Globally Embedded Community: Satisfaction and Attachment in Vance, Alabama

Abstract

Community, as an imagined representation of a social collectivity, is necessarily dynamic and subjective. In the contemporary globalized world, rapid structural changes provide an opportunity to evaluate the extent to which structure and subjectivity interact to create particular patterns of community life. Using multiple regression analysis of data from Vance, Alabama, which suddenly entered the global arena with the announcement and construction of a large German automobile factory there, the argument made here is that structural and contextual models are insufficient on their own to account for community life. Especially as our communities become increasingly incorporated into the global economy, our understanding of community must incorporate the subjectivities of community members.

Keywords:

• community attachment
• community satisfaction
• community theory
• globalization
• subjectivity