Understanding Community

Question 1

Community

Answer 1

• Available
• Mutual: There is some kind of exchange
• Network of relationships
• We can’t be lonely or alienated
• We have increasingly high levels of tech make things more lonely
• People may need to escape community for many reasons

Question 2

Types of community

Answer 2

• Locality
• Relational

Question 3

Locality-based community

Answer 3

• Traditional conception of community
• City blocks, neighbourhoods, small towns, cities, and rural regions
• Personal ties exist based on proximity
• Friends are neighbours
• Attachment to place

Question 4

Relational communities

Answer 4

• May be based on friendship or recreation
• Or, bound by a common task or interest
• Ex: Bowling league, Facebook, self-help groups, political parties

Question 5

Communities: Levels

Answer 5

Mesosytems:
- Microsystem: classroom
- Organization: University
- Locality: town or city

Macrosystems:
- Religious community, country, national advocacy group

Question 6

Community Integration

Answer 6

• Physical: Frequency of involvement in social or community events and places
• Social: Quantity of social relationships with others; also known as social network size
• Psychological: Sense of belonging and emotional connection to community

Question 7

Sense of community

Answer 7

• A feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together

Question 8

Sense of community: four elements

Answer 8

1. Membership
2. Influence
3. Integration and fulfilment of needs
4. Shared emotional connection

Question 9

Membership

Answer 9

• People experience feelings of belonging in their community
• Boundaries, common symbols, emotional safety, personal investment, sense of belonging and identification

Question 10

Influence

Answer 10

• People feel they can make a difference in their community
• The power that members exercise over the group, and the reciprocal power that group dynamics exert on members
• Greater cohesion = greater conformity

Question 11

Integration and Fulfillment of Needs

Answer 11

• Members of the community believe that their needs will be met by resources available
• Ex: I’ll find out about what’s going on, someone will loan me a hammer, we get something from the community

Question 12

Shared Emotional connection

Answer 12

• Community members have and will share history, time, places and experiences
• Definitive element of community
• Bond based on a shared history among members of the community

Question 13

Sense of community correlates

Answer 13

• Neighbouring: informal contacts and assistance among neighbours
• Neighbourhood satisfaction
• Participation in neighbourhood organizations
• Sense of empowerment at individual and group level in dealing with neighbourhood issues
• Personal well being

Question 14

Negative sense of community

Answer 14

• Arising from negative feelings about community
• Perception that community involvement could be harmful
• Can lead to drawing a strong boundary between personal and community realms
• Ex: the negative aspects of poverty

Question 15

Online communities

Answer 15

• Primarily used to pursue existing relationships rather than to establish new ones
• A supplementary rather than a primary form of communication with friends and institutions (e.g., school)
• A stool for social action and mobilization

Question 16

4 claims in community ted talk

Answer 16

1. People are defined in terms of their deficiencies
2. Money goes to professionals rather than to those in need
3. Active citizenship is discouraged
4. Individuals and communities internalize belief that they need external professional intervention

Question 17

What is community development

Answer 17

• The process and the practice of supporting people to collectively create change in their own communities
• A long term process

Question 18

What is community organizing

Answer 18

• A shorter term process of mobilizing people to make specific changes in their communities

Question 19

Key elements to building a community

Answer 19

• Not acting on the community’s behalf
• Strengthening communities so they can take action

How?
- Building connections
- Building shared understanding of community strengths and needs
- Building capacity to share and use information
- Building capacity to take action
- Building operational capacity

Question 20

Approaches to building community

Answer 20

• Banking Approach
• Open, non-directive approach
• Problem-posing approach
• Critical friend approach

Question 21

Banking approaches

Answer 21

• Pouring information into people’s heads as though they were empty vessels
• There’s an assumption that people don’t know even though that usually isn’t the problem

Question 22

Open, non-directive approach

Answer 22

• Working from community perception of needs
• More of a passive approach
• Anything the community wants you go and do, may structure the ideas a little bit

Question 23

Problem-posing approaches

Answer 23

• What is the issue that brings the group together? What are the community’s hopes/fears?
• We prioritize certain issues with the community to help them get done what they want to do

Question 24

Critical friend approach

Answer 24

• Sometimes build into problem posing
• Moves beyond organizing ideas and challenges the community to look at their own biases and challenge
• Ex: Why didn’t it work? Why do you think it didn’t work?
• More of an end game because it takes a really ling time to build trust

Question 25

Qualities of the competent community

Answer 25

1. Commitment 2. Self other awareness 3. Articulateness 4. Communication 5. Conflict containment and accommodation 6. Participation in decision making 7. Management of relations with larger society 8. Utilization of resources 9. Socialization for leadership 10. Evaluation

Question 26

Citizenship

Answer 26

- Ability to effectively participate in society, meet one's obligations, and take advantage of rights and privileges that come with being a citizen - A concept that has at least three conceptions

Question 27

Legal citizenship

Answer 27

- A person's legal status as a member of a political community - Focus on rights ensures equal status and treatment to all citizens

Question 28

Normative citizenship

Answer 28

- How citizens are active within civic, political, or social organizations or processes - Citizenship as a set of practices rather than a legal status - What is considered normal in what ways a person should participate in political structures, activities, debates, organizations, etc. - Ideas of the "good" citizens

Question 29

Lived citizenship

Answer 29

- Meaning and experience of citizenship in daily life - Focuses on everyday settings and interactions - Are we excluded? Listened to? Etc.