Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Spring 2006
Abstract
David Proctor advances the concept of "civic communion" as both a useful heuristic and a process. As the former, it supplies the community researcher and development practitioner with a "lens" for understanding the community scene. As a process, Proctor argues, it constructs and reinforces community. He defines civic communion as "community-coalescing events that establish and open an ethical rhetorical space for creating, crystallizing, and organizing community-building talk," those "collective moments of intense, yet transitory praise for community . . . [and] moments of enthusiastic praise for local community structures." His book sheds social interaction/constructionist light on the phenomenon of community.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Research 16:1 (Spring 2006). Copyright © 2006 The Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Used by permission.