Community Flashcards
Definition of Community
‘A specific population living within a specific geographical area with shared institutions and significant social interaction’ (Warren, 1963)
Community Association
A ‘sense’ of community or an ‘absence of community’
CSHE
Came up with a theory of how ‘natural communities’ emerge within cities, arguing that community was the product of biotic activity and could be understood through ecology
Three key concepts underpinning CSHE theory
Competition, ecological dominance and Invasion and Successtion
Competition
Park believed humans have an urge to survive so they must compete for the best places to live and set up businesses. This competition takes place in the form of pricing mechanisms which determine land values. People are segregated in the city according to where they can afford to live.
Ecological Dominance
One species will have a dominant influence. Park argued that within the city the CBD is dominant because there is competition between humans who wish to locate there.
Invasion + Succession
Plants can change the micro environment in which they live + so can generate conditions in which other plants can grow. Park pointed out this occurs in human communities e.g. residential areas might be invaded by businesses and people living their move out making the area commercial.
Criticisms of CSHE
Does not apply well to other places other than Chicago. Theoretical analogy with plant communities is criticised and included inappropriate moral judgements about group concentration
Fully realised community should include
Hierarchy, identity, plurality, autonomy, participation and integration (Selznick, 1992)
Neighbourhood community Dictionary of Human Geo Def
Johnston et al, 2000 - ‘A social network of interacting individuals, usually concentrated in a defined territory’
Neighbourhood community another def
Cater + Jones (1989) define it as a socially interactive space inhabited by a close-knit network of households, most of whom are known to one another and who, to a high degree, participate in common social activities, exchange info, engage in mutual aid and support etc’
The Working Class Community
Young + Willmott (1957) ‘In Bethnal Green people commonly belong to a close network of personal relationships. They know immediately dozens of other local people living near at hand, their school friends, their work mates, their pub friends and above all their relatives. They know them well because they have the security of belonging to a sense of small and overlapping groups’
Debates about community existence
Wellman (1979) characterised the debates as ‘lost’, ‘saved’ or ‘liberated’.
Gemeinschaft
Lasting and genuine form of living together - togetherness and mutual bonds. Where community relationships are tied to social status, public arena and binded local territory (Tonnies, 1967)
Gelleschaft
Involves a more calculated action on behalf of individuals to engage in ‘artifical’ relations for what they can get from one another. Tonnies, 67
community ‘lost’
Debate between Gemeinschaft and and Gelleschaft. Tonnies (1967) argued social relations were moving from Gemeinschaft to Gelleschaft as a result of industrialisation, urbanization and mass communication.
Community saved
Argues that communities have survived and prospered. Suttles (1972) found evidence of strong networks mainly among poor and ethnic minority groups
Community Liberated
Wellman (1979) argues that this starts from the basis that seperation of home, work and wider kinship networks mean who dwells multiple social networks with weak solidarity; high rates of residential mobility, weaker community ties making it easier for individuals to develop multiple loosely based netowks meaning its less likely individuals with whom a resident is linked will be part of a close knit community
Communities without propinquity
Communities which are not predicated a space have been termed this by Webber (1963).
Davis and Herbert, 1993
Personal mobility and the development of modern forms of communication mean that people can develop social networks beyond their immediate locality and are more easily able than in the past to maintain these relationships over greater distances.
Virtual communities
One example of new forms of social relations being created by new technologies that are free of the limitations of place.
Benedikt, 1991
Virtual communities are predicated to be antidote to liveliness and offer ‘new living and multiple associations between people’
ICT’s role
Claimed to be turning community from local to a global concept (Kitchin, 1998)
Rheingold (1993)
On line social relationships offer the opportunity to enjoy many facets of ‘real’ social relations which are disappearing from off line public spaces.
