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Based in his researches on the meaning of community, Goerge Hillery (1995), defines
community as consisting of persons in social interactions within a geographical area and
having one or more additional ties
Functions of Community
Several approaches to the study of communities have been adopted. Each of these
approaches emphasizes a particular aspect of community life.
Many communities are located in certain geographical area because the characteristic
of that environment has attracted people.
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Mass transportation or the presence of highways may also affect the location of a
community, for the people may want to get quickly and easily from their places of residence
to their jobs ans shops.
The community as a social system. The social system view looks at the
community as a relatively enclosed system of interaction centered in some locality. A
collection of a small subsystems performs various community functions such as socialization
of members, social control of the people living in a community, and mutual support among
residents.
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2. The secondary associations their presence will indicated diversity of the
population.
3. Social tolerance caused by diversity of the population and imposonal contacts.
4. Secondary controls controls regulating the complex and predatory relation.
5. Social mobility requires division of labour, competition and impersonality.
6. spatial segregation in which the center of the city is monopolized by functions
ans self-centered
Communities are types of social groupings, which are extensions of the groupings of
family. They vary greatly in many ways such as size and population density, occupation, and
specialization. Some are very small consisting of few families like the barangays or sitios,
while others consist of thousands and millions of people like metro manila, New York,
London, and Calcutta.
A community is rural when the people live in contiguous farms, their chief
occupations and interest are fishing and farming, and they have certain interests and
purposes to common actions. It refers to a number of families residing in a relatively small
area within which there lives have developed a more-or-less complete socio-cultural definition
imbued with collective identification and by means of which they solve problems arising from
the sharing of an area.
Sociologist used special indices to show how rural-urban differences. These are
occupations, environment, size, density of population, heterogeneity or homogeneity of
culture, social differentiation, and stratification, mobility and system of interaction.
In the Philippines, the urban areas are those that fall under the following categories.
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All poblaciones and any barrio contiguous to the poblaciones with 1,000 inhabitants
fro cities and 500 per square for municipalities.
Early civilization thought equated the divine Good with the notions of self-
identity, the experience of evil has often been linked with notions of exteriority or
otherness. The demonic was invariably thought of as an outside invader who
occupies and estranges the inner unity of the soul evil is alienation and the evil
one is the alien. We find many popular media narratives on our screens promoting
paranoia by anathematising what is what is unfamiliar as evil. Such tales
reinforces, once again the idea that the other is an adversary, the stranger a
scapegoat, the dissenter the devil.
Most nation states bent on preserving their body politic from alien viruses seek to
pathologies their adversaries. Faced with a threatening outsider the best mode of
defence is attack. Again and again the national we is defined against the foreign
them. Borders are policed to keep nationals in and aliens out.
How do we know when the other is truly an enemy who seeks to destroy us or simply an
innocent scapegoat projected by our own phobias?
How do we account for the fact that not every other is an angel and not every self is an
egoistic emperor?
Folk Societies
Additional researches
Redfields Folk-Urban Continuum - Urban Societies
Great Tradition (elites) - literate
organic solidarity, achieved statuses
large scale, not isolated
heterogeneous
technical order dominant - arrangements holding people together result from mutual
usefulness or coercion (law)
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Redfields Folk-Urban Continuum
Serves as the basis of linear modernization theories
Is essentially dualistic and based on externally defined features of peasants
Presumes the incorporation of peasants into the urban, modern world as proletariats
(and thus their demise)
Foraging Societies
small mobile population - band level of social organization
35-50 people or less, get together on an intermittent basis
egalitarian (i.e., equal access to resources and prestige) in emphasis
prestige and authority based on personal qualities (achieved status)
Horticultural Societies
began with the Neolithic Revolution, 12-15,000 years ago
sedentary population, 100-500 per community, sometimes up to 1000+
diverse family forms, often large extended families, unilineal descent groups
larger kin groups are the key basis of social organization
Pastoral Societies
usually nomadic (need for grazing lands) or are semi-sedentary
tribal level of organization based on kin groups
usually patrilineal with emphasis on activities of men
achieved status with egalitarian emphasis often present
What is a Community?
What is a community? This is an interesting question to ask but a difficult one to answer.
Many scholars have attempted to define community or to describe what makes up a
community and Galbraith (1990) talks about the multi-dimensionality of community. Massey
(1992) also describes how changes in the world economy are impacting on visions of "home,"
"place," or "locality." In concert with the main theme of this book, Decker (1992) suggests
that communities need to be where learning can take place. Various sources referenced at
the end of this chapter provide these varied and contrasting conceptions or dimensions of
community.
The word "community" comes from the Latin term, Communis, meaning fellowship or
common relations and feelings. In its medieval usage the word was perhaps more
descriptive, meaning a body of fellows or fellow townspeople. This definition is still relevant,
since the average person today usually defines community in reference to locality, such as a
hometown, place of residence, or neighborhood.
However, there are many other ways of examining the meaning of community beyond a
locality reference. This does not mean that the community as a locality base is dying out;
rather, the nature of community is complex and changing. Thus, more precision is needed to
promote an understanding of community adequate enough for effective living and survival in
a situation of change.
One of the least precise ways for describing a community is to place it at either of two
opposite poles. Yet, such a description often is used. Such polarities have been variously
described as the range from rural to urban, folk culture to mass culture, simple organization
to complex, or Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft (see the definitions later in this chapter). In
whatever way these contrasting positions are described, they provide little assistance in
helping you describe a personal perception of community.
On a slightly higher scale of precision, community can be described strictly on the basis of
geographic locality. This is perhaps the one community descriptor with which most people are
familiar. Included would be such statements as: "Kalamazoo, Michigan, is my home
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community!" "I was born in New York." "I came from Vancouver, British Columbia." "I moved
to a retirement village in southern Florida." "I'm a United States citizen." Thus, locality can
range from individual perceptions