“There are new ways of being and acting together that generate ties of solidarity and commitment around cultural practices, ethical choices and social movements involving people from different backgrounds and characteristics.” economic system, it has converted itself into a paradigm with a hegemonic vocation. Thus, the business and com- mercial paradigm now imposes itself in the world of art, education, health and even everyday life, infusing them all with its profit motive and competencies, its instrumentalism and individualism, its contempt for community values. Old and new community sensibilities in Latin America The general commodification of social relations, taken to the extreme in the neoliberal model, seeks to dissolve “any form of camaraderie and the ability to freely produce other ways of living life that represent the mutual confirmation of individ- uality and the option of choosing common goals” (Barcelona 1999). As a “single way of thinking”, it also seeks to prevent the rise of individual subjective thinking and collective sub- jectivities suggesting other economic projects, social and political alternatives to the capitalist order. At the same time this proletarianization of capitalist domination has also made visible, reactivated and enabled the emergence of lifestyles, values, ties, networks and social projects that diverge from individualistic, competitive and contractual logic. At least in Latin America, such alter- native dynamics and social practices sometimes carry other community sensibilities. Through them a new sociability emerges, as do collective actions and ways of understand- ing democracy. When we recognize these community sensibilities we encourage alternative proposals and projects to the material and subjective impoverishment that comes with capitalism. In this light it is challenging to build a perspective that shapes the community as a place to recognise and channel certain potentially emancipatory social dynamics and policies. territorial base, some forms of production and solidarity work, some practices of authority and a repertoire of com- munity customs. In recent decades there has also been a process of “re- Indianisation” in several countries. With this I mean a revival of ancestral identities tied to strategies for the recovery of territories, customs and forms of community governance. This has happened with some African-American populations in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and the Caribbean. The presence of sentiments, ties and practices seen as belonging to the community also appear in the initial stages and joint mobilisation of popular urban settlements when their precarious conditions or extreme situations of injustice activate processes of solidarity and mutual aid. We also see stable bonds of solidarity based on neighbourhood and other support networks such as provincial origin or ethnic affinity emerge. In the initial phases of establishing a people’s movement, a mesh of relationships are formed. There are solidarities and loyalties emerging, which constitute them- selves into a collective strength and present resistance against the dynamics of a massive increase of urban life, the market economy and adverse policies. When disaster strikes Similar processes have been found after natural or human disasters, like the earthquakes in Managua (1976), Mexico (1985), Armenia (1999), and landslides and floods caused by “La Niña” in hundreds of villages in Colombia (2011). Here the people were confronted with the absence of, tardiness of, or limited institutional action. They responded by solidarity and collective action, helping them to reinvent themselves as communities. Apart from lifestyles or territorial community ties, we can add other ties around values of justice and sensibilities toward a shared future. One example is public social move- ments that bring together different people around the defence of the environment, the public, the reclaiming of gender or cultural rights. Such groups, from their common indignation, joint actions and the development of shared agendas, gen- erate a sense of belonging and community ties that transcend the interests that motivate them. These purpose-led commu- nities arise from the deliberate intention to reorganise a coexistence according to ideally elaborated values, based on beliefs or new social frameworks. Re-Indianisation Creating a culture First of all, unlike the suppositions of sociology and develop- mental policies, ties and traditional community values do not disappear in the wake of capitalist modernisation. On the contrary they are sometimes even strengthened and revived when people start to resist the development. This is the case of many indigenous people and peasant populations in countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. In these places the community constitutes an ancient way of life based on the existence of a common In the urban context, forms of sociability marked by strong and intense emotional bonds have been growing, either around massive spaces or cultural consumption, as in the case of the “youth culture” (punk, rock, hip hop), football bars and multiple groupings of adults around shared cultural practices. These are not stable solidarities nor oriented toward anticapitalist sensibilities, but they generate loyalty and interpersonal bonds that are not defined by mere self- interest or economic benefit. 81 2014 Communities 5