Start with the preliminaries: It’s good that Jason, Stevens, Ram, Miller, Beasley, and Gleason’s (2016) paper has been written and that we’re responding to it. Discussions of theory are relatively rare in the community psychology literature; for that reason alone I’m glad this is happening.
The paper itself features a thorough and sophisticated exposition of theory and what theory is supposed to do, based on the twin premises that community psychology should be a science and therefore be guided by conventional standards of scientific inquiry. This is followed by a useful descriptive and critical review of three current theories in the field, and then by a particularly compelling and challenging analysis of prospects for future theory development, one worthy of close re-reading.