Television's Community follows the shenanigans of a diverse group of traditional and nontraditional community college students: Jeff Winger, a former lawyer; Britta Perry, a feminist; Abed Nadir, a pop culture enthusiast; Shirley Bennett, a mother; Troy Barnes, a former jock; Annie Edison, a naive overachiever; and Pierce Hawthorne, an old-fashioned elderly man. There are also Benjamin Chang, the maniacal Spanish teacher, and Craig Pelton, the eccentric dean of Greendale Community College, along with well-known guest stars who play troublemaking students, nutty professors and frightening administrators. This collection of fresh essays familiarizes readers not only with particular characters and popular episodes, but behind-the-scenes aspects such as screenwriting and production techniques. The essayists explore narrative theme, hyperreality, masculinity, feminism, color blindness, civic discourse, pastiche, intertextuality, media consciousness, how Community is influenced by other shows and films, and how fans have contributed to the show.

In this book, the authors have explored a series of different types of communities - moving from the basic idea of those based at a specific location all the way to virtual communities of the internet. A key feature of this book is the research focus that emphasizes the theory-driven analyses and the diversity of contexts in which sense of community is applied. The book will be of great interest to those concerned with understanding various forms of community and how communities can be mobilized to achieve wellbeing.

Communities of Sense argues for a new understanding of the relation between politics and aesthetics in today’s globalized and image-saturated world. Established and emerging scholars of art and culture draw on Jacques Rancière’s theorization of democratic politics to suggest that aesthetics, traditionally defined as the “science of the sensible,” is not a depoliticized discourse or theory of art, but instead part of a historically specific organization of social roles and communality. Rather than formulating aesthetics as the Other to politics, the contributors show that aesthetics and politics are mutually implicated in the construction of communities of visibility and sensation through which political orders emerge. The first of the collection’s three sections explicitly examines the links between aesthetics and social and political experience. Here a new essay by Rancière posits art as a key site where disagreement can be staged in order to produce new communities of sense. In the second section, contributors investigate how sense was constructed in the past by the European avant-garde and how it is mobilized in today’s global visual and political culture. Exploring the viability of various models of artistic and political critique in the context of globalization, the authors of the essays in the volume’s final section suggest a shift from identity politics and preconstituted collectivities toward processes of identification and disidentification. Topics discussed in the volume vary from digital architecture to a makeshift museum in a Paris suburb, and from romantic art theory in the wake of Hegel to the history of the group-subject in political art and performance since 1968. An interview with Étienne Balibar rounds out the collection. Contributors. Emily Apter, Étienne Balibar, Carlos Basualdo, T. J. Demos, Rachel Haidu, Beth Hinderliter, David Joselit, William Kaizen, Ranjanna Khanna, Reinaldo Laddaga, Vered Maimon, Jaleh Mansoor, Reinhold Martin, Seth McCormick, Yates McKee, Alexander Potts, Jacques Rancière, Toni Ross

Rituals and traditions in preschool programs have the power to - Connect children, families, and staff - Foster a sense of belonging - Create a positive learning environment The information in this book answers the questions of why rituals and traditions are important and how teachers can incorporate them into their daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly plans to create a supportive, caring community.

The aim of this encyclopedia is to provide a comprehensive reference work on scientific and other scholarly research on the quality of life, including health-related quality of life research or also called patient-reported outcomes research. Since the 1960s two overlapping but fairly distinct research communities and traditions have developed concerning ideas about the quality of life, individually and collectively, one with a fairly narrow focus on health-related issues and one with a quite broad focus. In many ways, the central issues of these fields have roots extending to the observations and speculations of ancient philosophers, creating a continuous exploration by diverse explorers in diverse historic and cultural circumstances over several centuries of the qualities of human existence. What we have not had so far is a single, multidimensional reference work connecting the most salient and important contributions to the relevant fields. Entries are organized alphabetically and cover basic concepts, relatively well established facts, lawlike and causal relations, theories, methods, standardized tests, biographic entries on significant figures, organizational profiles, indicators and indexes of qualities of individuals and of communities of diverse sizes, including rural areas, towns, cities, counties, provinces, states, regions, countries and groups of countries.

Most of our communities are fragmented and at odds within themselves. Businesses, social services, education, and health care each live within their own worlds. The same is true of individual citizens, who long for connection but end up marginalized, their gifts overlooked, their potential contributions lost. What keeps this from changing is that we are trapped in an old and tired conversation about who we are. If this narrative does not shift, we will never truly create a common future and work toward it together. What Peter Block provides in this inspiring new book is an exploration of the exact way community can emerge from fragmentation. How is community built? How does the transformation occur? What fundamental shifts are involved? What can individuals and formal leaders do to create a place they want to inhabit? We know what healthy communities look like—there are many success stories out there. The challenge is how to create one in our own place. Block helps us see how we can change the existing context of community from one of deficiencies, interests, and entitlement to one of possibility, generosity, and gifts. Questions are more important than answers in this effort, which means leadership is not a matter of style or vision but is about getting the right people together in the right way: convening is a more critical skill than commanding. As he explores the nature of community and the dynamics of transformation, Block outlines six kinds of conversation that will create communal accountability and commitment and describes how we can design physical spaces and structures that will themselves foster a sense of belonging. In Community, Peter Block explores a way of thinking about our places that creates an opening for authentic communities to exist and details what each of us can do to make that happen.

This groundbreaking book analyzes the theme of community in seven French Caribbean novels in relation to the work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. The complex history of the islands means that community is often a central and problematic issue in their literature, underlying a range of other questions such as political agency, individual and collective subjectivity, attitudes towards the past and the future, and even the literary form itself. Celia Britton here studies a range of key books from the region, including Édouard Glissant’s Le Quatrième Siècle, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco, Daniel Maximin’s L’Ile et une nuit, and Vincent Placoly’s L’eau-de-mort guildive, among others.

The authors have joined forces again to reflect upon the ever changing world of health promotion. As a result, their highly respected textbook has been substantially rewritten to document both theoretical and practical developments within this important sphere of professional activity.