Extending the Concept of Community Interaction to Explore Regional Community Fields

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title

Journal of Rural Social Science

Publication Date

1-1-2010

Volume

25

Issue

25

First Page

22

Last Page

36

Abstract

Interactional approaches to community development routinely focus on the community field concept at a local level. This paper expands the field concept to a regional level of analysis. It suggests a regional community field emerges through interactions among communities at a regional scale, particularly in rural areas lacking a dominant metropolitan core. Recent contributions by human geographers highlight the emergent characteristics of regions in contrast to the static, bounded regions conceptualized in the past. Such logic is compatible with community field theory. This paper explores the generalizability of the community field concept and assumptions to larger levels of analysis and highlights potential applications for rural development.

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