Sense of community, a theory not a value: a response to Nowell and Boyd

This is a response to the Nowell and Boyd (2010) article printed in this journal titled: Viewing Community as Responsibility as Well as Resource: Deconstructing the Theoretical Roots of Psychological Sense of Community. In that article, they argued that the McMillan theory of Sense of Community is a simplistic, needs‐based theory that excludes responsibility as a part of Sense of Community. They base their critique of McMillan's theory on March and Olsen's many articles. In this article, McMillan responds. He argues that Nowell and Boyd (2010) have yet to understand his theory and that they use a false dichotomy to critique it. He suggests that Third Position Thinking (Newbrough, 1995; Newbrough & McMillan, 2005) would help undo false dichotomies and provide a better description of the juxtaposition of human values. McMillan contends that responsibility is an inherent part of his theory. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.