In brief then, the problem with the term "community" as it is often used, is that people appeal to it as an absolute, as an end in itself, as a final justification or an answer to the question "why am I doing this?" or "why should I do this?" (answer :"for the community"). It is this totalising and final sense of the term community that is so dangerous as it allows us to avoid confronting the real struggles that go on in communities and lulls us into a false sense of security - a sense in which we feel we have actually answered a question by using the term rather than merely posed one. Communities can be bad as well as good. They are often non-existent: a "gated community", "the host community", " the ethnic minority community" are good examples of the oxymoronic use of the term.

We need to do some elementary house keeping on our use of such language in this area otherwise we will be beguiled by the dubious ideologies that lie behind many uses of the term - instead of being in charge of and responsible for what we actually mean we will actually mean nothing at all.