Concept of Community

What is Community? It is a concept of community.... is any circle of people....essentially an area of social living.

The concept of community concerns a particularly constituted set of social relationships based on something which the participants have in common – usually a common sense of identity. The term community is very loosely used. It is given different interpretations and used in different ways to mean different things. In their casual talks, people often use the term community to refer to a racial community, or a religious community or a national community or a caste community or a linguistic community or a professional community or sometimes, to refer to the entire mankind in a restricted sense, it is used to mean an association or group, and in wider sense, it is used to refer to the entire humanity.

Pattern Of A Community

According to Mannheim “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”. Therefore, community is a geographic area having common centers of interests and activities. A community is essentially an area of social living. It is marked by some degree of social coherence. Thus community is a circle in which common life is living. ‘Community’ is an all-inclusive term. It includes in itself all our social relationships. It includes a variety of associations and institutions. Within the range of a community the members may carry on their economic, religious, political, educational and other activities. Hence community is the total organization of social life within limited space. Example: village, town, tribe, city, district, etc.

According to Alex Inkeles three elements are relevant to the definition of community. A community exists:

1. When a set of households is relatively concentrated in a delimited geographical area;
2. Their residents exhibit a substantial degree of integrated social interaction; and
3. Have a sense of common membership, of belonging together, which is not based exclusively on ties of consanguinity.

Thus from the above we can conclude that there is two main basis or elements of community: ‘locality’, and ‘community sentiments’.

• Locality: A community is occupied by a de-limited geographical area. It is a residential type to an area.
• Community Sentiments/Centre: If people have to live in a same territory but do not poses a feeling of belonging together that is, if they lack community centre, the community does not arise, the people belonging to a community must be conscious of sharing a way of life as well as the common earth.

William J. Goode considered that a community would nevertheless be called a community by the virtue of these characteristics:

Community Needs

1. Its members are bound by a sense of identity.
2. Once in it, few leave, so that it is a terminal or continuing status for the most part.
3. Its members share values in common.
4. Its role definitions vis-à-vis both members and non-members are agreed upon and are the same for all members.
5. Within the areas of communal action there is a common language, which is understood only partially by outsiders.
6. The community has power over its members.
7. Its limits are reasonably clear, though they are not physical and geographical, but social.
8. Though it does not produce the next generation biologically, it does so socially through its control over the selection of professional trainees, and through its training processes it sends these recruits through an adult socialization process.

Group Of Community

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To know more you can visit these significant topics:
The Development of Literacy and Schooling, Commensality, Indian State, State, Indian Society, Religion, Marriage, kinship System, Social Institution, Types of Marriage, Family, Indology, Social Movement, Bride Wealth (Price), Nation State

Reference:

• Alex Inkeles, What is Sociology? ;
• Neil J. Smelser, Sociology: an introduction;
• C.N.Shankar Rao, Sociology;
• Various.

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