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The purpose of this paper is to identify the main individual and collective strategies online communities employ to appropriate fantasy worlds and the ways in which community members use imagination within this context.

A qualitative study drawing on an ethnography of online communities including individual in‐person interviews with community members of the world is considered.

The predominance and the vital importance of the production/consumption of stories within these communities has been shown. The multiple benefits of this practice have been illustrated, including the pleasure of creating and playing with one's imagination. These benefits engender the surprise and enchantment of community members, who lavish other members with encouragement, congratulations and thanks.

Because of opting for a non‐participatory ethnography, it was impossible to directly contact the members of the community to conduct interviews. Thus a convenience sample was chosen representative of the study subject and individuals outside of these communities were questioned.

The online community allows members to collectively and playfully participate in entertainment related to the fantasy world. It appears as an imaginary organization of the (entertainment) service provider. The members of this organization can take part in value coproduction and share the benefits of an extended entertainment service that sparks their imagination and allows them to enjoy the fruits of their creations. Given the fantasy world's power to fire the imagination of fantasy lovers, the paper demonstrates that it is important for leisure and entertainment service providers to consider adding a fantasy component to their service.

Drawing from recent work on online social networking and communities of consumption, the purpose of this paper is to explore, identify, and postulate key factors facilitating the growth and success of marketing in virtual worlds.

An empirical study was conducted employing netnographic evidence from three different virtual worlds and related user‐generated blog discussions.

The findings suggest mechanisms which enable virtual worlds to gain and maintain the interest of their users and therefore underlie successful marketer practices.

This is an exploratory study based on qualitative and ethnographic online research methods, and therefore the results are of a descriptive nature. The study was conducted to initiate the academic discourse about marketing in virtual worlds. As such, the paper believes that it can act as a reasonable starting‐point for future discussion.

The study suggests that traditional advertising has not proven to be a very effective way to exploit the special characteristics of virtual worlds. There is substantial potential in virtual worlds for new and innovative marketing methods that are highly engaging and take advantage of users' active role in virtual worlds. From the marketing point of view, virtual worlds can be especially used for connecting with customers, contributing to customer learning, and getting customer input.

The paper illustrates that virtual worlds have come to offer marketers new opportunities for engaging their customers into interactive and co‐productive marketplace exchanges. They uncover untapped potential, resources and creative means for building customer relationships.

In this final chapter, we explore the ever-evolving 21st century landscape where ethics drive community development toward resilience and progress. Drawing inspiration from the subheadings mapping our journey, we traverse international case studies spanning Canada, Brazil, Sweden, Kenya, China, Australia, Antarctica, and India. Through these global insights, we uncover the impacts of dynamic forces on communities worldwide, navigating ethical dilemmas and opportunities. We present strategies tailored to diverse continent-specific needs, explore inclusive governance models, and highlight the transformative power of ethical engagement. This journey underscores the vital role of resilience and concludes with a global call to embrace ethical approaches for inclusive community development and a sustainable future.

How do you get people – particularly young people – to engage with social and political issues? Activists and academics alike have been plagued by this question for some time, and answers to it have ranged from greater organizational involvement to framing. Another possibility is meeting youth where they are at; that is, connecting youth’s existing interests in popular culture with broader social problems and issues. A group that is doing just that is the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), a story-fueled nonprofit organization that turns fans into heroes. In this chapter, we trace the development of the Harry Potter fan community, the stories’ resonance with fans, and how the HPA has drawn on the community and the story for mobilization. We argue that the HPA leverages culture in two ways that are relevant for social movements and political communication scholars. The HPA is able to tap into the fan community for bloc recruitment using its ties and connections to media – in this case, the fictional story – as a point of mobilization. Additionally, the HPA is able to bloc recruit from mass society – a process they refer to as “cultural acupuncture” – by strategically connecting the story with social justice issues when cultural attention is at its peak. We conclude with a discussion of the HPA’s impact on its members and how bloc recruitment and cultural acupuncture may be relevant for other fan communities.

Since the prevalence of virtual worlds in society has grown exponentially in recent years and virtual worlds have demonstrated an incredible power to engage participants in ways in which traditional education has not, virtual worlds provide us an excellent opportunity to create engaging, collaborative, and academically challenging learning situations. Also, given the new media literacy of many of younger students, we in higher education are in many ways meeting them where they already are …or should be. By integrating virtual worlds into instruction, the Virtual Education Research Group (VERG) at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts provides students with these collaborative experiences. Through a sustained community of practice and experimentation with a variety of virtual world platforms including ActiveWorlds, World of Warcraft, Warhammer, City of Heroes Architect, Forbidden City, and Second Life, some general principles and specific learning activities emerge for instructors integrating virtual worlds into the classroom. The basic concepts of connecting with technical and administrative support, choosing a world with thematic connections to your subject, creating scheduled opportunities to play and learn together, and committing to providing a strong online presence have been expanded upon to create a flexible model that can be applied across disciplines. Through the work of VERG at Middlesex Community College, virtual worlds are now used in a variety of instructional disciplines, ranging from humanities to psychology to business. Several case studies illustrating unique and effective practices are provided.

Leadership in education begins with the establishment of a strong link between education and a healthy society. In the world's poorest areas, too often formal education systems have been imported with little thought as to how they integrate with the life of local communities. As a result, development projects aimed at education focus on inputs to schools – teachers, school buildings, textbooks, or exams rather than rethinking the larger question of how education is integrated into the larger purposes of community life, work, and identity. Korea, a new member of OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) desires to take a different approach that reflects the success of its own development and supports local values and structures. A project being designed for Zambia is conceived as an education project yet calls for a modest initial donor investment in agricultural inputs to boost agricultural output in the community. University students from Zambia and Korea will serve as project managers initially, rotating between university classes and field work. At the same time, data will be gathered on how the community learns and grows. This research will begin to build a body of literature on how such projects succeed. The proposed project addresses many of the concerns of development projects and lifelong learning approaches to economic growth. Education is community-supported and directed. Community learning involves the adults individually and collectively.

With increasingly precarious work contracts, more remote work, and additional flexibility in the timing of the workday, the new world of work is creating both relational opportunities and relational challenges for modern workers. In this chapter, we pair recent research on human thriving with trends we observe in organizations' efforts to create and maintain a sense of community. Key in these efforts is a new kind of built environment – the coworking space – which brings together remote and independent workers and, increasingly, traditional employees as well. We show that in curating community, or perhaps even the possibility of community, coworking spaces may support the interpersonal learning and vitality that help workers to thrive.

This paper argues that community is a necessary element of spirituality. Community is based on connectedness and a healthy interdependence. Using Wilber’s integrative framework, I argue for three propositions linking community and spirituality: people need to belong to communities where they can make meaningful contributions building a better world; organizational prosperity and survival depend on building in structures and relationships that permit people to make meaningful contributions and fulfill the fundamentally spiritual need for community; and we need collaboration as much as competition to survive as the interconnectedness of the world grows more apparent.

The purpose of this paper is to include the following items: to show the absolute necessity of managing the international community, to explore the fundamental possibility of managing the global world, to prove or disprove such a possibility, to determine the real background of global governance in modern conditions and to show the methods of transition toward global governance.

The main methodological principles used in writing the paper are: the principle of the integrity of the world; the understanding of globalization as an objective historical process; the principle of historical sequence of the considered event; the principle of priority of the general over the particular, as well as of the global over the regional and the local.

As a result of the proposed research, it is shown that the global world needs to be managed. Prerequisites for the management of the global world are identified, among which the most important are morality and rights. It is shown that for management of the global world there should not only be global government, but also other branches of government, such as a World Parliament and a judicial system based on global law.

A clear distinction between the management and regulation of social relations is made. The need to further explore the concepts of international law and global right is stated.

National sovereignty increasingly must give place to global governance structures.

The need to build a global civil society is evident.

The absolute necessity and possibility of regulating the world community are shown. New approaches to solving this problem are proposed. They are based on existing assumptions in the field of executive and legislative power and also involve the creation of new structures, primarily in the area of the judiciary.