Community

Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler and Tipton, 1985
A community is a group of people who are socially interdependent, who participate together in discussion and decision making, and who share certain practices that both define the community and are nurtured by it. Such a community is not quickly formed. It almost always has a history and so is also a community of memory, defined in part by its past and its memory of the past. (p. 333)

Bellah, R. N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W. M., Swidler, A., and Tipton, S. M. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. New York: Harper and Row. 1985:333

McMillan and Chavis, 1986
A feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members' needs will be met through their commitment to be together.

McMillan,D.W. and D.M. Chavis. 'Sense of community: a definition and theory' Journal of Community Psychology, 14 (1) 1986:9

Wellman, Boase, and Chen, 2002
Networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging and social identity.

Wellman, Barry, Jeffrey Boase, and Wenhong Chen. "The networked nature of community: Online and offline." It & Society 1.1 2002:153

Conrad, 2005
I define community as a general sense of connection, belonging, and comfort that develops over time among members of a group who share purpose or commitment to a common goal.

Conrad, Dianne. "Building and maintaining community in cohort-based online learning." The Journal of Distance Education/Revue de l'Éducation à Distance 20.1 2005:2.


 * See Virtual Communities