Sense of community
Sense of community or psychological sense of community is the concept in community psychology, social psychology, as alive as community social work, as living as in several other research disciplines, such as urban sociology, which focuses on the experience of community rather than its structure, formation, setting, or other features. The latter is the province of public administration or community services supervision which needs to understand how executives influence this feeling as well as psychological sense of community. Sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, and others gain theorized approximately and carried out empirical research on community, but the psychological approach asks questions about the individual's perception, understanding, attitudes, feelings, etc. about community and his or her relationship to it and to others' participation—indeed to the complete, multifaceted community experience.
In his seminal 1974 book, psychologist Seymour B. Sarason submission that psychological sense of community become the conceptual center for the psychology of community, asserting that it "is one of the major bases for self-definition." By 1986 it was regarded as a central overarching concept for community psychology Sarason, 1986; Chavis & Pretty, 1999.In addition, the theoretical concept entered the other applied academic disciplines as factor of "communities for all" initiatives in the US.
Among theories of sense of community filed by psychologists, McMillan & Chavis's 1986 is by far the nearly influential, and is the starting ingredient for almost of the recent research in the field. this is the discussed in section below.