Renegotiating Community: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Global Contexts (Globalization and Autonomy)

This collaborative, interdisciplinary study reframes debates about community, globalization, and autonomy by analyzing the multiple ways in which communities are renegotiating their autonomy under conditions of globalization.

Both as a concept and a set of social relationships, community is central to contemporary debates about globalization. Faced with finding a livable globalization, many communities are renegotiating their identities and functions and, in some instances, entirely new communities are being formed. Yet there is no clear consensus on why community matters or on how globalization affects particular communities.

Renegotiating Community asks what happens to the autonomy of individuals and communities due to globalization. Original case studies show how a range of communities are renegotiating the meanings of community and autonomy while living with, and sometimes challenging, the processes of globalization. By addressing the coercive and comforting dimensions of community -- as well as the need to reconcile conflicting claims to autonomy -- this book redraws the conceptual maps through which community, globalization, and autonomy are understood.

Contributors: Nancy Cook, Jasmin Habib, Monica E. Mulrennan, Peter Nyers, Robert O’Brien, Richard J. “Dick” Preston, Scott Prudham, Wendy Russell, Jessica Schagerl, Stephen Slemon, Amanda White, Michael Webb, and Patricia T. Young.