Abstract

The re-emergence of a diffuse need for community in the context of the global age compels us to rethink the concept of "community" in the light of the changes and transformations that are unfolding today. The community cannot be considered as a residual phenomenon of resistance to the processes of modernization, but must be recognized as a new phenomenon which accompanies the processes of globalization. The following contribution investigates the fundamental sources of the need for community in the world today, and identifies principally two: 1) community as a response to the pathologies of individualism (insecurity, loss of meaning, atomism, loss of solidarity); 2) community as a response to the dynamics of exclusion that affect societies that are ever more multicultural in character. Also if community largely tends today to assume pathological forms that harbour the potential for conflict and violence, the need for community is legitimate insofar as it expresses a need for belonging and solidarity, a need for the affirmation of identities and a demand for recognition. In my view, the global era offers the bases for sharing in this sense insofar as it gives rise to the idea of the community of the human kind, a community united by interdependence of processes and events, brought together by its shared vulnerability in the face of the new risks and challenges that are produced by globalization