The Importance of

Understanding
Community Dynamics and
Community Action
Learning Objectives:
 To understand the role and importance of the individual in a
community
Fundamental Queries:
 Why is it important to study the community and its dynamics?
 How important is the study of community to our future as an
individual and as a collective?
 How can critical knowledge about the community affect us and
others?
Learning Competencies:
 Explain the importance of studying community dynamics and
community action in relation to applied social sciences and the student’s
future career options.
 Develop and firm sense of shared identity and willingness to
contribute to the attainment of the common good.
The Living Commune

The word community in its literal form is defined by two

characteristics: location and social identification. First, a community
can be defined simply as a group of individuals bound within specific
geographic location. Is means that a group of people living in a specific
area can already be called a community.
A community is a living social entity and goes beyond the old
categorized of space as its primary definition. More than a space,
a community is made up of people: you and I. Much like a living
organism, you may think of people as living cells that make up an
organic being. People within the community act in the same way
and of same importance. Like cells, we need each other to
support life. Our society itself has life, has vibrancy, and every
single one is as integral to support this structure as everybody
else.
The Basic of a Community

When we think of a community, we think of how people come

together to form a singular faction. We see it as a structure that is made
up of individuals bound by something abstract and unforeseen. It is not
as simple as such, as the community is bound because of self-help.
The concept of self-help is about how individuals seeks personal
development without the help of others. However. Self – help defines a
community once each individual wants and needs intersect, therefore
justifying a need to unify. It is assumed that people are bound to seek
self-help in their own lives, and in their journey, find common avenues
for cooperation and partnership among others and therefore lay the
foundations for capacity- building.
 Through community participation, individuals can provide their
own contributions through acts of volunteerism in projects and
other communal initiatives. More so, participation is not only
focused on being part of an ongoing project but an individual
should also be an active member by taking part in the managerial
and organizational development of the community, which includes
the conceptualization, planning , operationalization, and review of
initiatives. Existent communal models of direct participation include
town halls, focus group discussion, forums, and through informal
channels which can include everyday affairs. An active community
is one of the most important facets of healthy community because it
characteristically directs issue discourse into tangible and
structured dilemmas that can be solved and operationalized via
pragmatic and sustainable solutions created by the combined
efforts, ideas, expertise and experience of the group.
While participation is key, inclusion is one aspect of the
community that is integral in binding the collective into a whole. As
a form of social assembly, the personalities within a community are
different and unique. In respect to culture, race, religion, and other
identifiable social identities, one person is unique as to the other.
Such backgrounds, histories, mores, and customs vary and yet
should be integrated into the local communal social fabric.
Moreover, inclusion echoes the need for the community to be
compromising and tolerant of these differences. A community
should always consider not only the needs of the majority but more
critically, the needs of the minority that are often neglected or
overlooked. This can be solved by using more objective
instruments of inquiry and wider view that reality exists outside the
confines of the majority. Inclusion is all about conciliation that
reaches beyond norms of collective understanding wherein the
goals is to reach social equity among its members.
 The Community As a Movement
A community is more than just a collective. It acts much like a living
entity that takes on life. Living within the imaginations of its
members, a community also embodies a perspective, identity,
strand, and, much like a social movement. The main differences
between both is social movements its exits primarily of a cause the
manifest either as a reaction to an event or as pre-existing popular
rhetoric among the community members, while a community is
bound not just by one issue or narrative but on plethora of
compromises that are commonly accepted and continually
reinforced.
To put it simply, a social movement is more issue-specific and may
exist primarily for its own ecosystem. To look deeper in its
dynamics, let us focus on its important ideals and how it comes to
fruition.
Through issues and concerns that are shared among its members,
advocacies are formed by the community and its leaders. To improve and
garner support , communities try to garner support from other individuals or
groups which are aligned with their worldview. As compared to social
movements, communities are made up of various advocacy clusters that try
to supplement the ongoing efforts of the government. Advocacies include
multitudes of topics where people are compelled to push for value-specific
agendas that are shared through their supporters. Formations are created
with the organic networking of actors that later on find commonalities and
avenues for cooperation and partnerships. Underpinning these effort is the
spirit of collaboration where groups and individuals from various walks of life
come together to form linkages that are important for mobilization and value
creation. The creation of these networks is also both formal and informal
since there is really no limit to where collaboration can happen or manifest.
Partnership can take form between the individuals or groups of various
backgrounds that share a common identification, but at the same time ,
contribute on different levels to solve problems and overcome obstacles.
Embracing this kind of diversity is critical in building networks the last and
work under various circumstances and challenges.
Standing on the foundation of advocacies and networking is the
hope for social action. At the end of the day, the community
hopes to address the issues of the status quo through the
combined efforts of actors. Planning, conceptualization,
operationalization, and implementation of action will not be
possible without the political will of actors toward meeting general
compromise to effect social change. The community is a
movement that cannot be dismissed as external to the realities
that we hold our own. We are , in fact , the community; our
personal worldviews and realities are directly derived from the
collective with which we identify ourselves and in sharing a
common identity, we also hare the same.