Anthony P. Cohen – Symbolic Construction of Community

“Culture, constituted by symbols, does not impose itself in such a way as to determine that all its adherents should make the same sense of the world. Rather, it merely gives them the capacity to make sense and, if they tend to make a similar kind of sense it is not because of any deterministic influence but because they are doing so with the same symbols. The quintessential referent of community is that its members make, or believe they make, a similar sense of things either generally or with respect to specific and significant interests, and, further, that they think that that sense may differ from one made elsewhere. The reality of community in people’s experience thus inheres in their attachment or commitment to a common body of symbols.” (Cohen, 1995: 16)

Cohen, A.P. (2001). Symbolic construction of community. Routledge.