Community & Memory

“Community is a term used very loosely by Americans today. We use it in a strong sense: a community is a group of people who are socially interdependent, who participate together in discussion and decision making, and who share certain practices … that both define the community and are nurtured in it.” Communities have a history and also “a community of memory, defined in part by its past and its memory of its past.” Storytelling, he has said, is an essential aspect in the memory of a community- stories about people and the community itself.”

Robert N. Bellah et al Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 333, 153.