Community

The concept of community is derived from the Latin word “Commune”which means “to
communicate.”Accordingly by community is meant such a group of people between whom there
is common mode of communicating with one another. There is similarity in their language, habits,
customs, means of livelihood, conditions and characteristics of the life and who live within a
shared geographical location. In sociological literature there are a number of definitions of the
term community depending upon the social scientists, authors and knowledgeable writers and their
focus of attention on special problem. But still the term community is undergoing the stages of
qualification and modification. Anyhow, for the sake of reference, we can say that the concept of
community refers to:
“A large number of people living together within a specific geographical area, sharing a
common way of life in such a way, that they try to overcome most of their basic needs and
problems from local resources and institutions.”
(Or)

“A reasonable group of people who live in a common territorial area and have a
considerable degree of interpersonal acquaintance and contacts, and some special basis of
coherence that separates it from neighbouring groups is known as community. The community
may have special bonds of unity such as recreational origin or religious affiliations. ”
(Or)

According toOgburn&Nimcoff, “A community may be thought of as total organization of

social life within a limited area.”
(Or)
According toMaciver, “Community is an area of social living marked by some degree of
social coherence.”He further says, “Whenever the members of any group, small or large, living
together in such a way that they share, not this or that particular interest, but the basic conditions
of common life, we call that group a community.”
This concept of community is of great importance for human beings, as said by M. Scott
Peck, “There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without
vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community”.
Moreover, in developing countries where the resources are limited with respect to their
problems and needs, the concept of community has become vital. Because there it becomes very
difficult for the government to meet individuals’ problems one by one, therefore, it takes them at
community level so that more and effective results could be achieved in a short time.
Essentials of Community:
Following are the features on the basis of which we can decide whether a particular group
is a community or not:

a) Locality:
As for locality, a community occupies a specific territorial area to reside. It means the
condition for a group to be a community is that they live together in a specific geographical
boundary that provides them almost all the means of subsistence. They have schools, hospitals,
shops, masjids, union councils and all other major social institutions and thus are self-sufficient in
the fulfillment of their basic needs.

b) Community Sentiment:
The community sentiment refers to the social coherence which community people inculcate
within themselves. However,every community usually has two types of sentiments which are not
found in other groups. Firstly, a sense of belonging to its territory and secondly, a sense of
belonging to one another. It means all its people know one another and frequently meet at different
occasions. A situation of primary group is mostly created among them. Cooperation and mutual
help are the formations of mutual relationship. Similarly, they belong to their locality and have
sentimental relationship with it. They are not ready to leave it at any cost.

c) Common Culture:
The community people share a common culture. They have their owncultural normswhich
are shared by the community as a whole. These local norms are the product of their local social
conditions and are different and more important than those of the general community. The
community people consider them their glory and perform all their functions according to them.

d) Permanency:
A community is not transitory like a crowd. It essentially includes a permanent life in a
definite place.

e) Naturality:
Communities are not made or created by an act of will but are natural.

g) A Particular Name:
Every community has some particular name.
Elements of Community:
Thebasic elements of community include:

i) Security:
The term security is very complex and comprehensive. Its meaning and scope differ from
country to country in accordance with the prevailing legislations, traditions and ideals. As in some
countries it includes only income security while in others it covers a wide field of social life. But
the following definition will reveal the term in its true perspective, i.e.,“Social security is an attack
on five giants, namely want, disease, ignorance, squalor and illness.”(Sir William Beveridge)
Here, security against want implies that everyone in the society has to get reasonable
remuneration in return for his/her services by which he/she can lead a minimum standard of living
and can look after his/her dependents. Security against ignorance means providing greater
educational facilities to all members of the society. Security against the giant of squalor means
security against those evils which come through the unplanned growth of cities. Similarly security
against illness means to provide medical facilities to every citizen according to his/her income and
means.
So it is the responsibility of the state to ensure social security. Because in a democratic
welfare state, social security is the right of every citizen.

ii) Norms:
Norms are the social rules that specify appropriate and inappropriate behaviour in given
situations. They tell us what we “should,” “ought” and “must” do and what we “should not,”
“ought not” and “must not” do. Theyare also known as the shared expectations or ideally expected
manners of behaviour as they provide us guidance to align our actions with those of others when
situations are unclear or ambiguous, and provide us standards by which we judge other people and
make decisions about how we will interact with them. In other words, norms are the codes of
mutual relationship.
However, these norms areof three types, i.e. mores, folkways and laws with respect to the
level of their intensity and enforcement.They constitute an essential element of community as they
control our behaviour and make it systematic and patterned. They help to bring social order and to
improve social integration. They ensure peace and harmony in the society and maintain its social
fabrics. Not only this, the norms also safeguard our values and perform the role of their guardians.
In short, we can say that survival of the community depends upon norms.

iii) Values:
Norms are the rules for behavior but values are the broad ideas regarding what is desirable,
correct and good that most members of a society share. They are so general and abstract that they
do not explicitly specify which behaviours are acceptable and which are not. Instead they provide
us with criteria and conceptions by which we evaluate people, objects and events as to their relative
worth, merit, beauty or morality.It means that values are the goals or objectives to attain while
norms are the institutional proceedure of getting these goals.
Anyhow, these values are of great importance for a community as they provide goals or
ends to its members to aim for. They provide stabilities and uniformities in group interaction and,
hence, create a sense of belongingness. They bring legitimacy to the rules that govern specific
activities and help to bring about some kind of adjustment between different sets of rules. But most
importantly they differentiate between right and wrong and what is desirable and undesirable.

iv) Role & Status:

In sociology social status is the honor or prestige attached to one’s (social) position in the
society. It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son, or
daughter, playmate, pupil, or teacher, etc.

However, this social status can be determined in two ways, firstly, the position/status that
is fixed for an individual at birth without reference to his/her inner abilities, this is called ascribed
status. It has nothing to do with the specific qualities of the individuals rather it is attached just
with the physical existence of an individual. Sex, age, race, ethnic group and family background
all are the ascribed statuses of the individual. Secondly, one can earn his/her social status by his/her
own achievementsor as a result of the exercise of his/her knowledge, ability, skill and/or
perseverance. This is known as achieved status and physician, engineer, teacher, college
student,president, pastor, pickpocket, prostitute, etc. are all its examples.

While, on the other hand, role refers to the function or to the dynamic aspect of the
corresponding status. It refers to a set of culturally defined rights and duties which the individuals
have to perform in order to achieve or maintain a particular status. This is so because status is a
cultural value attainable only through the prescribed ways of behaviour called social roles e.g. a
professor enjoys his/her status in college due to his/her role of teaching class students. It means
status depends upon role performance. Both of them are inseparable from each other or in another
way they are the two faces of a sheet of paper. The only difference between them is that we occupy
a status and play a role.

These statuses and roles are necessary for effective functioning of the community. Because
when everyone is aware of his/her rights and duties and perform them in socially approved ways
no disturbance may arise.

v) Power:
Power is the ability of an individual or group to carry out its wishes or policies, and to
control, manipulate or influence the behaviour of others. It is an important element of the
community which is exercised through the formal and informal structures of the political
institution of a community including governmental organizations. Its function or objectiveis to
maintain law and order in the community and to promote social well-being of its people by taking
all the appropriate and possible measures.

vi) Social Control:

 The term social control is a collective one which combines all such factors and forces which
go to make the members of a group to conform to the accepted ways of common living. It is
essential for the smooth running of the community asit aims at an integrated community, whose
social systems make a coherent whole. While without it there would be anarchy and
disorganization. That is why, it is necessary for every community to have certain approved ways
of doing and thinking so that chaos and destruction may be avoided.

vii) Ranks:

Rank refers to the social or official position or standing. It is an essential object of analysis
for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians because in
the social sciences, the term is often discussed in terms of “social stratification”which typically
comprises of three layers: upper, middle, and lower. Thus the ranks help to understand the structure
of a society as this class difference is intrinsic to the structure of any society and to a great extent
ineradicable.

viii) Facilities:
The term facility refers to an installation, contrivance, or other thing which facilitates
something. In a human settlement the facilities are usually of two types, i.e., some those which
are owned by the individuals or families, such as housing. While the other communal ones, which
are owned by the group as a whole. These include roads, markets, water supply, schools, hospitals,
etc. All these facilities and services, their upkeep (dependable maintenance and repair),
sustainability, and the degree to which all the community members have access to them are of
great importance for the community. Because these community facilities protect public safety and
enhance the quality of their life.

ix) Advancement:
Advancement has been described as a process of change from the traditional ways of living
to the progressive ones. It also refers to a method by which certain activities are created in the
fields concerning welfare of the people and last but not the least it means a movement for progress
with a certain ideological content. But whatever may be the way to describe the term, its objective
is always promotion of the all-round advancement of the community, i.e. economic, social and
cultural. That is why, it is an essential element of the community because without advancement
the community will become static and deprived of all the modern facilities of life.

Types of Community:
 Community can be of several types but the most important ones are as follows:

1) Urban Community:

Urban community represents a larger community with regard to population and space
structured with residential, commercial and industrial areas at a vast stretch of land. In it life is
much busy, diversified and modern with regard to occupation, standard of living, etc. There are
cultural and political activities besides economic ones. There is greater social mobility due to the
life being more competitive and the social change with regard to ideas, customs, traditions, etc. is
easily accepted. Formal methods of social control exist in it. All the facilities of modern civic life
are available here. Social relationships among its individuals are impersonal and contractual and a
high degree of complexity and heterogeneity is found in their living styles and identities.

In short, it can be said that urban community is a symbol of progress of the people and the
society. It has developed out of the growing needs of a given people and the improvement they
have made in their social organization. Itmarks an advance stage in human settlementas well as a
marked progress in human development.

2) Rural Community:

Rural community is a natural phenomenon which is small in size of population and area of
land. It is present in almost every society of the world having distinct culture and pattern of social
life. It is actually a product of natural free will of the people having extreme similarity in their
objectives and ambitions of living. It refers to a place where people live immediately on agriculture
and othertraditional occupations. But agriculture is the main identity of this kind of community.

People, in such a community, have simple, informal and intimateinteractional processes

among them and the primary groups dominate the secondary ones. They have a high degree of
homogeneity in their living styles and identities while the ratio of social change and social mobility
is very low because of their limited resources and skills. They have no diversity and innovationas
the use of technology in rural community is very less. Basic urban/modern facilities like schools,
hospitals, markets, municipal offices, police stations, etc. are absent andthe people share the
features of primitive mode of life. Their ranks and status are usually based on the ownership of
land and type of labour and there is a strong hold of social institutions which provide guidance for
the behavioural patterns of its people.

3) Tribal Community:

According to Oxford Dictionary, “A tribe is a group of people in a primitive or barbarous

stage of development acknowledging the authority of a chief and usually regarding themselves as
having a common ancestor.” Whereas L.M Lewis believes that “tribal communities are those
which are small in scale, are restricted in the spatial and temporal range of their social, legal and
political relations and possess a morality, a religion and world view of corresponding dimensions.”
 So we can that a tribal community is the onewhichis economically backwardand has least
functional interdependence within the community, a comparative geographical isolation of its
people, a common dialect, customary laws and community panchayat as the source of power.

Such type of communities are particularly present in the Indian states of Kerala, Orissa,
Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, etc. and are well known for their
own traditions and amusing culture.