The (in)justice of community-based initiatives

In a variety of fields, pursuing different ends, forms of sociality that go under the English word “community” are seen as useful in journeying towards new economic, cultural, political, and environmental settlements. Prominently community has emerged as a form of eco-community: community used to respond to environmental challenges. This can be community as a social glue used by grassroots actors allowing them to increase agency. Or it could (potentially concurrently) be a form of top-down allocated community, used to guide and arrange populations. Importantly, almost all these forms of community, certainly all forms beyond the so-called “Dunbar Number” of around 250, are imagined, in the sense put forward by Benedict Anderson: Not everyone can know and have a direct relationship with all those supposedly in their community.