Conceptualizing Community

Conceptualizing Community

• Global, international, and world community denotes society's relationships.
• Many individuals associate with several communities, rendering "the community" a misnomer.
• Groups create specific communities of interest within geographical areas that can oppose local culture.
• "Community" in the U.S. has eroded geographically due to the expansion of suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Technology redefines community, posing social work challenges.
• Poor individuals are forced to remain in environments lacking resources and facing dangers.
• Clear commitments and relationships require multiple community definitions.
• Marx identifies 10 community types for social work intervention.

Online Communities

• Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are examples of online communities.

Green Communities

• Green communities focus messages on global warming and promoting healthier living.

Gray Communities

• Gray communities consist of older adults advocating for support services and engagement opportunities.

Devastated Communities

• Devastated communities include natural disaster survivors advocating for paid personnel and volunteers.

Hispanic Communities

• Spanish-speaking communities maintain Hispanic heritage communities.

International Communities

• Assist other communities with resources; examples include NGOs.

Innovative Communities

• Promote the future through creative, entrepreneurial activities and the diffusion of innovation.

Electoral Communities

• Local, state, and national campaigns unite people with similar ideologies for change.

Cinematic Communities

• Film, visual artists, and smartphone users create videos to document needs and advocate for change.

Business Communities

• Corporate sectors collaborate with public and nonprofit sectors to solve social problems.

Defining Community

• Ferdinand Tonnies conceptualized communities using Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.

Gemeinschaft

• Translates to community.
• Focuses on intimate, mutual bonds that unite people in local units, like neighborhoods, or families.

Gesellschaft

• Gesellschaft refers to society or association, such as a city or government.

Engaging Communities

• Macro practitioners require a systematic approach for four reasons.
• Systematic approach considers the person-in-environment view.
• Community-level macro change occurs constantly.
• Communities change constantly with formative evaluation over time.

Seven Functions of Community

• Production, distribution, consumption refers to economic activities that ensure resources needed for survival. Local industries, markets, and management systems are part of this function.
• Socialization occurs when individuals learn their community's norms and values in order to effectively participate.
• Social control relies on formal (laws) and informal (social norms, peer pressure) mechanisms that maintain order and conformity.
• Social placement assigns roles based on education, skills, and family to fulfill needs and maintain social order.

Mutual support

• Mutual support provides emotional, financial, and physical assistance to foster solidarity and interdependence.

Defense

• Communities must protect its members from external threats organize through security and defense forces.

Communication

• Community communication exchanges information, ideas, and feelings that collaborate, decide, and reinforce identity.

When Communities Fail

• A community is optimally structured if its functions meet the needs of all members.
• Distribution and consumption are inadequate or distribution is uneven.
• Socialization may be tied to values imposed by some members.
• Social control may be oppressive or uneven.
• Social participation and mutual support are limited, and communication suffers.
• Communities may be healthy or unhealthy, functional or dysfunctional, competent or incompetent.

Descriptive/Prescriptive Approaches to Understanding Community

• This approach uses systems theory and social ecology concepts.

Boundaries

• Social ecology defines limits of social, cultural, or environmental contexts in units or institutions.

Mechanical Analogy

• Social systems work in rigid structures with individuals functioning like machine components, often downplaying complex interactions.

Organismic

• Highlights dynamic social systems, emphasizing interaction/adaptation.

Morphogenic

• The capacity of a social system fosters resilience and change. System can adapt, reorganize, or evolve to societal or environmental challenges.

Factional

• Subgroups emerge within social systems, reflecting divergent values affecting system stability.

Catastrophic

• Catastrophic events include natural disasters, political upheavals, or economic collapses requiring immediate adaptation.

Understanding Communities from Human Behavior Theories

• Social capital represents social networks and the support, resources, and information available through connections.

Economic Capital

• Financial and material resources influence economic well-being and opportunities.

Human Capital

• Human capital refers to the skills, knowledge, and capabilities contributing to productivity and development.

Interactional Field Theorists

• Interactional field theorists study how dynamics impact behavior and relationships in a context.

Community Action Field

• This field refers to the activities undertaken to address common issues, create change, and improve well-being.

Collective Identity

• Collective identity is a shared sense of belonging based on characteristics, experiences, or values.

Human Needs

• Fundamental needs, such as food, safety, and social connection are crucial in community development.

Understanding Communities Through Power, Politics, and Change

• Power Dependency Theory focuses on power relationships. The more one party depends on resources, the more power the provider has.

Conflict Theory

• Conflict Theory emphasizes power imbalances and conflicts over resources, leading to social change.

Resource Mobilization Theory

• Resource Mobilization Theory suggests the success of a movement depends on its ability to mobilize structure, media, money, and people.

Community Diversity

• Community Diversity includes race, ethnicity, culture, and socioeconomic status.

Key Ideas of Community Diversity

• Key Ideas recognize contributions for inclusivity, understanding, and cohesion from different backgrounds.

Understanding Communities

• It is important to identify the possibilities of strengths, assets, talents, knowledge, and resources
• Honoring tools exist within individuals and communities.

The Lexicon of Pathology

• Once a persons pathology is identified, the person's characteristics fade, and are replaced by the symptoms.
• Problem orientation devalues individuals or groups.
• Detached objectivity diminishes partnership opportunities between helper and helped.
• Deficit focus breeds cynicism towards rehabilitation.
• Pathology supposes a cause and linear explanation amidst uncertainty.

Principles of Strengths Perspective

• Workers recognize resources and potential to reverse misfortune, ease pain, and reach goals.
• When overcoming trauma, individuals gain capacities affirming dignity.
• Professionals may limit growth, thus workers ally with aspirations.
• Collaboration prevents preventing paternalism and victim blaming.
• Every environment has resources.
• Empowerment recognizes strengths as change.
• Empowerment means subverting labels, connecting people, and trusting intuitions.
• Empowerment is personal, interpersonal, and political. Resiliency maintains empowerment by resisting giving up to conflicts.

Resiliency

• Resiliency acknowledges life's difficulties and the ability to cope.

Quality-Oriented Sentiments

• Strengths will be taken for granted
• Deficits may seem more "transparent"
• Deficit focus does grab more attention
• Emphasizing of strengths may seem like flattery
• Ignoring deficits and pride/hubris occurs

Deficits-Based Approach in Communities

• That community is labeled as disempowered and needs experts.
• Funding is directed to services, not people, so there is an emphasis on outside resources.
• Places the focus on patient rather than the community
• Power is consolidated by denigrating the community
• Reinforces the cycle of dependency
• The process is top-down, thereby ignoring the member's priorities

Guiding Principles & Values of Asset Mapping

• Any intervention should mirror member priorities
• There is a need for ethical, collaborated efforts
• Individuals should have power in their own lives

Capacity Building

• There is a need for natural support systems before professional intervention.

Natural Helpers

• They turn to others in times of need.
• Help happens at the personal or community level, without formal ties to outside organizations
• They are normally the initial people to give support because there is trust and equality
• Open minded and able to see things for how they are

Informal Social Supports

• Interdependence.
• Belongingness exists with a good support network.

Social Supports

• Happens when there is information sharing, empathy, love, and trust

Self-Help Groups

• There is a particular topic that the group is trying to make progress one
• The meeting extends beyond the boundaries of the meeting place

Voluntary Associations

• There is a deep understanding of the community and its needs to do this
• The goal is to serve this collective identity of the community which can be accomplished with practice

Community and Social Work Practice Models

• There must be a goal
• There may be a target group
• The needs for recourses will vary

3 Intervention Approaches

• Politics and planning (data, facts, logic will be favored, focus on process, techniques will be utilized)
• Develop community (engage with the process, relationships will come first)
• Social work values

Review From the Previous Week

• There is not a one-size-fits-all way to understanding communities

Community Work

• Engage with the community to make it better

3 Reasons Why Community Practitioners Need A Systematic Approach

• It's important for social workers to see all of their clients on a macro level

Task 1, 2, 3, 4 (Framework for community assessment)

• What's most important in assessing the community? Assets/Resources
• The history of the region
• Demographics/Statistics

Organizations' Theories

Building blocks of larger macro systems

• Collectives of people

Theories are intended to...

• Understand, analyize, and improve on the current social order

Two approaches to conceptualization

• Prescriptive
• Structural

Open And Closed Systems

• Opens systems have feedback (look at the diagram)

Theories and Perspectives

• Structure reflects the ways relationships are constructed.
• Ensuring commitment

Bureaucratic Theory

• Max Weber's bureaucracy
• Power and hierarchy
• Maximizing efficiency

Qualities of bureaucratic theory

• Key Features
• Emphasize efficiency in structure
• Decisions are specialized
• Organizational personal

And A By-The-Book restics discretion

• It encourages job specialization
• Is the professional job

Scientific Management

• Piece-rate
• Pyramidal

EBM and Universal Theories

• Top-down/Control
• Efficiency

Organization Goal

• Inevitable in oligarchies
• Goal-displacements

Organizational Goals

• Tend to make individuals want to reach their personal goals

Open Systems

• Katz and Kahn: need for organizations to be understood

Thompon Described 3 Levels:

• technical core (where the structure should preform at most high volume)
• Institutional System (interaction b/w structure and enviroment)

Human resources

Why do people act certain ways

• Solidarity
• Friendship
• Feelings

HRT tenets

• Social reasons
• Expectations

Is it about material?

• More on relationship with power than instrumental activities

HRT called to...

• Team work
• Cooperation and can ultimately lead to good workers.

There can design flaws in an original study

• It would make the study over valued

The theory of HRT increase power

• It leads to little or no change

HRT

• Social relationships favoured minorities more
• It's not always applied on jobs, and the ones that require more jobs

Quality is essential

• • Quality

The decision theory

• Understanding and satisfaction

All structures are close tied to power and function

• If somebody controls, they have the biggest positions

Critical and Feminist Theories

• It's seen as an exploitation

The critical

Theory work

• Make people feel safety and welcome

There is an assumption of bias against which gender?

Male

Symbolic Theories

• Addresses artifacts

Organizational Cultural Theory

• Shared experiences and beliefs

Organizational Social Context

• Developing client needs

Look for

• Patterns

Pursure excellence

• Through ethics and hard work
• Stay close with

OrganizationaL Learning

This theory is an open-systems model and is cybernetic.

Those promoting improved quality of life for the clients of communities served

• Conditions, problem, and issue of opitunity
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• Faming Theory it gives you mutpiles oponions in the enviroment
• Collective frame negotiated shared

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