(p. 309). After wrestling with the downsides of both liberalism and com-munitarianism, in the end Furman resolves the theoretical problems byproposing a nested model for community: “Normative postmodernism. . . provides a new metaphor for community—the interconnected web ofglobal community—which requires cooperation within difference and ‘anacknowledgement and celebration of otherness’” (p. 307). Her third-waysolution to this paradox is a continuum that extends from “smaller, valu-ational” kinship groups, to a global postmodern community “based on theethics of acceptance of otherness with respect, justice, and appreciation”(p. 318).

I find two problems with Furman’s “nested” theory of community. First,her concept of local-level valuational kinship is vastly different from herconcept of a global-level postmodern community. She characterizes thelocal level as a community of commonality and solidarity; in contrast, shecharacterizes the global level community as one of pluralism and liberaltolerance. Furman portrays the local level as communitarian, and sheportrays the global level as liberalist. The conflict between unity and diver-sity is not so much resolved as separated into two distinct spheres. SoFurman’s nested model does not deal with the paradox that frames theentire analysis, namely, “How is diversity incorporated at the local level?”and “What is to be the relationship between local communities and a globalcommunity?” The problems of diversity are not addressed at the local level,and the problems of unity are not addressed at the global level.

The second problem with Furman’s theory of nested community is thather model defines a particular vision of community. Her nested theoryconstructs a model of community “from above,” as it were. By definingcommunity according to this model, Furman’s theory promotes a top-downvision of community. The nested definition of community building pro-motes a perspective on community that does not provide for visions of

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community that are radically different from hers. Although Furman’s argu-ment incorporates postmodern critiques of modernist norms, in the endthose critiques are subordinated in favor of a coherent and normativeresolution. The paradoxes and nuances of Furman’s (1998) analysis (bal-ancing communitarianism with diversity and pluralism) tend to get buriedin compromises for the sake of coherence: “I have attempted . . . to unravelthe paradox of community and postmodernism by shifting both conceptsaway from their more extreme interpretations toward closer theoreticalalignment” (p. 323).

The rhetoric of the third way is seductive because it appears to bypass thecompromises of communitarianism and the selfishness of liberal individu-alism. However, third-way thinking embodies its own disciplinary mecha-nisms. For example, Gee (2000) argues that “communities of practice arenew and ideal forms of tacit indoctrination, replacing the brute force ofdirect orders and coercion. . . . In them, people may form value-ladenidentities through immersion in practice without much overt reflectionand critique” (p. 519). Gee’s analysis points directly to the ways communi-ties of practice reinforce new practices of capitalism, and the analysis can beextrapolated to technologies of governance in general.

Rose’s (2000) critique of third-way thinking focuses more on the con-struction of the citizen as a moral subject, an examination of what he callsethopolitics. Rose (1999) also explicates a “double movement” in the shiftsin governance patterns from the society to the community:

Organization and other actors that were once enmeshed in the complex andbureaucratic lines of force of the social state are to be set free to find their owndestiny. Yet, at the same time, they are to be made responsible for that destiny, andfor the destiny of society as a whole, in new ways. Politics is to be returned to societyitself, but no longer in a social form: in the form of individual morality, organiza-tional responsibility and ethical community. (pp. 174–175)

The discourse of community, then, becomes a vehicle of self-governance bywhich educators can envision their participation in ways that appear toavoid both centralization and individualization. Third-way thinking pavesthe way for community to be instantiated as a new site for government,while appearing to operate outside the structures of government. Member-ship and participation in any given community enacts the simultaneousprocesses of inclusion and exclusion (Popkewitz, 1998; Popkewitz & Bloch,2001); however, third-way thinking appears to be an inclusive middleground, so its mechanisms of exclusion, censorship, and normalization arenot readily available for critique. Nowhere is the normalization impulse ofcommunity more blatant than in Sergiovanni’s (1994) widely cited book,Building Community in Schools, where he writes: “Community building is thesecret weapon that can help domesticate the wild cultures that now seem soomnipresent in our schools” (p. xiv).

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COMMUNITY-AS-SOLIDARITY

Educational literature is generally critical of the melting-pot model ofbuilding community; most educational inquiry tends to recognize the prob-lems of assimilation and homogeneity. However, another way to promotecommunity is to appeal to solidarity. The vision of community-as-solidarityis that people of different backgrounds can voluntarily come together insupport of a common goal. We can see this vision as being related to laborunion organizing because solidarity has been endorsed as a strategy ofempowerment, especially within structuralist frameworks of dominanceand oppression. In this section I analyze literature in education that exem-plifies the ways in which solidarity has been mobilized as a strategy forcommunity building: first an example from a relatively mainstream theo-retical approach, and second an example of a Marxian approach. Whileanalyzing those examples, I draw from Laclau and Mouffe to suggest that inspite of efforts to the contrary, solidarity tends (ironically) to reproduceexisting power hierarchies and foreclose possibilities for diversity.

U.S. Liberal Mainstream. As the title of their book asserts, Guarasci andCornwell (1997) are primarily concerned with laying out a theoreticalframework of “democratic education in an age of difference.” Guarasci andCornwell critique the problems of classical and modern definitions ofdemocracy. They explicitly decry the dangers of assimilation: “Homog-enized commonality is the enemy of respect for difference, identity, andprivacy” (p. 20). Instead, they promote a multicentric version ofcommunity:

The world of interdisciplinary studies is where connection, integration, and synthe-sis are prized. Interdisciplinary studies call for a curricular design and a collegeexperience in which interculturalism is the very means of forging connectedness,mutuality, and common destiny. (p. 9)

It is clear that Guarasci and Cornwell are aware of the dangers ofhomogenization, and they reject traditional notions of melting-pot democ-racy. However, they equally strongly reject appeals to identity politics,which they deem to be instances of “cultural isolation” (p. 4). For Guarasciand Cornwell, the politics of difference is not a debate or a problematic,but rather a normative stance to be opposed:

Although we live in a world that is obsessed with difference as both sanctuary andthreat, reliance on the politics of difference and separation is a doomed strategy.The politics of difference fails to produce a democratic community and it fails as anenduring means to personal liberation as well. (p. 17)

Guarasci and Cornwell promote “community-based learning as a peda-gogy for evoking the interplay of difference, community, and intercultural

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citizenship” (p. 48). They cite examples of community-based learning(sometimes called service learning) in order to “build a sense of campuscommunity” (p. xi). Their book provides examples of educational practicesthat engage students as participants in a democratic community as part ofthe learning process.

Guarasci and Cornwell make extensive efforts to reach out and includedifferent groups of people and dissenting voices. In an effort to be multi-centric, the authors do not limit their citations and references to thecanonized speakers for Western democracy. Interestingly, they draw fromwritings by Anzaldúa, Foucault, hooks, Lorde, Noddings, Spivak, and Westto support their stance against “homogenized commonality” (p. 20). In asubsection titled “Community and Multiplicity,” Guarasci and Cornwell citeLorde (1984) as they defend a multicentric community.

To analyze Guarasci and Cornwell’s theory of community, I offer here aclose and critical reading of one section. I compare Guarasci and Corn-well’s interpretation of Lorde with Lorde’s original text. Here is Guarasciand Cornwell’s interpretation:

As Lorde . . . puts it, we will then “develop the tools” to break the seeming “insurmount-able barriers” of difference and end the destructive force of invisibility brought on byparochialism and false homogenization. By direct encounter and experience, stu-dents and teachers increase their comfort with the “other,” with the “different,” asthey begin to see their connection to difference as well as its presence within themselves.This is Lorde’s “springboard for creative change within our [own] lives.” (Cornwell& Guarasci, 1997, pp. 20–21, emphases added)

Here is Lorde’s (1984) original text:

Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference intopretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist atall. This results in voluntary isolation, or false and treacherous connections. Either way,we do not develop tools for using human difference as a springboard for creative changewithin our lives. (pp. 115–116, emphases added)

The thrust of Lorde’s original text is “recognizing,” “exploring,” and“using” human difference to make creative changes. In contrast, Guarasciand Cornwell’s appropriation seems to suggest that we need to “break thebarriers” of difference and begin to “see connection.” In Lorde’s text,difference is a source of strength, “a springboard”; in Guarasci and Corn-well’s text, difference is a “barrier” to be broken. This is a subtle butprofound alteration in meaning. Finally, Lorde’s original vocabulary of“treacherous connections” was tellingly paraphrased as “false homogeni-zation.” Guarasci and Cornwell’s interpretation infuses community withthe discourse of solidarity and thereby transforms Lorde’s idea of differ-ence in a way that favors homogeneity and diminishes possibilities ofdifference.

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In linguistic moves such as these, the impulse toward solidarity, even asit tries to be inclusive, ends up by denying the possibility of differenceand/or reinscribing existing power hierarchies.

Marxian Solidarity. Many critical theories in education derive fromMarxian premises. Examples from Halsey, Lauder, Brown, and Wells’s(1997) anthology, Education: Culture, Economy, Society, illustrate how com-munity underlies Marxian political programs in critical theories of educa-tion. The analyses in these chapters attempt to preserve demographiccategories (e.g., race, class, and gender) and account for their overlap atthe same time. The multiplication of categories has been a key element incultural studies of education as these critical theories attempt to recognizediversity while they maintain a structural basis for understanding collectiv-ity and solidarity.

The tension between homogenization and fragmentation is evidentwhen Halsey et al. (1997) write: “The . . . problem of ‘modern’ capitalistsocieties concerns the alienation caused by the homogenization of cultureand the resultant loss of personal identity through a process of assimilationinto a common culture” (p. 3). They assert that “a central problem forcritical educationalists has . . . been to reconcile the relativism and nihilismof a set of theories denying the possibility of social progress with a politicsof difference advancing the liberation of women and people of colour” (p.14). In these quotations, we can read the concern about homogenizationand assimilation that accompany some versions of community. So Halseyet al. construct a particular kind of community when they advocate cultur-ally autonomous schooling on the grounds that such community buildingwill increase the likelihood of empowerment, participation, and voice inthe larger society:

While the projects of culturally autonomous schooling will take years to realize, andhence to evaluate, they need to be judged against the broader aims of the preser-vation of living cultures and languages and as a way of “getting out from under”:education here is seen as providing a platform for access to power and full demo-cratic participation in society. (p. 18)

Halsey et al. argue that homogenization and assimilation are bad, andculturally autonomous (i.e., segregated) communities are good for pur-poses of solidarity and empowerment in the face of a different dominantculture.

I find this concept of community troublesome because of its assumptionsabout who needs solidarity and who does not. Halsey et al. seem to implythat culturally autonomous schooling is appropriate for minorities andunderrepresented people but not for all cultural subgroups. When theyargue in favor of sex-segregated or race-segregated schooling, they mean tosupport women and racial minorities; they do not intend to support exclu-

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sive schools for the cultural subgroup of rich, White, heterosexual males.Presumably, Halsey et al.’s concept of culturally autonomous schooling isnot for wealthy, White, able-bodied, heterosexual males because they areassumed to have a de facto community and privileged access to resources.

If Halsey et al.’s idea of culturally autonomous schooling is not supposedto be applied to everyone in the society, then I become concerned aboutdeficit-model thinking that may underlie the distinction between those whoare perceived to need autonomous schooling and those who are perceivednot to need it. If culturally autonomous schooling is designed to compen-sate for the disadvantages of some demographic groups, then culturallyautonomous schooling is applied remedially, which may convey deficit-model thinking. Presumably, Halsey et al. intend for this sort of communitybuilding to serve as a means to an end. That is, the need for communitydoes not apply to the society at large but rather to isolated cultural groups,“providing a platform for access to power and full democratic participationin society” (Halsey et al., 1997, p. 18).

Halsey et al.’s promotion of community-for-solidarity raises other trouble-some questions for me: What is suppose to happen when the culturalsubgroup reaches (as they say) “power and full democratic participation insociety”? Do they no longer need culturally autonomous schooling? At whatpoint will the subgroup be considered ready for admission to the society atlarge? And then on what grounds should that larger composite entity becalled a community? Will everyone be assimilated? Will the differenceseventually wither away? Conversely, by what means is the possibility forcultural (or other) differences maintained in the context of the largersociety? Halsey et al.’s theory of community does not address these issues,and so their suggestion of culturally autonomous schooling has not fullyaccounted for the participation of Others in their vision of community.

To summarize my criticisms of community-for-solidarity, I argue thatsolidarity platforms (like that of Halsey et al.) reiterate existing hierarchicalpower relations because some groups are positioned as deficient and inneed of remediation, and other groups are seen as normal and acceptableas is. I see this as an example of deficit-model thinking in which those whoare excluded from the community are regarded as lacking, in need ofassistance, or deserving of support from those more fortunate. At the sametime, the group that is seen as forming an acceptable community is notregarded as pathological or in need of therapy or intervention in any way.As Skutnabb-Kangas (1990) argues, “This static and ethnocentric view,where the whole burden of integration is on the incomer alone, and wherethe dominant group’s values are presented as somehow ‘shared and uni-versal,’ rather than particularistic and changing, like all values are, stillprevails in many countries” (p. 87). So in the model of community-as-solidarity, unintended consequences arise: the status of the included isaffirmed and maintained, and the status of the excluded is also affirmedand maintained.

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Critical theorists who promote solidarity for empowerment frequentlydecry the tendencies toward fragmentation or “separatism.” McLaren(1997), for example, writes that is it important to maintain a sense oftotality in emancipatory projects: “Without a shared vision (however con-tingent or provisional) of democratic community, we risk endorsingstruggles in which the politics of differences collapses into new forms ofseparatism” (p. 492). Apple (1997) writes, “I say all this because of very realdangers that now exist in critical educational studies. One is our loss ofcollective memory” (p. 599). These critical researchers are interested inforging community at a very broad level: “This book attempts to build acoalition that enables dialog, to identify terrains of mutual support, and toarticulate common concerns and agendas” (Halsey et al., 1997, p. 8).

A similar strategic solidarity for empowerment is articulated by thosewho embrace cultural feminist project. Arnot and Dillabough (1999), forexample, write:

we must counter the “false antithesis” expressed about the distinctions betweenmodern feminist thought (e.g., equality) and post-modern feminist thought (e.g.,difference), and even more significantly, the fragmentation of the field. . . . We mustreconcile modernist questions of feminist solidarity and social structure with post-modern concerns about hierarchies of identification and difference. (p. 180,emphases added)

This example illustrates the definition of community in which theoreticaldiversity and even incommensurability are good up to a point, but that forpurposes of political mobilization, solidarity is ultimately required.

In the assumption that empowerment requires solidarity I can see someironic consequence insofar as solidarity minimizes attention to differences.Mouffe (1992) articulates how visions of solidarity, regardless of how com-prehensive, cannot avoid establishing exclusions of some sort:

The idea of the common good specifies what we can call . . . a “grammar ofconduct” that coincides with the allegiance to the constitutive ethico-political prin-ciples of modern democracy: liberty and equality for all. Yet, since those principlesare open to many competing interpretations, one has to acknowledge that a fullyinclusive political community can never be realized. There will always be a “consti-tutive outside,” an exterior to the community that is the very condition of itsexistence. It is crucial to recognize that, since to construct a “we” it is necessary todistinguish it from a “them,” and since all forms of consensus are based on acts ofexclusion, the condition of possibility of the political community is at the same timethe condition of impossibility of its full realization. (p. 30)

Here, Mouffe concisely summarizes the analytical argument for prob-lematizing community-as-solidarity that is evident in the above examplesfrom educational literatures. Insofar as educational research denies theconstitutive outside, that research has ignored pervasive practices ofexclusion that are inherent in all attempts at inclusion. Such a stance not

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only ignores the practices of exclusion, but also forgoes a critical perspec-tive that might address the mechanisms by which exclusion is exercised.In another critique of solidarity, Laclau (1992) historicizes the relation-ship of the universal to the particular, asserting that the “integrationist”assumption of liberal democratic community was “originally conceived forfar more homogeneous societies” and that “this theory was based on allkinds of unexpressed assumptions that no longer pertain” (p. 89). Thispoint suggests that critical curriculum theorizing may profit by exploringthe ways community platforms reiterate unintended impulses towardcommonality.

By bringing Laclau’s and Mouffe’s analyses into educational discourse, itbecomes possible to take another look at the ways community-buildingpractices tend toward homogeneity and assimilation despite their explicitintentions to the contrary. If some sort of constitutive outside is inevitablein all political communities, then it is dangerous to celebrate and promotecommunity building as if it were unproblematic. Instead, it would behooveresearchers to keep constant vigil and continually challenge the ways com-munity constructs inclusions and exclusions simultaneously.

COMMUNITY AS AFFECT, EMOTION, AND CARING

Recognizing the complexities inherent in theorizing community, recentliterature has been integrating the affective aspects of community, espe-cially the notion of caring (Noddings, 1995, 1996). In some cases, thevocabulary of political science is subordinated in favor of the language ofaffect and emotion. Emotion is also fashionable in research now with suchconcepts as “emotional intelligence” (Goleman, 1995) and “feeling power”(Boler, 1999), so it is not surprising that emotions play a part, together withthird-way thinking and solidarity, in the constitution of community foreducation. In this section I analyze examples in the literature ofcommunity-as-affective-bond, and argue that the discourse of emotionalsafety functions simultaneously to include and exclude.

Abowitz (2000) calls attention to emotion under the rubric of feminism,and she criticizes liberal reason for its detachment: “Liberal reason, asconstructed against emotion, has come to mean that which is antithetical topassion or feelings” (p. 82). Abowitz argues that community necessitatesthe integration of affective elements, “our subjectivities can intersect overcommon issues and problems. Such work involves the affective domain aswell as the logical thought patterns of weighing evidence and evaluatingstatements and ideas” (p. 82). Abowitz does not dichotomize reason andemotion, neither does she romanticize the emotional realm. At the sametime, she points repeatedly to the inescapable role of emotions in commu-nity building, for example, “if we were to take the affective seriously, schoolswould be places where the time and scale of the institution would allow for

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the kinds of work that facilitate the full expression of feeling and thinkingthat should accompany learning and teaching” (p. 144).

Similarly, bell hooks (2003) emphasizes the need for educators to“undermine the socialization” (p. 36) that occurs under domination, andshe describes community as something that must cross differences. Hooksadvocates what she calls beloved community, and casts the project in emo-tional terms:

One of the dangers we face in our educational systems is the loss of a feeling ofcommunity, not just the loss of closeness among those with whom we work and withour students, but also the loss of a feeling of connection and closeness with theworld beyond the academy. (p. xv)

This is an example of the discursive construction of community as anemotional feature of curriculum.

Stronger appeals to emotion have been brought into U.S. educationalresearch through frequent deployment of the concepts Gemeinschaft andGesellschaft. Interestingly, these terms in U.S. literature usually appear inGerman (italicized, though not always capitalized). Readers familiar withTönnies’s original work might be surprised at the ways these 19th-centuryconcepts have been appropriated and transformed from analytic descrip-tors to normative values in educational inquiry.

Tönnies (1887/1957) used the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft todescribe various existing forms of associations among people. Gemeinschaftdescribes relationships in which there is an “a priori and necessarily exist-ing unity” (1887/1957, p. 65). Further, Gemeinschaft describes relationshipsin which emotions are factors (blood and proximity), but Gemeinschaft doesnot necessarily implicate the emotional aspect of those relationships.However, recent U.S. educational research on community endows the termwith other meanings and other uses. For example, in one chapter, Merzand Furman (1997) carefully summarize Tönnies concepts as analyticdescriptors. In the course of their argument, however, community becomesconstituted via normative understandings of Gemeinschaft: “we believe thatschools have become too gesellschaftlich” (p. 89); “Noddings’ . . . work ishighly consistent with making schools more gemeinschaftlich” (p. 72); and“Gemeinschaft can be created by choice, but for schools to do so requiresgiving up some choices and tolerating some idiosyncratic procedures andoutcomes” (p. 98). This research deploys the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesell-schaft to understand how schools are organized. In doing so, they set up atheoretical framework in which Gemeinschaft signifies an intimate sense ofbelonging, and this framework makes it possible to extend an analyticallens onto emotional relationships in schools. The analytical categoriesserve as warrants for new research agendas. Research must now observe,record, analyze, and evaluate a whole array of emotional relationships sothat administrators and policy makers can propose therapeutic interven-

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tions that will build communities in their schools. In this way, educationalresearch itself—with its technologies of surveillance and rehabilitation—exercise normalization and governance in the process.

Sergiovanni (1994) advocates perhaps the strongest appeal to emotionas the foundation of building community in schools: “The need for com-munity is universal. A sense of belonging, of continuity, of being connectedto others and to ideas and values that make our lives meaningful andsignificant—these needs are shared by all of us” (p. xiii). Sergiovanni’sschool community is often described with religious terminology; commu-nity requires altruistic love. “To be blunt about it, we cannot achievecommunity unless we commit ourselves to the principle ‘love thy neighboras thyself’ ” (p. 29). The norms of community are described as command-ments, and infringements are called sins. Sergiovanni distinguishes authen-tic community from substitutes for community. This distinction is necessarybecause other criteria for community do not exclude gangs, which Sergio-vanni means to do. So certain tightly bonded, purposeful groups of people(like gangs) do not meet the criteria for authentic community because heregards their sense of belonging as dysfunctional.

The recent trend that constructs community on the basis of emotionalappeals raises four contentious points: the dichotomization of reason andemotion, the universality of emotions, the construction of enemies, and themodern separation between individual and society. I address the problemsof each of these points in turn.

To argue that emotion and affect need to be included in rationaldebates is to assume that rationality is not already shaped by emotion.When researchers normalize concepts and criticize communities for beingtoo gesellschaftlich, they perpetuate a very old dualism of mind and body,cognition and emotion. Many writers recommend that affect and emotionbe brought back into social relations and understandings (see, e.g., Beatty,2000; Blackmore, 1996; Bodine & Crawford, 1999; Cherniss & Goleman,2001; Cooper & Sawaf, 1997; Dirkx, 2001; Goldstein, 1998, 2002; Har-greaves, 1998a, 1998b, 2000; Zembylas, 2005). This effort to reintegrateemotions with reason seems to suggest that it is possible to separateemotion from reason in the first place. However, as critical histories clearlyargue, systems of reason and rationality have always been shaped byemotion, religion, belief systems, and power dynamics: “The archaeology ofthe human sciences has to be established through studying the mechanismsof power which have invested human bodies, acts and forms of behaviour”(Foucault, 1980, p. 61; see also Rose, 1989, 1999). The separation of reasonand affect perpetuates the assumption that reason is somehow objectiveand impartial; the separation does not recognize that systems of reasonhave been produced as the effects of culturally and historically specificpower relations that always entail an array of human faculties.

Second, the feelings that are identified as aspects of the affectivedomain—trust, caring, and safety—have also been constructed in histori-

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cally specific circumstances. To essentialize these affective aspects is toassume the universality and naturalness of feelings that are culturally andhistorically specific. In other words, comfort has no essential meaning;there is no reason to assume that an atmosphere that feels safe, welcoming,and caring to one person will feel that way to another person. Moreimportant, when people acknowledge difference in anything but trivialways, that experience can be expected to be precisely unfamiliar, andtherefore uncomfortable and disconcerting. People who face systematicinjustices daily generally recognize that feelings of trust and safety are notprerequisites of participation, but privileges endowed by existing hierar-chies. Therefore, it is misguided to require a sense of caring or safety as abasis for community because these dimensions are neither universal nornatural. People learn to recognize when they are supposed to feel safe andwhen they are not as discourses of community are circulated and reiterated.

Some researchers call for a community in which such things as partici-pation and safety are negotiated among members. For example:

Democratic community is aimed not just at improving student behavior but atcreating the kinds of ties that bond students together and students and teacherstogether and that bind them to shared ideas and ideals. When students share theresponsibility for developing norms and when their commitment to these norms isexpected, they know they belong. They get the message that they are needed. Theyexperience community. (Sergiovanni, 1994, pp. 120–121)

However, processes of negotiation and dialogue are not neutral or immunefrom cultural bias. Norms of interaction will always favor some and excludeothers. Even when norms of behavior are stated in such seemingly innocu-ous terms as “respect,” those norms generally remain unspecified: Underwhat circumstances are humor and laughter considered respectful? Howmuch time between conversational turn taking does courtesy require? Howloud can voices be? What terms of address are acceptable? What observa-tions should remain politely unspoken? What vocabulary is uncouth? Whatrhythm of eye contact feels impertinent? What body postures appear offen-sive? As abstract concepts, comfort and respect are easy to affirm. However,in practice (as operationalized behaviors) comfort and respect are not thesame to all people in all places. Therefore, affective bases for communitycan be just as exclusive as they are inclusive.

More importantly, even when communities ostensibly establish theirown norms, they fail to recognize the power that circulates as socializationor governmentality. Negotiations about norms are shaped by a variety ofexpectations that include reliance on modern expertise. As Rose (1989)has argued extensively:

Yet our conceptions of normality are not simply generalizations from our accumu-lated experience of normal children. On the contrary, criteria of normality areelaborated by experts on the basis of their claims to a scientific knowledge of

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childhood and its vicissitudes. . . . [E]xpert notions of normality are extrapolatedfrom our attention to those children who worry the courts, teachers, doctors, andparents. (p. 131)

As Rose points out, what we understand to be respect is a conglomerationof expert advice, television images, intimate encounters, stereotypes, andethical commitments.

Third, assumptions about community can construct enemies in attemptsto prevent extremism, fragmentation, and alienation. One corollary ofdemarcation of community is the simultaneous construction of ally andenemy, same and Other. The prospects of building community in responseto an enemy threat are not new. Nations, gangs, tribes, and movementshave typically established their unity and identity not on the basis of whatthey support but on the basis of what they oppose. In his provocatively titledbook, Democracy Without Enemies, Beck (1998) points out the ways commu-nities create enemies:

In all previously existing democracies, there have been two types of authority: onecoming from the people and the other coming from the enemy. Enemy stereotypesempower. Enemy stereotypes have the highest conflict priority. They make it pos-sible to cover up and force together all the other social antitheses. One could saythat enemy stereotypes constitute an alternative energy source for consensus.(p. 143)

After historicizing the relationship between communities and enemies,Beck argues that the current historical milieu, after postmodernity, is com-prised of a new constellation of social relations.

Fourth, like Rose, Beck (1998) argues that it does not make senseanymore to talk about an agonistic or dichotomous relation between theindividual and the collective: “Individualization therefore, to pick out onepeculiarity, is a collective fate, not an individual one” (p. 34). Beck usesproblematic terms such as “imposed freedom,” “programmed individual-ism,” and “do-it-yourself biography” to convey that the idea of a modernautonomous individual is anachronistic:

But what drives millions of people in all the countries of the globe, seemingly asindividuals but actually following a generally shared dream, to break out of mar-riage and live together “in sin” outside of the comfortable legal safety net? Is this atype of “ego fever” that can be treated by hot compresses of “us”? Not likely. A newrelationship between individual and society is announcing itself here. (p. 35).

The simultaneous construction of community and enemy is analogous tothe processes of inclusion and exclusion. The discourse creatingcommunities/enemies entails appeals to nationalism, pride, and a sense ofbelonging. Insofar as community is constructed as an emotional bond, thediscourse of psychology, which deals with the domain of affect, gets foldedinto the meaning of community.

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Educational psychology has based discussions about community onassumptions about identity. For example, Wenger’s (1998) communities ofpractice are delimited by participation and nonparticipation:

When communities define themselves by contrast to others—workers versus man-agers; collaborating versus rebellious students; or, more broadly, one ethnic, reli-gious, or political group versus another—being inside implies, and is largelydefined in terms of, being outside. This situation makes boundary crossing difficult,because each side is defined by opposition to the other and membership in onecommunity implies marginalization in another. (p. 168)

This construction of community is infused with assumptions about identity,which usually connotes coherence, individuality, or ascription. “In a land-scape defined by boundaries and peripheries, a coherent identity is ofnecessity a mixture of being in and being out” (Wenger, 1998, p. 165).When identity is assumed to be coherent, then community membershipbecomes the problematic issue: “we define who we are by the ways weexperience our selves through participation as well as by the ways we andothers reify our selves. . . . We define who we are by the ways we reconcileour various forms of membership into one identity” (Wenger, 1998, p.149).

Modern identity is commonly understood in terms of demographicascriptions—like race, class, and gender—that rely on sociological catego-ries (Castel, 1991; Hacking 1990; Popkewitz, 1998). A great deal of educa-tional research on community understands difference in those terms. Butother, more nuanced versions of diversity have become available in post-colonial literature. Cameron McCarthy, for example, has advanced theoriesof race in terms of “nonsynchrony” (1990) and “counterpoint” (1995) thatdisavow unities of race and identity:

I offer a critique of essentialist theories of race. I suggest that such theories havelimited explanatory and predictive capacity with respect to the operation of race ineducation and in daily life. Further, I argue that one cannot understand race,paradoxically, by looking at race alone. (1990, p. 246)

When constructions of identity are problematized, constructions of com-munity, Otherness, and inclusion are also disrupted. In recognition of thetheoretical difficulties inherent in the term community, Lynda Stone(1993) has proposed the term heteromity, saying, “I think the time has cometo disavow community because the concept itself carries the historical andideological baggage of the failures of western liberal association” (p. 98,italics in original). She characterizes heteromity as being fluid, decentered,and differentiated. Both McCarthy and Stone contribute dimensions of thediscourse of community that avoid assimilation and homogeneity.

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CONCLUSION

The deployment of community as a way to think about relations in educa-tional research is bolstered by compelling appeals to third-way moderation,solidarity for empowerment, and emotional comfort. Through these dis-cursive mechanisms, community is a problem for Others. The discourse ofcommunity has become a mechanism of governance and a forum forspecifying norms and rules of participation. At the same time, the conno-tations of the word community and its associations with moderation, empow-erment, and caring open new doors of research and analysis. Qualitativestudies in education are designed to measure the degree of emotionalattachment among working groups of teachers; policy research contrastssuccessful schools with failing schools and concludes that success is bothcorrelated with and caused by a feeling of intimacy between school andcommunity; trust and friendship become quantifiable and calculable incase studies of mentor teachers’ relationships with their apprentices; andtextbooks of teaching methods provide rubrics that evaluate the degree towhich a lesson on punctuation contributes to a sense of belonging in theclassroom. The ideal of the educated person constructed through thediscourse of community becomes one who takes on personal responsibilityfor regulating his or her moral welfare as a member of a community. AsRose (2000) writes:

Those who refuse to become responsible and govern themselves ethically have alsorefused the offer to become members of our moral community. Hence, for all ofthem, harsh measures are entirely appropriate. Three strikes and you are out.Citizenship becomes conditional on conduct. The counterpart to the moralism ofthese community-based programs is the enhancement of the powers of the penaland psychiatric complexes and the transformation of social workers and othercaring professionals [e.g., educators] into agencies of control concerned with riskmanagement and secure containment.

The spirit of community that Rose highlights is enacted in schools throughzero-tolerance policies and Ritalin prescriptions.

Research and discussion about community has recently overshadowededucational debates that have been cast for centuries in terms of societyand democracy. Casting the debate in terms of community is no more orless restrictive, oppressive, or disciplinary than casting the debate in termsof society or democracy. However, when associations and relationships ineducation are framed in terms of society and democracy, different kinds ofquestions rise to prominence. For example, Gutmann and Thompson’s(1996) influential work, Democracy and Disagreement, analyzed the politicalconsequences of various models of democracy: procedural, constitutional,and deliberative. When educational debates are framed in these terms,research asks other questions and evaluates other dynamics: Are the rulesof behavior explicit and applicable to everyone? On what grounds is com-

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pliance justified? What sorts of actions constitute transgressions? So thecriteria for participation stipulated in a democracy discourse are differentfrom the criteria stipulated in a community discourse.

Young (1990), whose work focuses on the politics of difference, arguesthat community aspirations are fraught with dead ends. She writes:

Too often contemporary discussion of these issues sets up an exhaustive dichotomybetween individualism and community. Community appears in the oppositions ofindividualism/community, separated self/shared self, private/public. But like mostsuch terms, individualism and community have a common logic underlying theirpolarity, which makes it possible for them to define each other negatively. Eachentails a denial of difference and a desire to bring multiplicity and heterogeneityinto unity, though in opposing ways. (pp. 228–229)

Most educational research about community cites Young as well asGutmann and Thompson. But the community debates in educationalresearch are not only about political theories of justice and inclusion.These debates are folded into issues of school safety, accountability, andmanagement. When safety is a primary concern, there is resistance to theidea of politicizing the debates about school management. Communitycarves out a space for discussion that feels politically neutral, and thereforeless alienating, less threatening, and less divisive. The idea is to bringpeople together, so third-way thinking fits the bill by appearing to bemoderate and centrist. Solidarity provides a sense of security in the face ofenemies, and a sense of identity in encounters with others.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for many critical readings and generous contributions tomy thinking about this paper. My heartfelt thanks go to the ResearchCommunity “Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education,” inLeuven, Belgium; to my colleagues Dorothea Anagnostopoulos, SteveRyan, and BetsAnn Smith; and to the editors and five anonymous reviewersat Curriculum Inquiry.

NOTES

1. Examples of work in education that define community as common groundinclude Allen (2000), Arthur (2000), Calderwood (2000), Fine, Weis, & Powell(1997), Guarasci & Cornwell (1997), Retallick, Cocklin, & Coombe (1999),Salomone, (2000), Sergiovanni (1994), and Tierney (1993).

2. See, for example, Boyle-Baise (1999), hooks (2003), Miele (2004).

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3. See, for example, Brown & Campione (1994, 1996), Lave & Wenger (1991).

4. See, for example, Keiffer-Barone (2005), Rico & Shulman (2004), Shulman &Sherin (2004).

5. The major pieces of literature included for analysis in this paper are Journal ofCurriculum Studies from 2004, vol. 36, no. 2 (a recent special-topics issue thatcontains nine articles on community in educational research); Redding &Thomas (2001) (a compilation of 10 years of articles in School CommunityJournal); Sergiovanni (1994) and Etzioni (1995) (which have been widely citedin educational literature); Salomone (2000); and Lave & Wenger (1991).

6. I drew from fields other than education as a strategy to gain perspectiveon assumptions that were embedded in educational discourses of community,for example, Beck (1998); Guttmann & Thompson (1996); Laclau (1992);McCarthy (1990); Rose (1989, 1999, 2000); Scott (1992); Young (1986).

7. Popular press has dubbed this “Goldilocks politics” in reference to that folktale’srefrain of “not too hot; not too cold; just right.”

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