本文探討南投縣埔里鎮桃米社區建構「桃米生態村」的過程，從它的蘊釀、討論，到具體成型與運作，再到轉型，一直到晚近社區重新組織再出發，所呈現出來許多和公共性（publicity）有關的面向。一般認為社區總體營造的提出與實踐，可以從地方逐漸萌芽出如Habermas所描述的現代溝通公共領域。本文則認為上述的說法，對於社區居民在參與公共事務的過程中培養以及實踐自己的權利意識，太過於從「應然」的層面去論述，其中假設居民參與社區事務的討論，就會產生公共意見，形成公共領域。筆者認為研究分析者應該找出不同的語言來描述我們看到的是甚麼、居民參與的是甚麼公共空間。人類學家Michael Herzfeld「文化親密性」是一個很值得注意的概念，他指出居民原有的經驗、習慣、行為，成為接合不同規模社會空間的共同元素。本文將描述桃米的公共領域泰半是熟人的組合，他們溝通互動方式是建立在熟悉的元素，桃米居民將其推到公共的層次，作為社區的精神和特色。掌握公共性的關鍵之處便在於了解個人與個人、個人與集體等不同規模社會空間連接的方式，文化親密性正是提供了這樣的途徑。

The author examines the construction of the Tau-Mi ”eco-village” in Puli Nantou, analyzing its emergence, operation, and transformation in terms of publicity. It is commonly assumed that recent examples of integrated community building in Taiwan are helping to establish a Habermasian public sphere. Instead, I view it as a normative and teleological discourse that presumes an increase in citizen consciousness via citizen participation. In this paper I argue that researchers need a new conceptual framework to describe actual practices in public spaces. Michael Herzfeld's ”cultural intimacy” concept is worthy of further development, since it addresses how people articulate different scales of sociality by means of inward acknowledgement of cultural habits. The community I use as the focus for this study is a place where people mostly know each other, and therefore can only develop new forms of publicity based on their experiences and understanding of their daily lives. My conclusion is that publicity reflects how people can cultivate ways to mediate communication among individuals, as well as between individuals and the collective whole. In short, cultural intimacy is a precise conceptual framework for mediating publicity.