Kuecker, G., M. Mulligan, et al. (2011). "Turning to community in times of crisis: globally derived insights on local community formation." Community Development Journal 46(2): 245-264.
This article follows Bauman and Delanty* in suggesting that there has been a 'turn' to community in the conditions of global flux and uncertainty. The conceptual starting point is a study of four diverse local communities in Australia conducted between 2003-2006 that two of the authors were involved in, which found that community must be seen as a dynamic process of constant formation in which good outcomes cannot be guaranteed. The authors argue that western ideas of community are often inadequate for describing social formations in the global south, and instead use a dynamic and multilayered conception of community that has been developed by the Globalism Research Centre at RMIT in Melbourne to apply to community formation in Ecuador and Malaysia. The research offers a comparison between this thinking about local communities which emerged from the Australian study, and very different local contexts in Malaysia and Ecuador. The paper adds to Delanty's conception of community and adds a new typology of contemporary communities, drawing on local case study research of local communities conducted by the three different authors in each of the countries.