Conditional communities: Contradictions in community-building

There appears to be a contradiction in the creation of community. A contradiction between proclamation and practice.

In proclamation, a commitment to openness and equality guides its inclusionary ethic. In practice, however, community building necessarily employs exclusionary tactics in order to demarcate interior (my community) and exterior (not my community) social zones.

These necessary and often unacknowledged strategies grant entrance to some, whilst denying it to others. In other words, community building is built on foundations of division and exclusion: between insiders and outsiders, between those encouraged to join and those never even invited.

Indeed, underling the rhetoric of inclusion and acceptance are (necessary) practices of exclusion and rejection.

Openness, it seems, comes with conditions.