Community

Theorists do not agree on the precise definition of community. Referents for the term range from ethnic neighborhoods to self-help groups to Internet chat rooms. What is broadly agreed upon is that community is a locus of social interaction where people share common interests, have a sense of belonging, experience solidarity, and can expect mutual assistance. Communities are the source of social attachments, create interdependencies, mediate between the individual and the larger society, and sustain the well-being of members. When locality based, such as in a town or neighborhood, they also provide a place for people to participate in societal institutions and, as such, are linked with democracy. Because community is recognized as socially imperative, community absence or weakening becomes a social problem.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, social theorists, looking at different types of places (a typological approach), observed the shift of population from rural areas to larger, denser, more diverse urban-industrial places. They noted a transition also occurring in the way people related to one another. In smaller, traditional villages, people were bound together by their similarities and sentiments; in cities their ties were based on contracts and they lived a more anonymous existence. The concept of community became identified with that smaller, more intimate locality and the types of relationships within it. In the 1920s the theoretical framework of human ecology, using the city of Chicago as a laboratory, further reinforced the notion of community as a geographic entity.

As a result, community became a social concern as the proportion of the population living in urban areas increased. Social scientists depicted urban dwellers as bereft of involving social ties, emotionally armored against a world of strangers. They were detached individuals, lacking the necessary social supports for psychological well-being. The city thus had a disorganizing effect.

By the mid-20th century, however, research documented the existence of ethnic villages within cities, but more important, in a new conceptualization, community was described as “liberated” from place. Community was refrained as a network of individuals connected to each other possibly in a particular locale or possibly widely dispersed geographically. Researchers sought to uncover the locus of attachments, whether in the neighborhood, workplace, or religious institution. Network theorists gave assurances that people enjoyed necessary social supports but in a more far-flung manner.