Community

A community is the social unit the office of well things with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area e.g. a country, village, town, or neighbourhood or in virtual space through communication platforms. Durable relations that remain beyond instant genealogical ties also define a sense of community, important to their identity, practice, and roles in social institutions such as family, home, work, government, society, or humanity at large. Although communities are commonly small relative to personal social ties, "community" may also refer to large institution affiliations such as national communities, international communities, together with virtual communities.

The English-language word "community" derives from the communis, "common".

Human communities may work intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, and risks in common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

Key concepts

In Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft 1887, German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies mentioned two species of human association: Gemeinschaft usually translated as "community" and Gesellschaft "society" or "association". Tönnies present the Gemeinschaft–Gesellschaft dichotomy 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.

In a seminal 1986 study, McMillan and Chavis identify four elements of "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 usage in schools, the workplace, and a classification of types of communities.

Studies conducted by the APPA[] indicate that young adults who feel a sense of belonging in a community, particularly small communities, instituting fewer psychiatric and depressive disorders than those who realize non have the feeling of love and belonging.[]

The process of learning to follow 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 setting the skills and knowledge and memorize the roles necessary to function within their culture and social environment. For some psychologists, particularly those in the psychodynamic tradition, the near 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.

Socialization is influenced primarily by the family, through which children first learn community norms. Other important influences add 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 add it, in an individual's involvement in community.