Here is your essay on the community

A community is a local grouping within which people carry out a full round of life activities.

Although families or other groups can sometimes be relatively self-sufficient, most of them do not live in isolation. For many reasons, ranging from economic interdependence to shared cultural values, families and other groups normally join together to form communities.

The community, rather than the family, becomes the social setting for most everyday economic, political, religious, educational, recreational and similar activities. As communities become larger and more complex, other types of organisations are often established within the community to perform these various functions.

Thus, a community is a type of social organisation that is territorially located and provides the setting for dealing with most of the needs and problems of daily living. Communities vary widely in size and complexity.

Definitions

1. Manheim states that the Community is “any circle of people who live together and belong together in such a way that they do not share this or that particular interest only, but a whole set of interests”.

2. According to Bogardus, “Community is a social group with some degree of ‘we feeling’ and ‘living in a given area’.”

3. For Kingsley Davis, “Community is the smallest territorial group that can embrace all aspects of social life”.

4. Ginsberg defines Community as “a group of social beings living a common life including all the infinite variety and complexity of relations which result from that common life which constitutes it”.

5. According to Parsons, “A community is that collectivity the members of which share a common territorial area as their base of operation for daily activities”.

6. According to MacIver, Community “is the term we apply to a pioneer settlement, a village, a city, a tribe, or a nation. Wherever the members of any group, small or large, live together in such a way that they share, not this or that particular interest, but the basic conditions of a common life, we call that group a community”.

7. Louis Wirth was of the opinion that historically, community as an expression emphasizes the unity of the common life of people. Community has four aspects: geographical, psychological, demographic and cultural.

As a conclusion, community has been defined in following ways:-

(i) A grouping of people

(ii) Within a geographic area

(iii) With a division of labour into specialised and interdependent functions

(iv) With a common culture and a social system which organises their activities

(v) Whose members are conscious of their unity and of belonging to the community and

(vi) Whose members can act collectively in an organised manner Characteristics of Community?

All communities need not be self-sufficient. Some communities are all-inclusive and independent of others. Among primitive peoples we sometimes find communities of no more than a hundred persons, for example, among the Yurok tribes of California, which are almost isolated. But modern communities, even very large ones, are much less self-contained. Economic and political interdependence is a major characteristic of our modern communities.

Apart from this, a community has the following characteristics:

(a) Definite territory

(b) Population

(c) Close social relationship

(d) Cultural similarity

(e) ‘We’ feeling

(f) Organised interaction Great and Small Communities

In spite of the expansion of the community to the dimensions of the nation and further the world, the smaller communities still remain, though only in degree. The nation or the world state does not eliminate the village or neighbourhood, though they may be changed in character. As civilised beings, we need the smallest as well as the larger circles of community.

The great community brings us opportunity, stability, economy, the constant stimulus of a richer, more varied culture. But living in the smaller community we find the nearer, more intimate satisfactions.

The larger community provides peace and protection, patriotism and sometimes war, automobiles and the radio. The smaller provides friends and friendship, gossip and face-to-face rivalry, local pride and abode. Both are essential to the full life process.