Community, Place, and Decision-Making Gene L. Theodori Department of Sociology Sam Houston State University Box 2446 Huntsville, TX 77341-2446 gtheodori@shsu.edu Gerard T. Kyle Department of Recreation, Park & Tourism Sciences Texas A&M University 2261 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-2261 gerard@tamu.edu ABSTRACT The term community is commonly invoked in the literatures on “place” and “natural resource decision-making.” Upon careful examination of the place and decision-making research, though, it becomes increasingly evident that no shared theoretical foundation or common use of the word community exits. Such variations in conceptual orientations and use have led to a somewhat complex and cloudy knowledge base with respect to “community-place-and-decision-making” linkages. In this chapter, we articulate and apply principles from an interactional theoretical perspective of social organization, rooted in the writings of Harold Kaufman (1959; 1985) and Kenneth Wilkinson (1970; 1991) – and further elaborated upon by their colleagues and students – to the notions of community, place, and decision-making. We begin our discussion with the concept of place. Our point of departure is that place is a necessary but not sufficient condition for community. Place, as we show, has conventionally been an essential component in the study of community. As numerous authors have noted (e.g., Day 2006; Wilkinson 1991), place is where the search for community begins. Wilkinson (1991: 23), for example, asserted that “[t]he local territory … is a logical place to begin the search for community, even if the study takes one beyond the locality as well.” Day (2006: 32) articulated that in community research “[p]laces are singled out for study because they appear to constitute viable communities, and once they are investigated and documented, the findings are read as showing precisely what a real community is like.” After informing the reader that we are restricting the domain of our work to “place-based communities,” we then pose the question “what makes a place a community?” Before attempting to answer that question, we review key elements inherent in the notions of place and community. Building upon Gieryn (2000), we state that, at a minimum, place has three essential features. These include: (1) geographic location; (2) material form; and, (3) investment with meaning and value. Then, rooting to Kaufman (1959, 1985) and Wilkinson (1970, 1991), we assert that there are three elements inherent in community. These include: (1) locality; (2) local 1