Böcker av Casey Plett

Community. It's a word we are used to hearing everywhere from political speeches to fast-food advertisements. But can we really define it?Using her own experiences, joyful or painful, in communities, as well a strong analysis of political and cultural shifts, Casey Plett shows how overuse of the word has caused it to become disconnected from the reality it signifies. Here, Plett suggests an alternative, moving towards a definition that acknowledges community as necessary for our existence - a source of comfort, knowledge and love - even while it has the potential to become dogmatic, cliquey or outright harmful. On Community does crucial work in pushing harder on words and ideas we take for granted. It invites us to be more careful and intentional with our language, to consider how we relate to those we know - and to those we don't know at all.

"We need community to live. But what does it look like? Why does it often feel like it's slipping away? We are all hinged to some definition of a community, be it as simple as where we live, complex as the beliefs we share, or as intentional as those we call family. In an episodic personal essay, Casey Plett draws on a range of firsthand experiences to start a conversation about the larger implications of community as a word, an idea, and a symbol. With each thread a cumulative definition of community, and what it has come to mean to Plett, emerges. Looking at phenomena from transgender literature, to Mennonite history, to hacker houses of Silicon Valley, and the rise of nationalism in North America, Plett delves into the thorny intractability of community's boons and faults. Deeply personal, authoritative in its illuminations, On Community is an essential contribution to the larger cultural discourse that asks how, and to what socio-political ends, we form bonds with one another."--