Abstract

Audio recordings of meetings of two community groups in a deprived inner-city area were analysed,using discursive psychological and conversation analytic techniques to explore situated enactments of ‘community’. Participants situated themselves as members of a geographical community, of an ‘imagined’ community and of other constitutive communities. A sense of community was enacted through five interactional strategies: Affirming moral codes, ‘defending’ other members, distinguishing
insiders from outsiders, enacting empowerment and cchallenging institutions. Participants regularly employed emotional displays and affirmed moral positions, both to constitute ‘community’ and to take action in it. In so doing they worked up social capital and positioned ommunity concerns in ways more reflective of their own situated values than of criminal law or government policy.