CHAPTER 1
COMMUNITY: IMPORTANCE, DEFINITION, ELEMENTS, AND APPROACHES
LESSON 1: THE IMPORTANCE, DEFINITION, AND ELEMENTS OF A COMMUNITY AND THE APPROACHES IN THE STUDY OF IT
LESSON 2: THE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ON THE COMMUNITY
The Importance of Understanding a Community and its Gains
• Community situations vary.
• Without a deep and wide knowledge of a target community, interventions may emerge as exclusive, inappropriate, or totally insensitive to the members of the community.
Gains from Understanding Community Dynamics
1. Provides benchmarking data It is important to establish benchmark data. That data illustrate the preliminary picture or image of the community. It serves as the initial community situationer or briefer.
2. Provides preliminary project planning
Understanding community dynamics is the key to a sound and relevant community development plan. A community development action plan includes strategies and actions meant to enhance the quality of life in a community.
3. Provides an idea of the community’s strengths and challenges To identify the strengths and possible loopholes of the project design. It will make the design more feasible and realistic.
4. Provides an opportunity to understand the community’s dominant rules and norms The success or failure of a community project more often than not is strongly affected by the prevailing rules and norms in the community. A successful community plan requires a consideration of those rules and norms.
5. Provides an occasion to gauge the attitude and behavior of the community An understanding of the community members’ attitude and behavior will give the project development team an idea whether the project will be supported or rejected or whether it can be negotiated with the people.
6. Provides a way for a more directed and well-informed dialogue with the community Project development is a process of creating or innovating ideas, interventions, and technologies that would respond to particular need or problem in the community.
7. Makes networking and partnership building more favorable By having an idea of the different advocacy and interest groups in the community, it is easier for people from schools, institutions or groups to partner with local networks or associations.
8. Gets project implementation less complicated Without a good grasp of a community they are aimed at, a project development and implementation become complicated and stressful. An understanding of the community will tell the project development and implementation team what not to do or what to be more concerned of.
• There are many ways to understand and appreciate a community but there is no substitute to immersing and living with that community.
• Immersion is a process of living with the people in order to feel, smell, and think like them.
The Definition of a Community
• Communities are generally defined by their common cultural heritage, language, beliefs, and shared interests.
• They may be classified as small such as the small place-based community of a barangay or coastal village, or large such as a region, state, or nation.
• Communities are viewed from the traditional and alternative perspectives.
• Traditional perspective: relates communities with geographical location, work, and the social system.
• Alternative perspective: more subjective, integrative, and feminist and addresses oppression and discrimination.
Elements of a Community: Nature and Power Structure
Nature Description
1. A community is a sociological construct
The community is a sociological construct or a set of interactions or human behaviors that have meaning and expectations between its members. There is not just action, but actions based on shared expectations, values, beliefs, and meanings between individuals.
2. A community has fuzzy boundaries
When a community is a little village separated by a few kilometers from other villages in a rural area, its boundaries appear at first to be very simple.
3. A community can exist within a larger community There may be communities within larger communities including districts, regions, ethnic groups, nations, and other boundaries. There may be marriages and other interactions that link the villages of a nation together.
4. A community may move
Example: There may be hunters who move to follow the game.
• A community can be considered like an organism because it can function even if people come and go.
• A community is a super-organic organism or system made up of the thoughts, outlook and conduct of individual human beings full of divisions and conflicts brought about by differences in religion, ethnicity, gender, access to resources, class, educational level, income level, ownership, language, personality, opportunities, etc.
The Structure of a Community
Bases of Local Community Power
1. Connections – the capacity to create linkages and develop helpful relationships with powerful individuals
2. Power in Number – support of the people
3. Rewards – provision of awards, promotion, money and gifts
4. Personal Traits/Expertise – based on charm, talents, and skills
5. Legitimate Power – leadership title
6. Information – the ability to keep or share information
7. Coercion – influence through manipulation and coercion
The Dimensions of a Community
1. Technological – community capital: tools, skills, and ways of dealing with the physical environment; not the physical tools but the learned ideas and behavior that allow human to invent, use, and teach others about these tools
2. Economic – ways and means of production
3. Political – types of governments and management systems
4. Institutional – the ways people act, react and interact with each, as well as the ways they expect each other to act and interact; includes institutions like marriages and friendships
5. Aesthetic-Value – structure of ideas that people have about what is good or bad, beautiful and ugly, and right and wrong. This is what people use to explain or justify their actions.
6. Beliefs-Conceptual – structure of ideas that people have about the nature of the universe, the world around them, their role in it, and the nature of time, matter and behavior. This dimension is sometimes thought to be the religion of the people.
The Four Approaches in Applying the Term Community
1. First Group (Sociologists and Geographers) – They are concerned about the social and spatial formation of social organizations into small groups, such as neighborhoods, small towns, or other spatially bounded localities.
2. Second Group (Cultural Studies and Anthropology) – applies the term to ideas of belonging and difference around issues such as identity
3. Third Group (Social Movement) – considers community as a form of political mobilization inspired by radical democracy that prompts communities of action to oppose social injustice
4. Fourth Group (Influence of Globalization) – consider the development of the community based on the rise of a global society and draws on processes and technological development
LESSON 3: THE TYPES OF COMMUNITIES
The Classification of Communities
1. Rural-Urban – geographical in nature
2. Local-Global – spatialized networks of social relations; “Think globally, act locally.”
3. Physical Space-Virtual Social Space – Social space is either physical or virtual like an online social media or a center or gathering place where people interact. Physical space refers to unlimited three-dimensional expanses in which material objects are located.
Types of Community
1. Geographic Community or Neighborhood – physical boundaries that make it distinct or separate, such as a river or a street
2. Community of Identity – this community has common identifiable characteristics or attributes like culture, language, music, religion, customs, etc
3. Community of Interest or Solidarity – this community incorporates social movements such as women’s rights, environment, peace and human rights.
4. Intentional Community – this community refers to individuals that come together voluntarily and support each other. Members share the same interests and identity or geographical location.
