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THE
SOCIOLOGY of COMMUNITIES
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The
Focus of Our Interest and Affection
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Introduction
to the Module (Hub)
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Documents
Included in the Community
Module
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The
community is both an object to be strengthened and a subject to be studied
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While the community is the main focus
of the practical or applied sociology of this site (how to strengthen it),
it is also a social institution which is studied as part of the sociological
investigation of culture and social organization.
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| This module looks at
some of the sociological questions and topics related to community. |
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Unlike the applied modules where
there are different documents for different purposes and different readers,
this module is composed of lecture notes for the beginning student of society. |
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| As well as looking at
various definitions and descriptions of community, it also looks at community
characteristics of community. |
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Ferdinand Tönnies used the two words
gemeinschaft
(community) and gesellschaft (society) to distinguish between elements
of informal, warm and fuzzy, spontaneous social organization and elements
of formal, cold, codified and ordered social organization. |
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Following his approach, we use the two
German words in English to identify elements of either as degrees of one
or the other, not merely as absolute categories.
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| An important discovery
is that there is a very thin line between communities and families. |
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Among many non western groups (such
as the First Nations peoples in Canada), the kin group often is the community. |
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As we recognize a wide variety of family
arrangements, many of them increasingly appear to be the same as communities.
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| Another important discovery
is that our psychological makeup, which has not changed much in the past
50,000 years, makes us more comfortable in small face to face groups where
we know everybody, in contrast to the anonymity of urban settlements. |
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This appears to be the energy behind
our creating new gemeinschaft arrangements, where we form associations,
including those on the internet, and learn first names of service personnel
(eg bus drivers and deli clerks) to create the illusion that we continue
to live in a gemeinschaft environment, in spite of the rapid pace
of urbanization and growth of gesellschaft. |
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2009.06.30