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In Marxist thought, communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access[1][2] to the articles of consumption and is classless and stateless,[3] implying the end of the exploitation of labour.[4][5]
Communism is a specific stage of socioeconomic development predicated upon a superabundance of material wealth, which is postulated to arise from advances in production technology and corresponding changes in the social relations of production. This would allow for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely-associated individuals.[4][6]
The term communist society should be distinguished from the Western concept of the communist state, the latter referring to a state ruled by a party which professes a variation of Marxism–Leninism.[7][8]
- 2Social aspects
Economic aspects[edit]
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A communist economic system would be characterized by advanced productive technology that enables material abundance, which in turn would enable the free distribution of most or all economic output and the holding of the means of producing this output in common. In this respect communism is differentiated from socialism, which, out of economic necessity, restricts access to articles of consumption and services based on one's contribution.[9]
![Community society management system Community society management system](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125642768/497765026.jpg)
In further contrast to previous economic systems, communism would be characterized by the holding of natural resources and the means of production in common as opposed to them being privately owned (as in the case of capitalism) or owned by public or cooperative organizations that similarly restrict their access (as in the case of socialism). In this sense, communism involves the 'negation of property' insofar as there would be little economic rationale for exclusive control over production assets in an environment of material abundance.[10]
The fully developed communist economic system is postulated to develop from a preceding socialist system. Marx held the view that socialism—a system based on social ownership of the means of production—would enable progress toward the development of fully developed communism by further advancing productive technology. Under socialism, with its increasing levels of automation, an increasing proportion of goods would be distributed freely.[11]
Social aspects[edit]
Individuality, freedom and creativity[edit]
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A communist society would free individuals from long working hours by first automating production to an extent that the average length of the working day is reduced[12] and second by eliminating the exploitation inherent in the division between workers and owners. A communist system would thus free individuals from alienation in the sense of having one's life structured around survival (making a wage or salary in a capitalist system), which Marx referred to as a transition from the 'realm of necessity' to the 'realm of freedom.' As a result, a communist society is envisioned as being composed of an intellectually-inclined population with both the time and resources to pursue its creative hobbies and genuine interests, and to contribute to creative social wealth in this manner. Karl Marx considered 'true richness' to be the amount of time one has at his disposal to pursue one's creative passions.[13][14] Marx's notion of communism is in this way radically individualistic.[15]
In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production.
--Capital, Volume III, 1894[16]
Marx's concept of the 'realm of freedom' goes hand-in-hand with his idea of the ending of the division of labor, which would not be required in a society with highly automated production and limited work roles. In a communist society, economic necessity and relations would cease to determine cultural and social relations. As scarcity is eliminated,[10]alienated labor would cease and people would be free to pursue their individual goals.[17]
Politics, law and governance[edit]
Marx and Engels maintained that a communist society would have no need for the state as it exists in contemporary capitalist society. The capitalist state mainly exists to enforce hierarchical economic relations, to enforce the exclusive control of property, and to regulate capitalistic economic activities—all of which would be non-applicable to a communist system.[10][17]
Engels noted that in a socialist system the primary function of public institutions will shift from being about the creation of laws and the control of people into a technical role as an administrator of technical production processes, with a decrease in the scope of traditional politics as scientific administration overtakes the role of political decision-making.[18] Communist society is characterized by democratic processes, not merely in the sense of electoral democracy, but in the broader sense of open and collaborative social and workplace environments.[10]
Marx never clearly specified whether or not he thought a communist society would be just; other thinkers have speculated that he thought communism would transcend justice and create society without conflicts, thus, without the needs for rules of justice.[19]
Transitional stages[edit]
Marx also wrote that between capitalist and communist society, there would be a transitory period known as the dictatorship of the proletariat.[10] During this preceding phase of societal development, capitalist economic relationships would gradually be abolished and replaced with socialism. Natural resources would become public property, while all manufacturing centers and workplaces would become socially owned and democraticallymanaged. Production would be organized by scientific assessment and planning, thus eliminating what Marx called the 'anarchy in production'. The development of the productive forces would lead to the marginalization of human labor to the highest possible extent, to be gradually replaced by automated labor.
Open-source and peer production[edit]
Many aspects of a communist economy have emerged in recent decades in the form of open-source software and hardware, where source code and thus the means of producing software is held in common and freely accessible to everyone; and to the processes of peer production where collaborative work processes produce freely available software that does not rely on monetary valuation. Michel Bauwens juxtaposes open source and peer production with 'market production'.[20]
Ray Kurzweil posits that the goals of communism will be realized by advanced technological developments in the 21st century, where the intersection of low manufacturing costs, material abundance and open-source design philosophies will enable the realization of the maxim 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'.[21]
In Soviet ideology[edit]
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The communist economic system was officially enumerated as the ultimate goal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its party platform. According to the 1986 Programme of the CPSU:
Communism is a classless social system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and with full social equality of all members of society. Under communism, the all-round development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces on the basis of continuous progress in science and technology, all the springs of social wealth will flow abundantly, and the great principle 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' will be implemented. Communism is a highly organised society of free, socially conscious working people a society in which public self-government will be established, a society in which labour for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement of everyone, a clearly recognised necessity, and the ability of each person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people.
The material and technical foundation of communism presupposes the creation of those productive forces that open up opportunities for the full satisfaction of the reasonable requirements of society and the individual. All productive activities under communism will be based on the use of highly efficient technical facilities and technologies, and the harmonious interaction of man and nature will be ensured.
In the highest phase of communism the directly social character of labor and production will become firmly established. Through the complete elimination of the remnants of the old division of labor and the essential social differences associated with it, the process of forming a socially homogeneous society will be completed.
Communism signifies the transformation of the system of socialist self-government by the people, of socialist democracy into the highest form of organization of society: communist public self-government. With the maturation of the necessary socioeconomic and ideological preconditions and the involvement of all citizens in administration, the socialist state—given appropriate international conditions—will, as Lenin noted, increasingly become a transitional form 'from a state to a non-state.' The activities of state bodies will become non-political in nature, and the need for the state as a special political institution will gradually disappear.
The inalienable feature of the communist mode of life is a high level of consciousness, social activity, discipline, and self-discipline of members of society, in which observance of the uniform, generally accepted rules of communist conduct will become an inner need and habit of every person.
Communism is a social system under which the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all.[22]
In Vladimir Lenin's political theory, a classless society would be a society controlled by the direct producers, organized to produce according to socially managed goals. Such a society, Lenin suggested, would develop habits that would gradually make political representation unnecessary, as the radically democratic nature of the Soviets would lead citizens to come to agree with the representatives' style of management. Only in this environment, Lenin suggested, could the state wither away, ushering in a period of stateless communism. [23]
In Soviet ideology, Marx's concepts of the 'lower and higher phases of communism' articulated in the Critique of the Gotha Program were reformulated as the stages of 'socialism' and 'communism'.[24] The Soviet state claimed to have begun the phase of 'socialist construction' during the implementation of the first Five-Year Plans during the 1930s, which introduced a centrally planned, nationalized/collectivized economy. The 1962 Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, published under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, claimed that socialism had been firmly established in the USSR, and that the state would now progress to the 'full-scale construction of communism',[25] although this may be understood to refer to the 'technical foundations' of communism more so than the withering away of the state and the division of labor per se. However, even in the final edition of its program before the party's dissolution, the CPSU did not claim to have fully established communism,[26] instead claiming that the society was undergoing a very slow and gradual process of transition.
Fictional portrayals[edit]
The Culture novels by Iain M Banks are centered on a communist post-scarcity economy[27][28][29] where technology is advanced to such a degree that all production is automated,[30] and there is no use for money or property (aside from personal possessions with sentimental value).[31] Humans in the Culture are free to pursue their own interests in an open and socially-permissive society. The society has been described by some commentators as 'communist-bloc'[32] or 'anarcho-communist'.[33] Banks' close friend and fellow science fiction writer Ken MacLeod has said that The Culture can be seen as a realization of Marx's communism, but adds that 'however friendly he was to the radical left, Iain had little interest in relating the long-range possibility of utopia to radical politics in the here and now. As he saw it, what mattered was to keep the utopian possibility open by continuing technological progress, especially space development, and in the meantime to support whatever policies and politics in the real world were rational and humane.'[34]
See also[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Communist society |
References[edit]
- ^Steele, David Ramsay (September 1999). From Marx to Mises: Post Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court. p. 66. ISBN978-0875484495.
Marx distinguishes between two phases of marketless communism: an initial phase, with labor vouchers, and a higher phase, with free access.
- ^Busky, Donald F. (July 20, 2000). Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey. Praeger. p. 4. ISBN978-0275968861.
Communism would mean free distribution of goods and services. The communist slogan, 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' (as opposed to 'work') would then rule
- ^O'Hara, Phillip (September 2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. p. 836. ISBN0-415-24187-1.
it influenced Marx to champion the ideas of a 'free association of producers' and of self-management replacing the centralized state.
- ^ abCritique of the Gotha Program, Karl Marx.
- ^Full Communism: The Ultimate Goal
- ^Full Communism: The Ultimate Goal
- ^Busky, Donald F. (July 20, 2000). Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey. Praeger. p. 9. ISBN978-0275968861.
In a modern sense of the word, communism refers to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.
- ^Wilczynski, J. (2008). The Economics of Socialism after World War Two: 1945-1990. Aldine Transaction. p. 21. ISBN978-0202362281.
Contrary to Western usage, these countries describe themselves as ‘Socialist’ (not ‘Communist’). The second stage (Marx’s ‘higher phase’), or ‘Communism’ is to be marked by an age of plenty, distribution according to needs (not work), the absence of money and the market mechanism, the disappearance of the last vestiges of capitalism and the ultimate ‘whithering away of the state.
- ^Gregory and Stuart, Paul and Robert (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First. South-Western College Pub. p. 118. ISBN0-618-26181-8.
Communism, the highest stage of social and economic development, would be characterized by the absence of markets and money and by abundance, distribution according to need, and the withering away of the state…Under socialism, each individual would be expected to contribute according to capability, and rewards would be distributed in proportion to that contribution. Subsequently, under communism, the basis of reward would be need.
- ^ abcdeBarry Stewart Clark (1998). Political economy: a comparative approach. ABC-CLIO. pp. 57–59. ISBN978-0-275-96370-5. Retrieved 7 March 2011.
- ^Wood, John Cunningham (1996). Karl Marx’s Economics: Critical Assessments I. Routledge. p. 248. ISBN978-0415087148.
In particular, this economy would possess (1) social ownership and control of industry by the ‘associated producers’ and (2) a sufficiently high level of economic development to enable substantial progress toward ‘full communism’ and thereby some combination of the following: super affluence; distribution of an increasing proportion of commodities as if they were free goods; an increase in the proportion of collective goods...
- ^Peffer, Rodney G. (2014). Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice. Princeton University Press. p. 73. ISBN9780691608884.
Marx believed the reduction of necessary labor time to be, evaluatively speaking, an absolute necessity. He claims that real wealth is the developed productive force of all individuals. It is no longer the labor time but the disposable time that is the measure of wealth.
- ^Jessop and Wheatley, Bob and Russell (1999). Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought, Volume 6. Routledge. p. 9. ISBN9780415193283.
Marx in the Grundrisse speaks of a time when systematic automation will be developed to the point where direct human labor power will be a source of wealth. The preconditions will be created by capitalism itself. It will be an age of true mastery of nature, a post-scarcity age, when men can turn from alienating and dehumanizing labor to the free use of leisure in the pursuit of the sciences and arts.
- ^Marx, Theorien uber der Mehwert III, ed. K. Kautsky (Stuttgart, 1910), pp. 303-4.
- ^Woods, Allen. W. ''Karl Marx on Equality'(pdf). New York University: Department of Philosophy. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
A society that has transcended class antagonisms, therefore, would not be one in which some truly universal interest at last reigns, to which individual interests must be sacrificed. It would instead be a society in which individuals freely act as the truly human individuals they are. Marx’s radical communism was, in this way, also radically individualistic.
- ^Karl Marx (1894). 'Karl Marx, Capital Volume III, Part VII. Revenues and their Sources'. Capital Volume III. Marxism.org. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
- ^ abCraig J. Calhoun (2002). Classical sociological theory. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 23–23. ISBN978-0-631-21348-2. Retrieved 5 March 2011.
- ^Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, on Marxists.org: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch01.htm: 'In 1816, he declares that politics is the science of production, and foretells the complete absorption of politics by economics. The knowledge that economic conditions are the basis of political institutions appears here only in embryo. Yet what is here already very plainly expressed is the idea of the future conversion of political rule over men into an administration of things and a direction of processes of production.'
- ^'Karl Marx – Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy'.. First published Tue Aug 26, 2003; substantive revision Mon Jun 14, 2010. Accessed March 4, 2011.
- ^Michel Bauwens (22 March 2014). 'From the Communism of Capital to a Capital for the Commons'. P2P Foundation. Retrieved 2 February 2019.
- ^Ray Kurzweil (February 1, 2012). Kurzweil: Technology Will Achieve the Goals of Communism. FORA TV.
- ^'The CPSU's Tasks In Perfecting Socialism And Making A Gradual Transition To Communism'. Program of the CPSU, 27th Congress, 1986 – Part Two. Eurodos. 1998. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
- ^Lenin, Vladimir (1917). The State and Revolution. p. 106.
- ^Lenin, V.I. State and Revolution. V.: The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State. Marxists.org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm
- ^Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With a special pref. to the American ed. by N. S. Khrushchev. New York: International Publishers, 1963. https://archive.org/details/ProgramOfTheCommunistPartyOfTheSovietUnion_150
- ^Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A New Edition. 1986. https://archive.org/details/ProgramOfTheCommunistPartyOfTheSovietUnion
- ^Banks, Iain M. (1987). Consider Phlebas. Orbit. ISBN978-0316005388.
He could not believe the ordinary people in the Culture really wanted the war, no matter how they had voted. They had their communist Utopia. They were soft and pampered and indulged, and the Contact section's evangelical materialism provided their consciencesalving good works. What more could they want?
- ^Walter, Damien (11 October 2012), Dear Ed Miliband … seek your future in post-scarcity SF, Guardian US, archived from the original on 2015-11-14
- ^Parsons, Michael; Banks, Iain M. (16 November 2012), Interview: Iain M Banks talks 'The Hydrogen Sonata' with Wired.co.uk, Wired UK, archived from the original on 2015-11-14,
It is my vision of what you do when you are in that post-scarcity society, you can completely indulge myself. The Culture has no unemployment problem, no one has to work, so all work is a form of play.
- ^Banks, Iain M. 'A Few Notes on the Culture'. Archived from the original on March 22, 2012. Retrieved 2015-11-23. Link is to an archived copy of the site that Banks linked to on his own website.
- ^Roberts, Jude; Banks, Iain M. (3 November 2014), A Few Questions About the Culture: An Interview with Iain Banks, Strange Horizons, archived from the original on 2015-11-23,
This is not say that Libertarianism can't represent a progressive force, in the right circumstances, and I don't doubt there will be significant areas where I would agree with Libertarianism. But, really; which bit of not having private property, and the absence of money in the Culture novels, have these people missed?
- ^Cramer & Hartwell, Kathryn & David G. (10 July 2007). The Space Opera Renaissance. Orb Books. p. 298. ISBN978-0765306180.
Iain M. Banks and his brother-in-arms, Ken MacLeod, both take a Marxist line: Banks with his communist-bloc 'Culture' novels, and MacLeod with his 'hard-left libertarian' factions.
- ^Poole, Steven (8 February 2008), Culture clashes, The Guardian, archived from the original on 2015-11-23
- ^Liptak, Andrew (19 December 2014), Iain M. Banks’ Culture Novels, Kirkus Reviews, archived from the original on 2015-11-23
Further reading[edit]
- Ollman, Bertell. 'Marx's Vision of Communism', Dialectical Marxism, New York University.
- Rigi, Jakob. 'Peer to Peer Production as the Alternative to Capitalism: A New Communist Horizon', Journal of Peer Production.
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Communist_society&oldid=902475501'
A community of interest gathers at Stonehenge, England, for the summer solstice.
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A community is a small or large social unit (a group of living things) that has something in common, such as norms, religion, values, or identity. Communities often share a sense of place that is situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighborhood) or in virtual space through communication platforms. Durable relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties also define a sense of community. People tend to define those social ties as important to their identity, practice, and roles in social institutions (such as family, home, work, government, society, or humanity at-large).[1][need quotation to verify][2] Although communities are usually small relative to personal social ties (micro-level), 'community' may also refer to large group affiliations (or macro-level), such as national communities, international communities, and virtual communities.[3]
The English-language word 'community' derives from the Old Frenchcomuneté, which comes from the Latincommunitas 'community', 'public spirit' (from Latin communis, 'shared in common').[4]
Human communities may share intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, and risks in common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.[citation needed]
- 1Perspectives of various disciplines
- 2Key concepts
- 2.2Sense of community
- 3Community development
- 3.1Community building and organizing
Perspectives of various disciplines[edit]
Archaeology[edit]
In archaeological studies of social communities the term 'community' is used in two ways, paralleling usage in other areas. The first is an informal definition of community as a place where people used to live. In this sense it is synonymous with the concept of an ancient settlement, whether a hamlet, village, town, or city. The second meaning is similar to the usage of the term in other social sciences: a community is a group of people living near one another who interact socially. Social interaction on a small scale can be difficult to identify with archaeological data. Most reconstructions of social communities by archaeologists rely on the principle that social interaction is conditioned by physical distance. Therefore, a small village settlement likely constituted a social community, and spatial subdivisions of cities and other large settlements may have formed communities. Archaeologists typically use similarities in material culture—from house types to styles of pottery—to reconstruct communities in the past. This is based on the assumption that people or households will share more similarities in the types and styles of their material goods with other members of a social community than they will with outsiders.[5]
Ecology[edit]
In ecology, a community is an assemblage of populations of different species, interacting with one another. Community ecology is the branch of ecology that studies interactions between and among species. It considers how such interactions, along with interactions between species and the abiotic environment, affect community structure and species richness, diversity and patterns of abundance. Species interact in three ways: competition, predation and mutualism. Competition typically results in a double negative—that is both species lose in the interaction. Predation is a win/lose situation with one species winning. Mutualism, on the other hand, involves both species cooperating in some way, with both winning. The two main types of communities are major which are self-sustaining and self-regulating (such as a forest or a lake) and minor communities which rely on other communities (like fungi decomposing a log) and are the building blocks of major communities.
This is a simplified example of a community. A community includes many populations and how they interact with each other. In this example there's an interaction between the zebra and the bush, and the lion and the zebra, as well as the bird and the organisms by the water, like the worms.
Key concepts[edit]
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft[edit]
In Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887), German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies described two types of human association: Gemeinschaft (usually translated as 'community') and Gesellschaft ('society' or 'association'). Tönnies proposed the Gemeinschaft–Gesellschaftdichotomy as a way to think about social ties. No group is exclusively one or the other. Gemeinschaft stress personal social interactions, and the roles, values, and beliefs based on such interactions. Gesellschaft stress indirect interactions, impersonal roles, formal values, and beliefs based on such interactions.[6]
Sense of community[edit]
In a seminal 1986 study, McMillan and Chavis[7] identify four elements of 'sense of community':
- membership: feeling of belonging or of sharing a sense of personal relatedness,
- influence: mattering, making a difference to a group and of the group mattering to its members
- reinforcement: integration and fulfillment of needs,
- shared emotional connection.
To what extent do participants in joint activities experience a sense of community?
A 'sense of community index (SCI) was developed by Chavis and colleagues, and revised and adapted by others. Although originally designed to assess sense of community in neighborhoods, the index has been adapted for use in schools, the workplace, and a variety of types of communities.[8]
Studies conducted by the APPA[who?] indicate that young adults who feel a sense of belonging in a community, particularly small communities, develop fewer psychiatric and depressive disorders than those who do not have the feeling of love and belonging.[citation needed]
Socialization[edit]
Lewes Bonfire Night procession commemorating 17 Protestant martyrs burnt at the stake from 1555 to 1557
The process of learning to adopt the behavior patterns of the community is called socialization. The most fertile time of socialization is usually the early stages of life, during which individuals develop the skills and knowledge and learn the roles necessary to function within their culture and social environment.[9] For some psychologists, especially those in the psychodynamic tradition, the most important period of socialization is between the ages of one and ten. But socialization also includes adults moving into a significantly different environment, where they must learn a new set of behaviors.[10]
Socialization is influenced primarily by the family, through which children first learn community norms. Other important influences include schools, peer groups, people, mass media, the workplace, and government. The degree to which the norms of a particular society or community are adopted determines one's willingness to engage with others. The norms of tolerance, reciprocity, and trust are important 'habits of the heart,' as de Tocqueville put it, in an individual's involvement in community.[11]
Community development[edit]
Community development is often linked with community work or community planning, and may involve stakeholders, foundations, governments, or contracted entities including non-government organisations (NGOs), universities or government agencies to progress the social well-being of local, regional and, sometimes, national communities. More grassroots efforts, called community building or community organizing, seek to empower individuals and groups of people by providing them with the skills they need to effect change in their own communities.[12] These skills often assist in building political power through the formation of large social groups working for a common agenda. Community development practitioners must understand both how to work with individuals and how to affect communities' positions within the context of larger social institutions. Public administrators, in contrast, need to understand community development in the context of rural and urban development, housing and economic development, and community, organizational and business development.
Formal accredited programs conducted by universities, as part of degree granting institutions, are often used to build a knowledge base to drive curricula in public administration, sociology and community studies. The General Social Survey from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and the Saguaro Seminar at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University are examples of national community development in the United States. The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York State offers core courses in community and economic development, and in areas ranging from non-profit development to US budgeting (federal to local, community funds). In the United Kingdom, Oxford University has led in providing extensive research in the field through its Community Development Journal,[13] used worldwide by sociologists and community development practitioners.
At the intersection between community development and community building are a number of programs and organizations with community development tools. One example of this is the program of the Asset Based Community Development Institute of Northwestern University. The institute makes available downloadable tools[14] to assess community assets and make connections between non-profit groups and other organizations that can help in community building. The Institute focuses on helping communities develop by 'mobilizing neighborhood assets' – building from the inside out rather than the outside in.[15] In the disability field, community building was prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s with roots in John McKnight's approaches.[16][17]
Community building and organizing[edit]
The anti-war affinity group 'Collateral Damage' protesting the Iraq War
In The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace (1987) Scott Peck argues that the almost accidental sense of community that exists at times of crisis can be consciously built. Peck believes that conscious community building is a process of deliberate design based on the knowledge and application of certain rules.[18] He states that this process goes through four stages:[19]
- Pseudocommunity: When people first come together, they try to be 'nice' and present what they feel are their most personable and friendly characteristics.
- Chaos: People move beyond the inauthenticity of pseudo-community and feel safe enough to present their 'shadow' selves.
- Emptiness: Moves beyond the attempts to fix, heal and convert of the chaos stage, when all people become capable of acknowledging their own woundedness and brokenness, common to human beings.
- True community: Deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this community.
In 1991, Peck remarked that building a sense of community is easy but maintaining this sense of community is difficult in the modern world.[20][further explanation needed]
The three basic types of community organizing are grassroots organizing, coalition building, and 'institution-based community organizing,' (also called 'broad-based community organizing,' an example of which is faith-based community organizing, or Congregation-based Community Organizing).[21]
Community building can use a wide variety of practices, ranging from simple events (e.g., potlucks, small book clubs) to larger-scale efforts (e.g., mass festivals, construction projects that involve local participants rather than outside contractors).
Community building that is geared toward citizen action is usually termed 'community organizing.'[22] In these cases, organized community groups seek accountability from elected officials and increased direct representation within decision-making bodies. Where good-faith negotiations fail, these constituency-led organizations seek to pressure the decision-makers through a variety of means, including picketing, boycotting, sit-ins, petitioning, and electoral politics.
Community organizing can focus on more than just resolving specific issues. Organizing often means building a widely accessible power structure, often with the end goal of distributing power equally throughout the community. Community organizers generally seek to build groups that are open and democratic in governance. Such groups facilitate and encourage consensus decision-making with a focus on the general health of the community rather than a specific interest group.
If communities are developed based on something they share in common, whether location or values, then one challenge for developing communities is how to incorporate individuality and differences. Rebekah Nathan suggests[according to whom?] in her book, My Freshman Year, we are drawn to developing communities totally based on sameness, despite stated commitments to diversity, such as those found on university websites.
Community currencies[edit]
Some communities have developed their own local exchange trading systems (LETS)[23] and local currencies, such as the Ithaca Hours system,[24] to encourage economic growth and an enhanced sense of community. Community currencies have recently proven valuable in meeting the needs of people living in various South American nations, particularly Argentina, that recently suffered as a result of the collapse of the Argentinian national currency.[25]
Types of community[edit]
Participants in Diana Leafe Christian's 'Heart of a Healthy Community' seminar circle during an afternoon session at O.U.R. Ecovillage
A number of ways to categorize types of community have been proposed. One such breakdown is as follows:
- Location-based Communities: range from the local neighbourhood, suburb, village, town or city, region, nation or even the planet as a whole. These are also called communities of place.
- Identity-based Communities: range from the local clique, sub-culture, ethnic group, religious, multicultural or pluralisticcivilisation, or the global community cultures of today. They may be included as communities of need or identity, such as disabled persons, or frail aged people.
- Organizationally based Communities: range from communities organized informally around family or network-based guilds and associations to more formal incorporated associations, politicaldecision making structures, economic enterprises, or professional associations at a small, national or international scale.
The usual categorizations of community relations have a number of problems:[26] (1) they tend to give the impression that a particular community can be defined as just this kind or another; (2) they tend to conflate modern and customary community relations; (3) they tend to take sociological categories such as ethnicity or race as given, forgetting that different ethnically defined persons live in different kinds of communities —grounded, interest-based, diasporic, etc.[27]
In response to these problems, Paul James and his colleagues have developed a taxonomy that maps community relations, and recognizes that actual communities can be characterized by different kinds of relations at the same time:[28]
- Grounded community relations. This involves enduring attachment to particular places and particular people. It is the dominant form taken by customary and tribal communities. In these kinds of communities, the land is fundamental to identity.
- Life-style community relations. This involves giving primacy to communities coming together around particular chosen ways of life, such as morally charged or interest-based relations or just living or working in the same location. Hence the following sub-forms:
- community-life as morally bounded, a form taken by many traditional faith-based communities.
- community-life as interest-based, including sporting, leisure-based and business communities which come together for regular moments of engagement.
- community-life as proximately-related, where neighbourhood or commonality of association forms a community of convenience, or a community of place (see below).
- Projected community relations. This is where a community is self-consciously treated as an entity to be projected and re-created. It can be projected as through thin advertising slogan, for example gated community, or can take the form of ongoing associations of people who seek political integration, communities of practice[29] based on professional projects, associative communities which seek to enhance and support individual creativity, autonomy and mutuality. A nation is one of the largest forms of projected or imagined community.
In these terms, communities can be nested and/or intersecting; one community can contain another—for example a location-based community may contain a number of ethnic communities.[30] Both lists above can used in a cross-cutting matrix in relation to each other.
Internet communities[edit]
An online 'community' that allows user anonymity builds weaker bonds than an actual community[citation needed]. Sites that offer online interaction between individuals, like Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and Discord. allow (even tacitly encourage) users to stalk and bully others in their community[citation needed], protected by anonymity, because confrontation drives interaction, and thus revenue[citation needed]. 'An audience isn’t just a big community; it can be more anonymous, with many fewer ties among users. A community isn’t just a small audience either; it has a social density that audiences lack.' [31]
See also[edit]
- Community – Wikipedia book
![Society Society](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125642768/616425573.jpg)
Notes[edit]
- ^'Community : The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology : Blackwell Encyclopedia of SociolOnline'. www.sociologyencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2016-07-01.
- ^James, Paul; Nadarajah, Yaso; Haive, Karen; Stead, Victoria (2012). Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development: Other Paths for Papua New Guinea. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. p. 14.
[...] we define community very broadly as a group or network of persons who are connected (objectively) to each other by relatively durable social relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties and who mutually define that relationship (subjectively) as important to their social identity and social practice.
- ^See also: James, Paul (2006). Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In – Volume 2 of Towards a Theory of Abstract Community. London: Sage Publications.
- ^'community' Oxford Dictionaries. 2014. Oxford Dictionaries
- ^Canuto, Marcello A. and Jason Yaeger (editors) (2000) The Archaeology of Communities. Routledge, New York. Hegmon, Michelle (2002) Concepts of Community in Archaeological Research. In Seeking the Center: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in the Mesa Verde Region, edited by Mark D. Varien and Richard H. Wilshusen, pp. 263–79. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
- ^Tönnies, Ferdinand (1887). Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, Leipzig: Fues's Verlag. An English translation of the 8th edition 1935 by Charles P. Loomis appeared in 1940 as Fundamental Concepts of Sociology (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft), New York: American Book Co.; in 1955 as Community and Association (Gemeinschaft und gesellschaft[sic]), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; and in 1957 as Community and Society, East Lansing: Michigan State U.P. Loomis includes as an Introduction, representing Tönnies' 'most recent thinking', his 1931 article 'Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft' in Handwörterbuch der Soziologie (Stuttgart, Enke V.).
- ^McMillan, D.W., & Chavis, D.M. 1986. 'Sense of community: A definition and theory,' p. 16.
- ^Perkins, D.D., Florin, P., Rich, R.C., Wandersman, A. & Chavis, D.M. (1990). Participation and the social and physical environment of residential blocks: Crime and community context. American Journal of Community Psychology, 18, 83–115. Chipuer, H.M., & Pretty, G.M.H. (1999). A review of the Sense of Community Index: Current uses, factor structure, reliability, and further development. Journal of Community Psychology, 27(6), 643–58. Long, D.A., & Perkins, D.D. (2003). Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Sense of Community Index and Development of a Brief SCI. Journal of Community Psychology, 31, 279–96.
- ^Newman, D. 2005. Chapter 5. 'Building Identity: Socialization' pp. 134–40.
- ^Newman, D. 2005, p. 41.
- ^Smith, M. 2001. Community.
- ^Kelly, Anthony, 'With Head, Heart and Hand: Dimensions of Community Building' (Boolarong Press) ISBN978-0-86439-076-9
- ^Community Development Journal, Oxford University Press
- ^ABCD Institute, in cooperation with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. 2006. Discovering Community Power: A Guide to Mobilizing Local Assets and Your Organization's Capacity.
- ^ABCD Institute. 2006. Welcome to ABCD.
- ^Lutfiyya, Z.M (1988, March). Going for it': Life at the Gig Harbor Group Home. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Center on Human Policy, Research and Training Center on Community Integration.
- ^McKnight, J. (1989). Beyond Community Services. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, Center of Urban Affairs and Policy Research.
- ^M. Scott Peck, (1987). The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace, pp. 83–85.
- ^Peck (1987), pp. 86–106.
- ^M. Scott Peck (1991). 'The Joy of Community'. An interview with M. Scott Peck by Alan Atkisson. In Context #29, p. 26.
- ^Jacoby Brown, Michael, (2006), Building Powerful Community Organizations: A Personal Guide To Creating Groups That Can Solve Problems and Change the World (Long Haul Press)
- ^Walls, David (1994) 'Power to the People: Thirty-five Years of Community Organizing'. From The Workbook, Summer 1994, pp. 52–55. Retrieved on: June 22, 2008.
- ^Local Exchange Trading Systems were first developed by Michael Linton, in Courtenay, BC, see'LETSystems – new money'Archived 2006-08-19 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved: 2006-08-01.
- ^The Ithaca Hours system, developed by Paul Glover is outlined in 'Creating Community Economics with Local Currency'Archived 2006-07-15 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved: 2006-08-01.
- ^'Social Trade Organisation'. Strohalm.net. Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved 2009-04-18.
- ^Gerhard Delanty, Community, Routledge, London, 2003.
- ^James, Paul (2006). Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In – Volume 2 of Towards a Theory of Abstract Community. London: Sage Publications.
- ^James, Paul; Nadarajah, Yaso; Haive, Karen; Stead, Victoria (2012). Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development: Other Paths for Papua New Guinea (pdf download). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
- ^Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.
- ^Tropman John E., Erlich, John L. and Rothman, Jack (2006), 'Tactics and Techniques of Community Intervention' (Wadsworth Publishing)
- ^Shirky, Clay (2008). 'Chapter 2'. Here Comes Everybody. Penguin Group. ISBN978-1-59420-153-0.
References[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Community. |
Look up community in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Barzilai, Gad. 2003. Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage: 2000. What is globalization? Cambridge: Polity Press.
- Chavis, D.M., Hogge, J.H., McMillan, D.W., & Wandersman, A. 1986. 'Sense of community through Brunswick's lens: A first look.' Journal of Community Psychology, 14(1), 24–40.
- Chipuer, H.M., & Pretty, G.M.H. (1999). A review of the Sense of Community Index: Current uses, factor structure, reliability, and further development. Journal of Community Psychology, 27(6), 643–58.
- Christensen, K., et al. (2003). Encyclopedia of Community. 4 volumes. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Cohen, A. P. 1985. The Symbolic Construction of Community. Routledge: New York.
- Durkheim, Émile. 1950 [1895] The Rules of Sociological Method. Translated by S.A. Solovay and J.H. Mueller. New York: The Free Press.
- Cox, F., J. Erlich, J. Rothman, and J. Tropman. 1970. Strategies of Community Organization: A Book of Readings. Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock Publishers.
- Effland, R. 1998. The Cultural Evolution of Civilizations Mesa Community College.
- Giddens, A. 1999. 'Risk and Responsibility' Modern Law Review 62(1): 1–10.
- James, Paul (1996). Nation Formation: Towards a Theory of Abstract Community. London: Sage Publications.
- Lenski, G. 1974. Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
- Long, D.A., & Perkins, D.D. (2003). Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Sense of Community Index and Development of a Brief SCI. Journal of Community Psychology, 31, 279–96.
- Lyall, Scott, ed. (2016). Community in Modern Scottish Literature. Brill | Rodopi: Leiden | Boston.
- Nancy, Jean-Luc. La Communauté désœuvrée – philosophical questioning of the concept of community and the possibility of encountering a non-subjective concept of it
- Muegge, Steven (2013). 'Platforms, communities and business ecosystems: Lessons learned about entrepreneurship in an interconnected world'. Technology Innovation Management Review (February): 5–15.
- Newman, D. 2005. Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life,Chapter 5. 'Building Identity: Socialization' Pine Forge Press. Retrieved: 2006-08-05.
- Putnam, R.D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster
- Sarason, S.B. 1974. The psychological sense of community: Prospects for a community psychology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 1986. 'Commentary: The emergence of a conceptual center.' Journal of Community Psychology, 14, 405–07.
- Smith, M.K. 2001. Community. Encyclopedia of informal education. Last updated: January 28, 2005. Retrieved: 2006-07-15.
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