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interacting elements influence one another. It focuses on the individual in social interaction with others as the definition of the communicator. Systems: they are sets of interacting components that together form something more than the sum of the parts. In a complex system, a series of feedback loops connects the part. These feedback loops are called networks.
System Theory
Community Development is a very complex activity -
there are so many elements involved that it seems almost impossible to describe development in a clear and organized manner. Although it is indeed a very complex field, there is a method which can be used to identify many of the components and processes involved in this work. This way of organizing information has been called System Theory.
usually involves the following steps: 1. Assessing the community; 2. Selecting development goals; 3. Planning a strategy to reach those goals; 4. Carrying out activities to achieve goals, and; 5. Evaluating progress and including the results of evaluation in subsequent activities. The use of these System Theory concepts can help workers organize information and see the patterns in complex community processes as they plan and carry out development activities with their communities.
Sociopsychological and Sociocultural Traditions deal with individual in interaction with one another.
Sociopsychological Sociocultural traditions
foregrounds the social interaction of the individual and emphasizes it above all.
social being. These theories of this tradition especially focus on individual social behavior, personalities and traits and share a common concern for behavior and for the personal traits and the cognitive processes that produce behavior. Single human mind is the focus and acknowledges that humans have effect on one another and that these effects are discoverable science of communication. It focuses on persuasion and attitude change research.
Sociocultural Tradition
Our understanding of meaning, norms, roles, and
rules are worked out interactively in communication. Axiom: reality is not an objective set of arrangements outside us but constructed through a process of interaction in groups, communities, and cultures. Focus is on patterns of interaction between people. How people get together to make meanings. Interested in language, identity construction, context in which interaction takes place, symbols that a community share, symbolic interactionism, social construction of reality, ethnography.
What symbols and rules and meanings have emerged from communication within our society that give power to some groups and take it away from others?
Religion
Gender
does not? To uncover oppressive social conditions and power arrangements Take action to overcome oppressive forces How messages reinforce oppression in society?
began with study of rhetoric Rhetoric was understood the art to persuade by constructive arguments Now rhetoric includes all the ways humans use symbols to affect those around them and to construct the worlds in which they live