this little book by the then senior anthropologist of community studies summarizes the extensive work of anthropologists and sociologists on "community" when the concept appeared an easy one to work with. It demonstrates

• how complex the thinking of anthropologists (see also Arensberg and Kimball 1955) and sociologists (Suttles 1972) was at the time,
• how the complexity prefigured the dismissal of "community study" as a proper framework for anthropological inquiry (see Geertz 1972 on anthropologists studying "in villages" rather than studying "villages")
• what was lost when Lave and Wenger used the word in their "community of practice" without clearly contextualizing their use in terms of the earlier work, and the later critique
• what can be gained by thinking further about such concepts as "participation," "field," "polity," etc.