Robert Nisbet's Key Ideas on the Decline of Community

One of the central themes in Robert Nisbet's work is the decline of community since the medieval period. He emphasizes that modern life exhibits a quest for community due to the breakdown of traditional communal structures. Nisbet discusses how societal movements, such as national movements and communal experiments like the communes of the 1970s, reflect this yearning for community. He attributes the breakdown of community to factors like the centralization of authority within the state, which led to the weakening of social bonds and the absorption of traditional community functions by the state.