Understanding Community

Bellah et al. (1985) define community as a socially interdependent group with shared practices and decision-making.

Cohen (1985) sees community as a system of values, norms, and moral codes that provoke a sense of identity.

British Columbia Ministry of Children and Family Development (2003) defines community as people living in a geographically defined area with social and psychological ties.

Berry (1996) argues that community has no economically beneficial value, but we argue for its consummate value.

Fellin (2001) defines communities as social units with spatial, interactional, and symbolic dimensions.

We also consider horizontal and vertical community linkages and institutional interactions.

Community concepts include geographic area, social interaction, common ties, and shared sentiments.

Communities are places of rich social and personal lives, shaping our thoughts, actions, values, and norms.

Social workers focus on communities as objects of intervention and aim to build competent communities.

A competent community has a commitment to its members, self-awareness, open communication, wide participation, and a sense of empowerment.

Community and neighborhood are sometimes used interchangeably, but community implies social ties and shared identity, while neighborhood refers to a place with face-to-face relationships.

Fellin (1995, 2001) provides in-depth discussions on community and neighborhood definitions.

Community and grassroots have social currency in politics and ideologies, representing a bottom-up approach focusing on the people in a community.

The community is viewed as a social system with interconnected subsystems that perform essential functions for its members.

A community as a system is different from a centrally organized organization due to the lack of a common goal and centralized authority.

A U.S. community has various subsystems with limited or no central control, such as the nonprofit, economic, underground economy, and illegitimate sectors.

Communities evolve through common needs, interdependencies, and sentimental bonds, and are made up of social units and systems that perform locality-relevant functions.

Warren's conception of community defines it as the organization of social activities for daily local access to necessary resources.

A community can be analyzed based on its autonomy, coinciding service areas, psychological identification, and relationship strengths.

Five critical locality-relevant social functions are production-distribution-consumption, socialization, social control, social participation, and mutual support.

Social functions can be fulfilled through formal or informal organizations, groups, and networks.

Entities and institutional structures interact and influence each other, with each component necessary for the system to function.

Vertical integration, reciprocity, and social exclusion are essential concepts to understanding the community's social functions and changes.