Levels.

(Finished my readings late...)

Lew's piece suggests that communities are building blocks for democracy, and communication is the tool that holds them together, and the Metamorphosis project piece that "storytelling community resources" is what is being communicated. And Laumann et al. peice fits in nicely in looking into how community faciliates interorganizational networks; If we consider the various levels, we could say that such communities again form networks that are included in a broader level of community, thus giving it a recurring pattern. Combined, those theories build a solid base to build discussions on.

One thing I would like to add to that is the concept of individual capacity, or to go in accord to Lew's accounts, "intra-personal level". An individual has only a limited capacity to invest into matters that is not of immediate self-interest, namely making-a-living. I always liked the concept of Putnam's social capital because it introduced a material(capitalistic?) sense to one's social activities; and I think this approach could also be applied to democracy, or a 'democratic/civic capital'. It is not practical for most people to spend too much of their resources - time, money, motivation and brain cells - evenly into all levels of community from micro to the system level. Sometimes one invests too much of his focus and interest on national news and neglects what's going on in the neighborhood; On the other hand, others are only concerned with their neighborhood and don't care about the larger dimensions of democracy. And it functions as the motivator or filter for those individuals to engage/disengage from specific levels of communicative action. Then, the question is how do individuals form such allocation strategies; Of course I would suggest communication on various levels as the key factor, as to build a cycling/feedbacking mechanism.

PS. I don't fully agree on Lew's quote of Hirschman ("They are communities of exit, because it is easiest for those who are dissatisfied(or simply bored) to leave rather than excercise their voice for change") to specify the limits of Internet. It is true that disconnecting from a webchat forum is easier than moving out of your residental neighborhood. But there are clearly instances where a strong communal bond arises from sharing common interests online; I think it is not a matter of whether it's online or offline, but how fully/broadly they engage in communicative action.