COMMUNITY

Course: Introduction to Sociology (SOC-101)

Course Instructor: Saeed Mashaal Bhatti
The term community is one of the most elusive and vague in sociology and is by now largely
without specific meaning. At the minimum it refers to a collection of people in a geographical
area. Three other elements may also be present in any usage.
(1) Communities may be thought of as collections of people with a particular social
structure; there are, therefore, collections which are not communities. Such a notion
often equates community with rural or pre-industrial society and may, in addition, treat
urban or industrial society as positively destructive.
(2) A sense of belonging or community spirit.
(3) All the daily activities of a community, work and non-work, take place within the
geographical area, which is self-contained. Different accounts of community will
contain any or all of these additional elements.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A COMMUNITY
1. Territory
2. Close and informal relationships
3. Mutuality
4. Common values and beliefs
5. Organized interaction
6. Strong group feeling
7. Cultural similarity
Talcott Parsons defined community as collectivity the members of which share a common
territorial area as their base of operation for daily activities. According to Ferdinand Tonnies
community is defined as an organic natural kind of social group whose members are bound
together by the sense of belonging, created out of everyday contacts covering the whole range of
human activities. He has presented ideal-typical pictures of the forms of social associations
contrasting the solidarity nature of the social relations in the community with the large scale and
impersonal relations thought to characterize industrializing societies. Kingsley Davis defined it
as the smallest territorial group that can embrace all aspects of social life. For Karl Mannheim
community is any circle of people who live together and belong together in such a way that they
do not share this or that particular interest only but a whole set of interests.
THEORIES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNITIES
Man has always lived in groups. It was not however until human groups began living a more or
less sedentary life that settlements or communities appeared. The eminent economic historian N.
S. B Gras propounded the theory that a nomadic economy and the latter preceded the village
community by a collectional economy that was the most primitive. Villages developed into
towns when a class of traders settled permanently in the villages and began trading from their
homes. Finally when conditions were favorable the towns developed into metropolises or large
cities that according to Gras appeared with the rise of empires and nation states. Gras contended
that the following conditions must be present in order for a metropolis to arise- considerable
natural resources, good transportation conditions-land that lends itself to the construction of
highways with a location near navigation water but a considerable distance from other large
cities and a temperate climate.
Charles Cooley put forth the theory that the development of large cities is primarily due to a
break in transportation that is an interruption in the movement of goods for the purpose of
transferring them from one type of conveyance to another. He distinguished two types of Breaks
the physical and commercial both of which may be involved at the same time.
By the first he meant mere physical transfer or storage of goods and by the second a change in
ownership. Transfer necessitates various activities that bring people together. People cooperate
to unload and store the commodities and to complete the financial transactions involved in the
transfer of ownership. This procedure requires warehouses and financial institutions each with its
personnel. The person engaged in various tasks the primary workers attract other secondary
workers who cater to their needs.
Consequently houses have to be built and hotels, shops have to be established. Institutions and
organizations of all types must be founded to satisfy the need of the people. The more extensive
the activities connected with the break in transportation the greater is the number of people
involved. The concentration of people and activities stimulates production. Commercial
development induces industrial activity. Metropolitanism manifests itself in a remarkable
development of subordinate communities around a central city or their orientation towards it so
as to give the arrangement more or less of an integrated unity. R. D McKenzie in the
Metropolitan Community showed that the development of each of the three types of
transportation- water, rail and motor had a specific influence upon the course of city
development in United States. These three types of transportation played effective roles in
certain periods corresponding to phases of urban development. The water transportation period
was important up to 1850 and marked the development of urban communities along the
seacoasts, lakes and navigable rivers. Rail transportation made possible the growth of cities and
towns at Junction Island.
RURAL & URBAN COMMUNITY
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RURAL & URBAN COMMUNITY
1. Mode of Life
2. Degree of Homogeneity
3. Attitudes & Behavior
4. Scope of Occupation Mobility
5. Role of Family
6. Code of Conduct
7. Living Patterns
8. Social Changes
9. Social Contacts
10. Uniformity
11. Division of Labor
12. Status of Woman
13. Social Stratification
14. Social Mobility
15. Environment
16. Social Control
17. Cultural Affiliation
18. Competition & Cooperation
19. Social Movements
20. Norms & Values

COMPARISON BETWEEN SOCIETY AND COMMUNITY

The fundamental difference between community and society is the difference between the part
and whole. To arrive at a distinction between two things we have to place them apart from each
other but to take away community from the whole from the society is to destroy the
completeness of society.

Community Society
(1) Population is one of the most essential Population is important but here the
characteristics of a community irrespective of the population is conditioned by a feeling
consideration whether people have or do not have of oneness. Thus conscious relations are
conscious relations. more important than the mere
population for a society.
(2) A community by nature is discrete as compared By nature and character society is
with society. abstract.

(3) For community area or locality is very essential Society is area less and shapeless and
and that perhaps is the reason that the community for a society area is no consideration.
had a definite shape.

(4) A community has comparatively narrow scope of A society has heterogeneity and
community sentiments and as such it cannot have because of its wide scope and field can
wide heterogeneity. embrace people having different
conflicts.
(5) The scope of community is narrow than that of The society has much wider scope as
society because community came much later than compared with the community.
the society. Though the primitive people might not
have understood the importance of community but
they realized that of the society and lived in it.

(6) In a community every effort is made to avoid In a society likeness and conflict can
differences or conflicts and to bring likeness as exist side by side and in fact the scope
nearly as possible because cooperation and of society is so vast that there is every
conflicts cannot exist in a community. possibility of adjustment.