There+is+no+such+thing+as+“community”

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**There is no such thing as “community”: Service‐learning and the problems of weak and multiple publics ** Dan Butin, Dean, Merrimack College and Executive Director, Center for Engaged Democracy [dan.butin@merrimack.edu]

**Keywords:** community definitions, engagement discourse, campus engagement

**Conference track:** Contexts and methods: Theoretical and conceptual frameworks, research designs, and methodological issues

**Format:** Research/Scholarly paper

**Summary** This presentation argues there is no singular local or global community out there. It offers a conceptual argument for the multiplicity of publics, examines the rhetorical strategies maintaining the notion of a singular community and outlines the implications of our attempts to engage with the public sphere.

According to the Carnegie Foundation’s classification, community engagement is, “collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity” (Carnegie, 2006). Indeed, the community service-learning field could not do service ‐ learning without a physical, temporal, geographically ‐ bounded, and identity ‐ defining community out there with which to engage.

Yet the idea that there is some singular local or global community out there is problematic. The community within the service-learning field is grounded in notions of a stable, identifiable, singular, and univocal space and place. In fact, a range of theoretical arguments (e.g., feminist, critical, postcolonial, poststructuralist, and critical race theorizing) have questioned nearly every assumption, enactment, and orientation of community (Adorno, 1973; Balibar, 1994; Hall, 1991; Haraway, 1988; hooks, 1981; Moraga & Anzaldua, 1983; Mouffe, 1992; Spivak, 1988; Young, 1986). Nevertheless, as Joseph (2002) astutely notes, none of this work has dampened the drive to embrace an ongoing upward narrative: “Before any progressive or resistant re-imagination of community will be efficacious, we need to account for the relentless return of the dominant discourse and practice of community” (p. xxxi).

Thus, this presentation will attempt to clarify three key points:

-there is a multiplicity of publics organized around and participating daily with institutions of higher education; -there are specific value ‐ laden rhetorical strategies that support the notion of community as a floating signifier with specific individuals and groups that serve as its implicit embodiment; -implications of such positioning upon our attempts in higher education to truly engage with the public sphere as embodied in our so ‐ called local and global communities.

This presentation concludes by suggesting that the engaged campus may be better able to accomplish its goals of meaningful engagement practices through alternative conceptualizations of and engagement with diverse social, political, and cultural networks of groups and associations.

**References** There were no references provided with this proposal.


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