In biological terms, a
community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an
environment.
In
human communities,
intent,
belief,
resources,
preferences,
needs,
risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the
identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.
In
sociology, the concept of community has caused infinite debate, and
sociologists are yet to reach agreement on a definition of the term. There were ninety-four discrete definitions of the term by the mid-1950s. Traditionally a "community" has been defined as a
group of interacting people living in a common location. The word is often used to refer to a group that is organized around common values and
social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a
household. The word can also refer to the
national community or global community.
The word
community is derived from the
Old French communité which is derived from the
Latin communitas, a broad term for fellowship or organized society.
Since the advent of the
Internet, the concept of community no longer has geographical limitations, as people can now virtually gather in an online community and share common interests regardless of physical location.
Perspectives from various disciplines
Sociology
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
German sociologist
Ferdinand Tönnies distinguished between two types of human association:
Gemeinschaft (usually translated as "community") and
Gesellschaft ("society" or "association"). In his 1887 work,
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, Tönnies argued that
Gemeinschaft is perceived to be a tighter and more cohesive social entity, due to the presence of a "unity of will." He added that
family and
kinship were the perfect expressions of
Gemeinschaft, but that other shared characteristics, such as place or belief, could also result in
Gemeinschaft.
Gesellschaft, on the other hand, is a group in which the individuals who make up that group are motivated to take part in the group purely by
self-interest. He also proposed that in the real world, no group was either pure
Gemeinschaft or pure
Gesellschaft, but, rather, a mixture of the two.
Social capital
If community exists, both freedom and security may exist as well. The community then takes on a life of its own, as people become free enough to share and secure enough to get along. The sense of connectedness and formation of social networks comprise what has become known as
social capital.
Social capital is defined by
Robert D. Putnam as "the collective value of all
social networks (who people know) and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other (norms of reciprocity)." Social capital in action can be seen in no groups what so ever, including neighbors keeping an eye on each others' homes. However, as Putnam notes in
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000), social capital has been falling in the United States. Putnam found that over the past 25 years, attendance at club meetings has fallen 58 percent, family dinners are down 33 percent, and having friends visit has fallen 45 percent.
The same patterns are also evident in several other western countries.
Western cultures are thus said to be losing the spirit of community that once were found in
institutions including
churches and
community centers.
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg states in
The Great Good Place that people need three places: 1) the
home, 2) the
office, and, 3) the community hangout or
gathering place. With this philosophy in mind, many
grassroots efforts such as The
Project for Public Spaces are being started to create this "
Third Place" in communities. They are taking form in independent bookstores, coffeehouses, local pubs, and through many innovative means to create the social capital needed to foster the sense and spirit of community.
Psychology
Sense of community
In a seminal 1986 study, McMillan and Chavis identify four elements of "sense of community": 1) membership, 2) influence, 3) integration and fulfillment of needs, and 4) shared emotional connection. They give the following example of the interplay between these factors:
Someone puts an announcement on the dormitory bulletin board about the formation of an intramural dormitory basketball team. People attend the organizational meeting as strangers out of their individual needs (integration and fulfillment of needs). The team is bound by place of residence (membership boundaries are set) and spends time together in practice (the contact hypothesis). They play a game and win (successful shared valent event). While playing, members exert energy on behalf of the team (personal investment in the group). As the team continues to win, team members become recognized and congratulated (gaining honor and status for being members), Influencing new members to join and continue to do the same. Someone suggests that they all buy matching shirts and shoes (common symbols) and they do so (influence).
A
Sense of Community Index (SCI) has been developed by Chavis and colleagues and revised and adapted by others. Although originally designed to assess sense of community in neighborhoods, the index has been adapted for use in schools, the workplace, and a variety of types of communities.
Studies conducted by the APPA show substantial evidence that young adults who feel a sense of belonging in a community, particularly small communities, develop fewer physchiatric and depressive disorders than those who do not have the feeling of love and belonging.
Anthropology
Community and its features are central to anthropological research. Some of the ways community is addressed in anthropology include the following:
Cultural or social anthropology
Cultural (or
social) anthropology has traditionally looked at community through the lens of
ethnographic fieldwork and ethnography continues to be an important methodology for study of modern communities. Other anthropological approaches that deal with various aspects of community include
cross-cultural studies and the
anthropology of religion. Cultures in modern society are also studied in the fields of
urban anthropology,
ethnic studies,
ecological anthropology, and
psychological anthropology. Since the 1990s, internet communities have increasingly been the subject of research in the emerging field of
cyber anthropology.
Archaeology
Archaeological studies of social communities. The term “community” is used in two ways in archaeology, paralleling usage in other areas. The first is an informal definition of community as a place where people used to live. In this sense it is synonymous with the concept of an ancient
settlement, whether a
hamlet,
village,
town, or
city. The second meaning is similar to the usage of the term in other
social sciences: a community is a group of people living near one another who interact socially.
Social interaction on a small scale can be difficult to identify with archaeological data. Most reconstructions of social communities by archaeologists rely on the principle that social interaction is conditioned by physical distance. Therefore a small village settlement likely constituted a social community, and spatial subdivisions of cities and other large settlements may have formed communities. Archaeologists typically use similarities in
material culture—from house types to styles of pottery—to reconstruct communities in the past. This is based on the assumption that people or households will share more similarities in the types and styles of their material goods with other members of a social community than they will with outsiders.
Social philosophy
Communitarianism
Communitarianism as a group of related but distinct philosophies (or
ideologies) began in the late 20th century, opposing
classical liberalism and
capitalism while advocating phenomena such as
civil society. Not necessarily hostile to
social liberalism, communitarianism rather has a different emphasis, shifting the focus of interest toward communities and societies and away from the individual. The question of priority, whether for the individual or community, must be determined in dealing with pressing ethical questions about a variety of social issues, such as
health care,
abortion,
multiculturalism, and
hate speech.
Gad Barzilai has critically examined both liberalism and communitarianism and has developed the theory of
critical communitarianism. Barzilai has explicated how non-ruling communities are constructing legal cultures while interacting with various facets of political power. Being venues of identity construction justifies collective protections of communities in law, while the boundaries with other communities, states, and global forces should be sensitive to preservation of various cultures.
Gad Barzilai has accordingly offered how to protect human rights, individual rights, and multiculturalism in inter-communal context that allows to generating
cultural relativism.
Business and communications
Organizational communication
Effective
communication practices in group and organizational settings are very important to the formation and maintenance of communities. How ideas and values are communicated within communities are important to the induction of new members, the formulation of agendas, the selection of leaders and many other aspects. Organizational communication is the study of how people communicate within an organizational context and the influences and interactions within
organizational structures. Group members depend on the flow of communication to establish their own identity within these structures and learn to function in the group setting. Although organizational communication, as a field of study, is usually geared toward companies and business groups, these may also be seen as communities. The principles of organizational communication can also be applied to other types of communities.
Ecology
In ecology, a community is an assemblage of populations of different species, interacting with one another. Community ecology is the branch of
ecology that studies interactions between and among species. It considers how such interactions, along with interactions between species and the
abiotic environment, affect community structure and species richness, diversity and patterns of abundance. Species interact in three ways:
competition,
predation and
mutualism. Competition typically results in a double negative—that is both species lose in the interaction. Predation is a win/lose situation with one species winning. Mutualism, on the other hand, involves both species cooperating in some way, with both winning.
Interdisciplinary perspectives
Socialization
Lewes Bonfire Night procession commemorating 17 Protestant martyrs burnt at the stake from 1555 to 1557.
The process of learning to adopt the
behavior patterns of the community is called
socialization. The most fertile time of socialization is usually the early stages of life, during which
individuals develop the skills and knowledge and learn the
roles necessary to function within their
culture and
social environment.
[Newman, D. 2005. pp. 134-140.] For some psychologists, especially those in the
psychodynamic tradition, the most important period of socialization is between the ages of one and ten. But socialization also includes adults moving into a significantly different environment, where they must learn a new set of behaviors.
Socialization is influenced primarily by the family, through which children first learn community
norms. Other important influences include school,
peer groups, people, schools, mass media, the workplace, and government. The degree to which the norms of a particular society or community are adopted determines one's willingness to engage with others. The norms of
tolerance,
reciprocity, and
trust are important "habits of the heart," as
de Tocqueville put it, in an individual's involvement in community.
[Smith, M. 2001. .]Community development
Community development, often linked with
Community Work or Community Planning, is often formally conducted by
non-government organisations (NGOs), universities or government agencies to progress the social well-being of local, regional and, sometimes, national communities. Less formal efforts, called
community building or
community organizing, seek to empower individuals and groups of people by providing them with the skills they need to effect change in their own communities. These skills often assist in building political power through the formation of large social groups working for a common agenda. Community development practitioners must understand both how to work with individuals and how to affect communities' positions within the context of larger social institutions.
Formal programs conducted by universities are often used to build a knowledge base to drive curricula in sociology and
community studies. The
General Social Survey from the
National Opinion Research Center at the
University of Chicago and the
Saguaro Seminar at the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University are examples of national community development in the
United States. In The
United Kingdom,
Oxford University has led in providing extensive research in the field through its
Community Development Journal, used worldwide by sociologists and community development practitioners.
At the intersection between community
development and community
building are a number of programs and organizations with community development tools. One example of this is the program of the Asset Based Community Development Institute of
Northwestern University. The institute makes available downloadable tools to assess community assets and make connections between
non-profit groups and other organizations that can help in community building. The Institute focuses on helping communities develop by "mobilizing neighborhood assets" — building from the inside out rather than the outside in.
Community building and organizing
In
The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace, Scott Peck argues that the almost accidental sense of community that exists at times of crisis can be consciously built. Peck believes that conscious community building is a process of deliberate design based on the knowledge and application of certain rules. He states that this process goes through four stages:
- Pseudo-community: Where participants are "nice with each other", playing-safe, and presenting what they feel is the most favourable sides of their personalities.
- Chaos: When people move beyond the inauthenticity of pseudo-community and feel safe enough to present their "shadow" selves. This stage places great demands upon the facilitator for greater leadership and organization, but Peck believes that "organizations are not communities", and this pressure should be resisted.
- Emptiness: This stage moves beyond the attempts to fix, heal and convert of the chaos stage, when all people become capable of acknowledging their own woundedness and brokenness, common to us all as human beings. Out of this emptiness comes
- True community: the process of deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this community. This stage Peck believes can only be described as "glory" and reflects a deep yearning in every human soul for compassionate understanding from one's fellows.
More recently Peck remarked that building a sense of community is easy but maintaining this sense of community is difficult in the modern world. Community building can use a wide variety of practices, ranging from simple events such as
potlucks and small
book clubs to larger–scale efforts such as mass
festivals and
construction projects that involve local participants rather than outside contractors.
Community building that is geared toward citizen action is usually termed "community organizing."
[Wells, David (1994) . From The Workbook, Summer 1994, pp. 52-55. Retrieved on: June 22, 2008.] In these cases, organized community groups seek accountability from elected officials and increased direct representation within decision-making bodies. Where good-faith negotiations fail, these constituency-led organizations seek to pressure the decision-makers through a variety of means, including picketing,
boycotting, sit-ins, petitioning, and electoral politics. The
ARISE Detroit! coalition and the
Toronto Public Space Committee are examples of
activist networks committed to shielding local communities from government and corporate domination and inordinate influence.
Community organizing is sometimes focused on more than just resolving specific issues. Organizing often means building a widely accessible power structure, often with the end goal of distributing power equally throughout the community. Community organizers generally seek to build groups that are open and democratic in governance. Such groups facilitate and encourage
consensus decision-making with a focus on the general health of the community rather than a specific interest group. The three basic types of community organizing are
grassroots organizing,
coalition building, and "institution-based community organizing," (also called "broad-based community organizing," an example of which is
faith-based community organizing, or "congregation-based community organizing").
Community currencies
Some communities have developed their own "
Local Exchange Trading Systems" (LETS) and
local currencies, such as the
Ithaca Hours system, to encourage economic growth and an enhanced sense of community. Community Currencies have recently proven valuable in meeting the needs of people living in various South American nations, particularly Argentina, that recently suffered as a result of the collapse of the Argentinian national currency.
Community service
Community service is usually performed in connection with a
nonprofit organization, but it may also be undertaken under the auspices of government, one or more businesses, or by individuals. It is typically unpaid and
voluntary. However, it can be part of alternative
sentencing approaches in a
justice system and it can be required by educational institutions.
Types of community
Participants in Diana Leafe Christian's "Heart of a Healthy Community" seminar circle during an afternoon session at O.U.R.
EcovillageA number of ways to categorize types of community have been proposed; one such breakdown is:
- Geographic communities: range from the local neighbourhood, suburb, village, town or city, region, nation or even the planet as a whole. These refer to communities of location.
Communities are nested; one community can contain another—for example a geographic community may contain a number of ethnic communities.
Location
Possibly the most common usage of the word
"community" indicates a large group living in close proximity. Examples of
local community include:
- A municipality is an administrative local area generally composed of a clearly defined territory and commonly referring to a town or village. Although large cities are also municipalities, they are often thought of as a collection of communities, due to their diversity.
Identity
In some contexts,
"community" indicates a group of people with a common identity other than location. Members often interact regularly. Common examples in everyday usage include:
- A "professional community" is a group of people with the same or related occupations. Some of those members may join a professional society, making a more defined and formalized group. These are also sometimes known as communities of practice.
Overlaps
Some communities share both location and other attributes. Members choose to live near each other because of one or more common interests.
- A retirement community is designated and at least usually designed for retirees and seniors—often restricted to those over a certain age, such as 55. It differs from a retirement home, which is a single building or small complex, by having a number of autonomous households.
- An intentional community is a deliberate residential community with a much higher degree of social communication than other communities. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political or spiritual vision and share responsibilities and resources. Intentional communities include Amish villages, ashrams, cohousing, communes, ecovillages, housing cooperatives, kibbutzim, and land trusts.
Special nature of human community
Definitions of community as "organisms inhabiting a common environment and interacting with one another," while scientifically accurate, do not convey the richness, diversity and complexity of human communities. Their classification, likewise is almost never precise. Untidy as it may be, community is vital for humans.
M. Scott Peck expresses this in the following way: "There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community."
See also
