One of the greatest challenges in the field of community psychology is also probably the most basic, to determine what makes a community. Even in the beginning of this century, when it was still possible to identify most communities by their geographic boundaries, it was recognized that geography alone did not define a community . Traditionally, community has been taken to imply both a shared geography and aspects of a shared life. Hillery, for example, examined 94 different definitions of community, and concluded that 69 were "in accord that social interaction, area, and a common tie or ties are commonly found in community life" (Hillery, 1955, p. 118).
In recent years there have been suggestions that perhaps a common geography is not necessary for a group of people to form a community; that perhaps communities can exist in other forms, such as cyberspace . Other researchers have argued strongly that groups without a common locality are just associations based on interest and cannot be considered true communities. In fact, some researchers suggest that the proliferation of associations based on interests has contributed to a decline in the strength of true communities in modern American society .
Even if we were willing to exclude the issue of shared locality from our definition, we still would not be willing to say that any group of people can be considered a community. There are aspects to communities that groups do not share. Hillery describes those aspects as "a common tie or ties." Howard, in a recent discussion of community in modern society, defines community as "a group of individuals who have a sense of obligation toward one another" (Howard, 1995, p. 5). She specifically states that community "is not necessarily based on primordial ties of kinship, common religion, common language, or common ancestral origins " (Howard, 1995, p. 5). But if community is not