Renowned sociologist Talcott Parsons's last major project, a masterly work that lives up to its billing as 'a general book on American society'.

This book interprets popular American belief and sentiment about cities, suburbs, and small towns in terms of community ideologies. Based on in-depth interviews with residents of American communities, it shows how people construct a sense of identity based on their communities, and how they perceive and explain community problems (e.g., why cities have more crime than their suburban and rural counterparts) in terms of this identity. Hummon reveals the changing role of place imagery in contemporary society and offers an interpretation of American culture by treating commonplaces of community belief in an uncommon way--as facets of competing community ideologies. He argues that by adopting such ideologies, people are able to "make sense" of reality and their place in the everyday world.

Did urbanization kill `community' in the nineteenth century, or even earlier? In this highly regarded volume Bender argues not only that community survivedthe trials of industrialization and urbanization but that it remains a fundamental element of Americ