A community is a type of human group marked by several features: local common residence, common interests, common identity, and synchronization of activities.

                  Early Sociological Research on Communities

Ferdinand Tönnies, in his work Community and Society (1887), presented the dichotomous classification of types of human association. The two main ideal types of human groups are "community" (Gemeinschaft) and "society" (Gesellschaft - also sometimes translated as „association“). The community is the first, in the historical sense, and is created by the „natural will“ (Wesenwille). The community is a place of common life, and the best examples of the community are household and family, neighborhood, village and rural life, and ethnic communities (which are connected by customs, language, and religion). The community is similar to a living organism and people in it share collectivist values. A community is formed spontaneously through long-term "organic" development and is determined by emotions, customs, traditions, solidarity, trust, and intimacy. The relations and order in the community are maintained through tradition and solidarity. Tönnies sees the origin of the relationships in the community in the very fact of birth within the community, and the factors that affect the relationship are gender and origin. The strongest ties are those between mother and child, husband and wife, and brothers and sisters. The maternal relationship is based on pure love, while the relationship between the spouses can lead to the one-sided submission of the woman. To avoid this subordination, it is necessary to build a lasting relationship of mutual affirmation, while care and love for common children and property can help in that. The attitude of the father towards the children best expresses the attitude of domination in the community. As patriarchy proved to be better in war and economic activities, it became a general cultural form. Apart from biological kinship, the greatest sources of the community are common life, common religion, common language, and intellectual closeness. Organic or natural will, in the community, is based on understanding and harmony.

Émile Durkheim’s book Division of Labor in Society (1893), observes the development and evolution from primitive to civilized societies, and pays special attention to the relationship between the type of economy and the division of labor, on the one hand, and the type of solidarity and morality is society, on the other hand. To explain this relationship, he introduces a division into two basic types of solidarity in society - "mechanical solidarity" and "organic solidarity". In societies of mechanical solidarity, e.g. communities, the division of labor is very limited, societies consist of segments that are functionally the same, while kinship relations govern relations within and between segments. This way of life and work influence the creation of "collective consciousness" which is completely within the individual consciousness, so individuals blindly obey the opinion of the majority and live following traditional rules. Individuals, among themselves, share collectivist values, and have the same patterns of actions, emotions, and attitudes, so they do not form separate personalities. The legal system is aimed at retributive sanction, that is, at punishing those who violate collective rules. The goal of the regulatory system is to establish moral balance. Moral and legal responsibility falls on the entire collective, while social status is mostly hereditary.

In his book Democracy and Education (1916), John Dewey states that it is necessary to strengthen individualism and community at the same time. He believes that human habits are not a product of personal characteristics, but are a consequence of the institutional framework that exists in society. To change people's habits and strengthen both individualism and a sense of community, it is necessary to manifest deliberative intelligence within the community. He believes that educational institutions are the most important institutions which shape society, but also people's habits. That is why educational institutions must be as integrated as possible into the wider community. The public sphere refers to common interests within a community in which everyone feels the consequences of joint action. Accordingly, he believed that for most ordinary people, the best way to engage in democracy was to participate in local community decision-making.

Community in the Perspective of the Chicago School of Sociology

Robert Park and Ernest Burgess jointly published two books that are key to the formation of the Chicago School of Urban Sociology - Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921) and The City (1925). These two books laid the theoretical and methodological foundations for the study of urban social phenomena. Park and Burgess studied cities as a type of urban community. Park viewed sociology as a "natural science" that should study the relationships and processes that take place between different communities in society. Influenced by Simmel's teaching, Park adopted the view that social interaction should be viewed as a key sociological category. He formulated his sociological approach known as "human ecology". Human ecology is a science that studies the action of forces that, within the natural area of ​​human habitation in the city, lead to the creation of typical groups of individuals and institutions. The city is a product of human nature, a state of mind (attitudes and feelings) that is maintained through customs and traditions. The city represents the unity of moral, natural, and ecological order. A city is a place of the creation of a new moral order. The city shattered the traditional moral order and led to the creation of a new order based on individual freedom, solidarity, and common interests. The main natural factors that affect human ecology are: the physical and administrative division of the city into urban areas, traffic and communication technologies, and the economy based on the division of labor. Park viewed sociology as a "natural science" that should study the relationships and processes that take place between different communities in society. Influenced by Simmel's teaching, Park adopted the view that social interaction should be viewed as a key sociological category. Social interaction has four main forms: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation.

Lewis Mumford, under the influence of the Chicago School of Sociology, wanted to convince politicians and urban planners to pay attention to how architectural and urban solutions and plans affect the social ecology of urban neighborhoods. He wanted to avoid the anomie and loss of the organic community that would result from poor planning of cities and their neighborhoods. As the biggest problems of urbanism, he saw the excessive concentration of the population in huge skyscrapers, the disappearance of public places and parks, and the excessive construction of roads and car parks. Mumford believed that technological advances in transportation and communications would lead to the proliferation of social networks and the strengthening of democracy at the regional level. 

                    Studies on Community Power Relations

Lynd Helen and Robert Lynd conducted two empirical studies in a small town (Muncie) in the state of Indiana, in the USA. The results of those studies are presented in the books Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937). Helen and Robert Lynd studied the entire society in that city. The methodological approach they used in conducting the empirical part of the research was influenced by the British school of structural-functionalist anthropology. In the first study, they studied six different activities of people: patterns of household organization, the way children are raised, the jobs people do, participation in religious activities, participation in other community activities, and the way people spend their free time. They concluded that the jobs that people did, that is, whether they belonged to the business or the working class, decisively influenced all other types of activities, and even belonging to different Protestant denominations. The second study was conducted during the period of the Great Depression when there was a sudden impoverishment of the working class, but there was no organized class activity of workers.

William Lloyd Warner is known for applying an anthropological approach to research in American society. Warner wanted to apply the way he studied kinship, marriage, social solidarity, and religious life among Aborigines to the study of small communities in the United States. The first such research was conducted in the late 1930s in a small town in the state of Massachusetts (that city is known by the nickname given to it by Warner - Yankee City), using interviews, surveys, observations, and document collection methods. Warner hypothesized that the role that kinship plays in tribal society, in modern society, is taken over by social stratification because stratification affects economic relations, sense of identity and belonging to a community, value systems, and forms of solidarity. He was primarily interested in status stratification, which determines the level of privilege, specific rights, and duties of members of a certain class and their patterns of living. The results of the research are presented in the book The Status System of a Modern Community, 2 vols. (1941, 1942). In the city where he conducted his research, Warner identified six specific classes: upper-upper, lower-upper, upper-middle, lower-middle, upper-lower, and lower-lower. The upper-upper class consisted of "patrician aristocrats", the richest families who possessed wealth for generations; they possessed specific patterns of social interaction and behavior, and they lived in the biggest houses and the best part of the city. The lower-upper class was made of families that experienced upward economic mobility and were sometimes richer than some upper-upper class families, but because their wealth was considered "new", those families did not have the same social reputation. In some other cities, where there is greater upward and downward economic mobility, these two classes formed a single class. The upper-middle class consisted of families who had a small family business, or individuals who were employed as highly-paid professionals. This class formed the basis of political and civic participation in the community. The lower-middle class of owners of small private businesses and highly skilled workers and the upper-lower class, made of skilled workers, made up the majority of the population and had a large dose of inter-class solidarity. The lower class consisted of unskilled workers living in poverty. Warner discovered another type of stratification in the "city of the Yankees", and that was ethnic and racial stratification. Whites and blacks formed two separate "castes," and that caste division intersected class divisions diagonally, and decisively influenced patterns of interaction.

                       Other Approaches to Community

Robert Redfield advocated a "rural-urban continuum" approach. Instead of viewing rural communities in isolation from the wider civilization, he believed that there was a continuum, from small communities to the largest cities. Although the inhabitants of cities are more secular and individualistically oriented, there are no clear lines of separation, but continuous changes in the patterns of social organization and values, which go from the smallest to the largest settlements. Trade has in the past connected rural communities with urban communities, while the impact of modernization and urbanization has only further connected these settlements and communities.

Benedict Anderson is best known for his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983), in which he uses Marxist analysis of history to investigate the origins of nations and nationalism. He defines nations as imaginary political communities, inherently limited, but also with their sovereignty. He connects the very emergence of nations and nationalism with the development of the press, the spread of literacy, and the reduction of the importance of the Latin language, as well as the rejection of the idea that the power of the monarch was vested to them by God. Anderson believes that the first true nationalism arose in the United States during the struggle for independence.

James Coleman argued that the basic unit of society is the individual, but although individuals share a common human nature, they also differ in the way the environment has influenced them, and this primarily applies to the community and schools. To understand how school and community influence the formation of individuals, Coleman empirically studied how the influences of both factors overlap. To advance the theoretical study of schools and communities, Coleman developed the concept of "social capital", which refers to norms that function within social networks.

Books:

Anderson B. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983);

Anderson N. The Industrial Urban Community: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (1971);

Banton. The Policeman in the Community (1964);

    -     Police-Community Relations (1973);

Bell. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973);

    -     The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976);

Bernard. American Community Behavior (1949);

Castells. The Economic Crisis and American Society (1980);

Coleman. The Adolescent Society (1961);

    -     Individual Interests and Collective Action (1986);

    -     Public and Private High Schools: The Impact on Communities (1987);

Collins Hill. Intersectionality (2016);

Comte. System of Positive Polity, 2 vols. (2018, in French 1851-1854);  

Dewey. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1916);

Durkheim. Division Of Labor In Society (2014, in French 1893);

    -     The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (2012, in French 1912);

Elias. The Established and the Outsiders: A Sociological Enquiry into Community Problems (1965);

Etzioni. New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions, and Communities (1995); 

Fromm. The Sane Society (1955);

Galpin. The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community (1915);

Gans. The Balanced Community (1961);

    -     Urban Villagers (1962);

Goldman. What I Believe (1908);

    -     Anarchism and Other Essays (1910);

Gurvitch. The Spectrum of Social Time (1958);

    -     The Social Frameworks of Knowledge (1971, in French 1966);

Hannerz. Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community (1969);

    -     Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology (1980);

Hawley. Human Ecology: A Theory of Community Structure (1950);

    -     Urban Society: An Ecological Approach (1971);

Hochschild. The Unexpected Community (1978);

Janowitz. Community Press in an Urban Setting (1952);

Lockwood. The Blackcoated Worker (1958);

    -     The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (1969);

Lynd. Middletown (1929);

    -     Middletown in Transition (1937);

    -     England in the Eighteen Eighties: Toward a Social Basis for Freedom (1944);

Mitchell. Women's Estate (1971);

Mouffe. Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community (1992);

Nisbet. The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom (1953);

Ohlin. Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs (1960);

Park. The City: Suggestions for the Study of Human Nature in the Urban Environment (1925);

    -     The University and the Community of Races (1932);

    -     Human Communities: the City and Human Ecology (1952);  

Parsons. The Social System (1951);

Redfield. The Little Community (1955);

Rex. Race, Community and Conflict (1967);

Rossi. Community (2001);

Shaw. Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (1931);

Smith A. National Identity (1991);

Tönnies. Community and Society (2021, in German 1887);

Warner. A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe (1937);

    -     The Status System of a Modern Community, 2 vols. (1941, 1942);

Wirth. The Ghetto (1928);

    -     Community Life and Social Policy (1956);

Wolf. Peasants (1966);

Wuthnow. Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community (1994).