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Understanding Community

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Title: 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

4
Functions that Communities Perform Systems
Approach
  • Production-distribution-consumption
  • Socialization
  • Social Control
  • Access to social participation
  • Mutual support

5
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

6
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

7
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.

8
Key Institutions inthe Community Systems
Approach
  • Kinship (Family)
  • Economic
  • Education
  • Political (Governmental)
  • Religious
  • Associations

9
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

10
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

11
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.

12
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

14
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

15
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.

16
Linking Functions and Institutions
Community Functions
17
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.

18
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

19
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

20
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

21
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

22
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

23
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

24
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

25
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

26
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
27
  • What are the Great Changes in your community?

28
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.
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