Reconsidering community and the stranger in the age of virtuality

Purpose – This question of community has always been a preoccupation for the human sciences and, indeed, is a practical concern for us everyday humans in our variety ways of being. As such a preoccupation with community traverses vast territories of intellectual discourse in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and so forth. Recent developments in continental philosophy, innovations in information and communication technology and the emergence of “virtual” communities afford an opportunity to reconsider the meaning of community in what is believed to be a rather fundamental way. Virtual communities are often critiqued for being “thin” and “shallow” lacking the depth that local proximity in face-to-face communities brings. It is suggested that such a critique privileges a certain view of community premised upon shared values, or shared concerns, embedded in local situated face-to-face interaction and practices. The paper agues that such a view of community, based on categorical and physical proximity or sameness, can be problematised by a notion of community that is based on the ethical proximity of the stranger, the otherness of the Other. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws upon Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Findings – The paper demonstrates that community premised upon a categorical and physical proximity can be problematised by a conception of community based upon the ethical proximity of the stranger – the otherness of the Other. In developing this notion of community, the paper argues that communities always face an insider/outsider problematic that mirrors Levinas’ tension between ethics and justice. Furthermore, the paper suggests that the continual working out of this problem, our ethical concern, is differently constituted in virtual communities and face-to-face communities. In particular, the paper draws attention to the importance of the encounter with the stranger in virtual environments. Originality/value – Contributes to debates on community by developing an ethical and political philosophy through which a shared sense of community can be rethought through the primacy of the Other.