Understanding Community

1
Understanding Community
2
Defining Community

• . . . Its the interaction of people or groups of
  individuals who live within some geographic area
  that provides for most of their daily needs.
  They share certain values and meanings about
  their common life situation. Further, these
  individuals work together to address local
  problems, concerns, and opportunities.

3
Key Elements of Community

• Geographic area that provides for most of their
  daily needs
• Social interaction
• Common ties or bonds among community members
• Locality-oriented collective actions

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Functions that Communities Perform Systems
Approach

• Production-distribution-consumption
• Socialization
• Social Control
• Access to social participation
• Mutual support

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A Further Look at the Functions of the Community

• Production-Distribution-Consumption
• Includes those goods and services that are part
  of daily living
• Reflects economic activities
• Encompasses educational services, local
  government services, religious activities,
  recreational/leisure activities, media services
• Socialization
• Process by which the community transmits its
  knowledge, values and behavior patterns to its
  individual residents.
• It is at the local level that individuals
  encounter and learn about their culture

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A Further Look at the Functions of the Community

• Social Control
• The process through which a group influences the
  behavior of its members toward conformity with is
  norms
• Local Access to Participation
• We are distinctively human through our
  participation in human groups most are with
  friends and neighbors from the same community
• Many organizations we belong to are local
  chapters
• Mutual Support
• Care in time of sickness, the exchange of labor,
  helping out in times of distress, are often
  performed locally

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Communities are Structured

• Communities are not mere masses of people who
  happen to live in a given locality. Rather, they
  are structured entities.
• Structure refers to the underlying anatomy of
  the community -- the set of mutual relations that
  exist among its various parts.
• Want to look at the institutional and leadership
  structure of the community.

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Key Institutions inthe Community Systems
Approach

• Kinship (Family)
• Economic
• Education
• Political (Governmental)
• Religious
• Associations

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Community Institutions

• Represent patterned activities that are intended
  to meet important social and economic needs
  existing among community residents
• They perform crucial functions that must be
  performed if the community is to persist through
  time

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Family Institution

• Regulate the nature of sexual relations between
  people
• Biological reproduction
• Care and socialization of the young
• Economic functions of providing food, shelter and
  warmth for family members
• Emotional intimacy

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Economic Institution

• Encompasses the roles, norms, and activities
  associated with the production, distribution and
  consumption of goods and services in a community.
• It influences the nature of work, where
  individuals get jobs, how much they earn, the
  conditions of their work, their prospects for
  future jobs, their spells of unemployment.

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Education Institution

• Major functions of education within the local
  community are twofold
• Cultural transmission and socialization
• Selection and allocation to adult positions

13
Political Institution

• Its major functions include
• Protecting life, liberty and property of local
  residents
• Regulating conflict
• Planning, coordinating and providing public
  facilities and services

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Religious Institution

• Its functions are threefold
• Provides an ongoing system of shared customs that
  offer purpose to its participants
• Serves as an important source of social control
  by supporting certain values and norms
• Provides personal support to local residents

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AssociationalInstitution

• Represent the variety of civic, service, social,
  fraternal and other voluntary organizations that
  exist in the community.
• These offer residents a mechanism for
  participating in a variety of local activities.

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Linking Functions and Institutions
Community Functions
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The Great Change in Communities

• Roland Warren states that there is a Great
  Change happening in contemporary community
  living. This shift is changing the complexion of
  local communities.

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What are the Great Changes Occurring?

• An elaborate division of labor and specialization
• Individuals are becoming increasingly engaged in
  associations and organizations based on
  interests, not residence
• Various sectors of the community are becoming
  increasingly linked to people, communities, and
  organizations outside the local area
• Greater share of functions once performed by
  individuals, families and neighborhoods are being
  shifted to government, volunteer sector, and/or
  private enterprise
• Peoples values are shifting -- commitment to
  community is declining

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Increasing Division of Labor

• Elaborate division of labor and specialization of
  occupations is taking place
• Functions are becoming narrowly defined and work
  specialized
• Increasing interdependence of people on one
  another
• Persons produce a smaller portion of the things
  the family consumes
• People in the same locality have no strong
  occupational bonds to unite them
• Increasingly, the individual wage owner doesnt
  know what his/her neighbor does for a living

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Differentiation of Interests and Associations

• The principal basis for social participation
  shifts from the locality to that of interest
  groups
• The individual often turns away from other
  individuals in the immediate locality and
  associates with individuals from other localities
  on the basis of selective interests
• Shift is from primary to secondary group
  relationships
• As association with neighbors decline,
  individuals often find themselves strangers in
  their own localities, knowing few neighbors

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Increasing Systemic Relationships to the Larger
Society

• Many organizations are becoming more a part of
  their extra-community systems than they are of
  the community in which they are located
• The seat of decision-making is less local, and
  more at the district, state, or national
  decision-making levels
• This relationship of local units to
  extra-community system is known as the
  communitys vertical ties.
• Given that decision-making is transferred
  elsewhere, the communitys autonomy is jeopardized

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Transfer of Functions to Profit Enterprise and
Government

• Refers to a change from the performance of
  functions by individuals to functions performed
  by business and government involving a direct or
  indirect payment of money
• As people specialize, they depend on others to
  perform functions that use to be performed
  themselves
• Food for home use
• Painting
• Lawn and pool service
• Recreation
• Restaurants
• Car washing
• Child and elder care

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Changing Values

• Gradual acceptance of governmental engagement in
  a number of fields (child care, housing, health)
• Change in community approach to social problems
  from that of moral reform to that of rational
  planning to address the communitys problems
• Loss of civic involvement or willingness to serve
  in community leadership positions

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In Sum (from Horizontal to Vertical Linkages)

• Theres an increasing orientation of local
  community units toward extra-community systems of
  which they are a part
• As such, the decision-making is shifting to
  places outside the community
• The result is that ties between local community
  units are weakening, and community autonomy is
  reduced

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Changing Nature of Relationships in Communities

• Horizontal Integration the strength of the
  linkages that exist among institutions and people
  at the local level
• Vertical Integration reflects the extent to
  which ties exists between local community
  institutions (or units) and units located at
  higher levels outside the community

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Horizontal Vertical Integration
American Trinity Church
First Union National Office
Goodhearts National
Glendale Community
Glendale Trinity Church
First Union Branch
Jones Family
Goodhearts of Glendale
Interaction
Roosevelt High School
City Police Dept.
Kroger Food Store
Kroger Food Chain
U.S. Dept. of Education
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• What are the Great Changes in your community?

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An Exercise

• Identify two key dimensions of The Great Change
  that you feel have had the greatest impact on
  your community? How has it affected the
  well-being of people who live in your community?
• Assemble in a small group (5-6 persons). Have
  each person share his/her list of items. Agree
  on three key items to share with other Groups.