Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

Lesson 1.2
The Community in Various Perspectives
Contents
Introduction 1

Learning Objectives 2

Let’s Connect 2

Discover 4
Various Concepts of a Community 4
Community as a Social Construct 5
Community within Communities 5
Community as a Cultural Concept 5
Perspectives of Community 6
Social Science Perspective 6
Institutional Perspective 6
Civil Society Perspective 7
Grassroots Level Perspective 7

Wrap-Up 9

Try This! 10

Challenge Yourself 12

Reflect on This 14

Photo Credits 15

Bibliography 15
Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

Lesson 1.2

The Community in Various

Perspectives

Introduction
The communities are at the edge of the compassionate reaction cycle to combat COVID-19.
Without dynamic and functional community engagement, massive problems will spread to
diverse territories and cities within the Philippines. Communities have to be efficiently
mobilized to contain or avoid COVID-19.

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

With the extensive impact of COVID-19, especially on the most vulnerable groups in our
country, the lives of Filipino families were disturbed. Subsequently, it is imperative to create
procedures inside the family to manage the unusual and eventually prepare efforts to
combat this crisis.

Learning Objectives DepEd Learning Competency

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to
In this lesson, you should be able to do the compare and contrast the definitions of
following: community using various perspectives, e.g., social
sciences, institution, civil society, and
● Discuss the different concepts of
local/grassroots level (HUMSS_CSC 12-IIa-c-2).
community.
● Explore the various perspectives of
the community.
● Evaluate the different concepts of the
community.

Let’s Connect

i-Barangay 10 minutes

Identify one major issue or problem that your local barangay currently faces. Select three
people to share their opinions, thoughts, or positions about the issue or problem. Ask them
to think of ways or possible solutions to solve the issue or problem.

Major Issue or Problem: ______________________________________________

Name of Person Opinion, Position, or Thoughts Solution

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

Name of Person Opinion, Position, or Thoughts Solution

Guide Questions
1. Who plays major roles in your barangay’s community planning and action?
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2. Whose interest do these groups or individuals protect?

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3. What are the varying perspectives that play a vital role in your community?
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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

Discover
Various Concepts of a Community
The community can be understood as a concept or as a construct. It is not tangible; it
cannot be seen nor touched. Experiencing the uniqueness of one community requires a
person to continuously engage in its activities and processes.

What lenses can be used to deconstruct the concept of

the community?

Fig. 1. The celebration of the Feast of Santo Nino (the infant Jesus) in Manila, Philippines
shows the religiosity of the Filipino people.

A community is not only shaped by the individuals who are in it but also by its current
inhabitants who will likely stay when most of the previous individuals, such as senior citizens
or overseas migrant workers, have passed on or moved out.

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

A community, like all societies and cultures, is composed of individuals’ considerations and
activities. A community may not have a physical area but can be delineated by being a group
of individuals with a common interest (Bartle 2014, par 4–7). Thus, members of a
community have a unified decision in continuing which programs they deem fit for the
community’s improvement.

Community as a Social Construct

The concept of a community is a sociological construct. It is a set of continuous
interactions and human behaviors that have meaning and expectations among its
members. These involve action based on the shared expectations, values, beliefs, and
meanings among community members.

In the context of community action, the members must have a proposed plan of programs
that can be considered beneficial to the community as a whole. This social construct
maintains the unity among the community’s members to continually aim for progress and
create an environment for its members to thrive and progress despite challenges.

Community within Communities

Some large communities contain other smaller communities within their areas or their
boundaries. These include the province’s districts, country’s regions, ethnic groups in the
same areas, groups of nations, and other borders. Different communities can live and
coexist together, like the Aetas and Tagalogs in Rosario, Batangas. But in some places, unity
among these communities might be challenging because of conflicting political, cultural, and
historical backgrounds.

Community as a Cultural Concept

The community has a life of its own that goes past the entirety of all the lives of its
inhabitants. A community is cultural because it is a social organization. It is a system of
systems composed of traditions and practices learned by members or groups of individuals
from the community itself.

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

A community’s culture distinguishes it from other communities. It allows the community to

have its own identity and expand it even to its neighboring communities. A community must
consider creating organizations or groups that preserve cultural practices, such as arts,
dances, clothing, and literature, so that these can be enjoyed and appreciated by the
younger generations.

Perspectives of Community
Social Science Perspective
A community can be characterized by depicting its social and political systems that bind
people, community organizations, and leaders. Understanding these systems is
necessary for arranging efforts in engagement. For example, following social ties among
people may offer assistance to leaders in distinguishing a community’s authority,
understanding its behavior patterns, determining its high-risk groups, and reinforcing its
networks (Minkler et al. 1997).

Institutional Perspective
A community is comparable to a living creature from an institutional perspective. Composed
of diverse parts that function uniquely, a community has distinctive parts that speak to
specialized capacities, exercises, or interests that work inside particular boundaries to
meet the community’s needs. These separated functions can be observed in schools
focused on child learning, transport groups focused on moving people and products,
economic entities focused on enterprise and creation of job opportunities, church and
faith organizations focused on the spiritual well-being of individuals, and health centers
and hospitals focused on the individuals’ physical well-being and prevention and
treatment of diseases. The operation and connection of each sector have vital roles in
sustaining the balance of the community. From an institutional perspective, a good
community should work cooperatively and must have interdependent sectors that
share duty for recognizing and settling issues and improving its well-being. Integration,
collaboration, and coordination are key parts in an effective establishment of an
approach that will lead toward a community's improvement.

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

Civil Society Perspective

The term civil society became prevalent in political and economic talks in the 1980s, when it
was recognized with non-state developments that were resisting dictator administrations,
particularly in central and eastern Europe and Latin America. Civil society, also known as
the third sector (after government and commerce), has the control to impact the activities
of chosen policy-makers and businesses. But the nature of a respectful society—what it is
and what it does—is advancing in reaction to mechanical improvements and more subtle
changes inside societies (Jezard 2018, par 1-5).

Although this term can always be read or heard from the media and lawmakers, there are
quite a few who can make an established definition of what a civil society might be.
Considering the World Bank’s civil society interpretation, there is a wide array of multiple
groups of individuals and constructed organizations that share a common identity and
belief. This can be a small group of vulnerable individuals such as women, youth, elderly,
and indigenous groups. It can also be a large communion of groups with shared interests
like labor unions, non-government organizations, faith-based organizations, professional
associations, and foundations.

Grassroots Level Perspective

As observed by various community leaders and scholars, each individual has their sense of
community beyond its definitions and essence. In addition, these individuals may share a
unique sense of belonging in more than one community. This may sometimes lead to a
change in their sense of membership; they may not be responsive in participating in
community-led activities in the future.

Unifying the varying perspectives from the grassroots level, we have to understand the idea
of self. To describe it, philosopher and psychologist William James shed light on this issue in
his studies. He stated that it is important to consider two points of view on one’s identity:
the “I,” or how a person considers approximately himself or herself, and the “me,” or how
others see and think about him or her. These two may agree sometimes, but most of the
time do not. The result of shared identity with the development of individualism can cause
false assumptions of differences in appearance, language, and culture of origin. Opposing

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

traditions and political beliefs may be a challenge in sustaining the shared identity that a
community wants to achieve (ATSDR 2015, 5–6).

Check Your Progress

What are the various perspectives of the community?
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In Philippine Context
To reach an understanding of the community, we need to understand the fundamentals
of social interaction. Virgilio Enriquez, regarded as the Father of Filipino Psychology,
investigated the concept of kapwa. In the Filipino-English dictionary, the term pertains to
other individuals. A more coordinated interpretation from Filipino to English would
allow the terms both, fellow being, or others. For Enriquez, kapwa contradicts these
interpretations; it is the solidarity of the self and the others. Within its English
interpretation, the self and the other are different and separate; in Filipino, these two
are joined. Kapwa is essentially the shared identity of one’s self and others.

To make the term kapwa into a verb, it becomes pakikipagkapwa. Pakikipagkapwa as a

social activity has several modes of social interaction, namely:
1. Pakikitungo or transaction/civility with
2. Pakikisalamuha or interaction with
3. Pakikilahok or joining/participating in
4. Pakikibagay or in conformity with/in accord with
5. Pakikisama or being along with
6. Pakikipag-palagayang loob or being in rapport with or understanding or accepting of
7. Pakikisangkot or getting involved
8. Pakikiisa or being one with

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

In the lesson, we see the community’s significance in different ideal models and
perspectives. Supporting the explanation of kapwa by Enriquez, we can view the
community as the pillar of the self and of our “self.” This is reinforced by the Adlerian
idea of the self in which man is seen as a unit, a self-conscious entirety that works as an
open system (Lee & Ansbacher 1964, 358). Portraying the self as an open system
requires the idea of outside strengths that encompasses it, which relates to the
environment. One can be called an ecological environment with which we are relating to
all living things collaborating in a certain space.

Wrap-Up
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● Community can be discussed based on different views in social science lenses:
community as a social construct, community as a cultural concept, and as a
community within communities.
● Community as a sociological construct is a set of interactions and human behaviors
that have meaning and expectations among its members. It is not just an action, but
actions based on shared expectations, values, beliefs, and meanings among
individuals.
● There are communities within communities, and these include districts, regions,
ethnic groups, nations, and other boundaries.
● A community is cultural, which means it is a system of systems composed of things
that are learned instead of being inherited from genes and chromosomes.
● There are various perspectives in which communities can be explored: social
science perspective, institutional perspective, civil society perspective, and
grassroots level perspective.
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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

Try This!
A. True or False. Write true if the statement is correct. Otherwise, if the statement is
incorrect, write false.

_____________ 1. Multiple communities have the potential to accommodate, enable, and

encourage individual differences through a variety of communities.

_____________ 2. The structure of the community is connected to the social interaction of

its individuals.

_____________ 3. From a sociological constructivist point of view, the community is a set

of interaction that includes human behaviors which have meaning and
expectations among its members.

_____________ 4. It is imperative that the investigation utilizing the social sciences ought
to play a dynamic part in tending to regions of social concern and
clarifying the diverse features of a community.

_____________ 5. The role of civil groups is to go against the government and businesses
whose only interest is for the benefit of the few.

_____________ 6. From an institutional perspective, collaboration is relevant because it is

part of a logical approach to improvement.

_____________ 7. From an institutional perspective, community engagement needs a basic

view of human rights law. It is suggested to achieve a rights-based
approach.

_____________ 8. The concept of community as a political construct explains that people

are made to believe in one’s particular goal or interest.

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

_____________ 9. As a social science researcher, it is good to look at the things that are
important to the community: distinguishing a community’s authority,
getting its behavior patterns, determining its high-risk groups, and
reinforcing its networks.

_____________ 10. Location is a vital component of a community.

B. Short-Response Essay. Answer the following questions briefly and coherently.

1. What is the significance of preserving the culture of a community?

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2. Why is the presence of civil society groups important?

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3. What differences can you enumerate between an institutional perspective and a

grassroots level perspective?
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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

Challenge Yourself
Short-Response Essay. Consider this situation: There will be an action drive set by the
groups of your local barangay to give service to the teachers in disseminating information
about plans for the next quarters of the school year. These plans focus on improving the
situation of the community based on various perspectives. Provide one program that can
be adopted by your local barangay in the community and provide a sentence that explains
how this plan can help make the community more progressive.

1. Social Science Perspective

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2. Institutional Perspective
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3. Civil Society Perspective

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

4. Local/Grassroots Perspective
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Suggested Rubric for Grading

The rubric below is a suggested one. Your teacher may modify the rubrics based on your
needs. Consult your teacher for the final rubric.

Performance Levels

1 2 3 Suggeste
Criteria Score
Beginning Proficient Advanced d Weight
Proficiency Proficiency

Understanding The answer did not The answer The answer clearly
show understanding somewhat shows an shows an
of the ×3
of the perspectives. understanding of the understanding of the
Perspectives perspectives. perspectives.

Depth of The answer did not The answer The answer presents
provide appropriate somewhat provides appropriate
Response ×2
explanations. an appropriate explanations.
explanation.

Proving The answer did not The answer The answer provides
provide details to somewhat provides enough appropriate
prove his or her appropriate details to details to prove his or
×1
understanding of prove his or her her understanding of
perspectives. understanding of perspectives.
perspectives.

Total Possible Score 18

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

Reflect on This
Why is it important to understand the community from various perspectives?

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Unit 1: Concepts and Perspectives of Community

Photo Credits
Slum in Manila during flooding by SuSanA Secretariat is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via
Flickr.

Santo Nino Infant Jesus idolatry in Manila Philippines 2016 by Glendale Lapastora is
licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Bibliography
Bartel, Phil. “What is Community.” Community Empowerment Collective. January 2014.
http://cec.vcn.bc.ca/cmp/modules/com-wha.htm.

Garganta, Y. “Introduction to Community Engagement.” Unpublished manuscript, October

13, 2020. Typescript.

Global Initiative for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. A GI-ESCR Practitioner’s Guide: A
Rights-Based Approach to Participation. May 2014.

Jezard, Adam. “Who and What is ‘Civil Society?’” World Economic Forum. April 2018.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/what-is-civil-society.

McCloskey, Donna Jo, Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, J. Lloyd Michener, Tabia Henry Akintobi, Ann
Bonham, Jennifer Cook, Tamera Coyne-Beasley, et al. “Community Engagement:
Definitions and Organizing Concepts from the Literature.” In Principles of
Community Engagement, 3–41. USA: Department of Health and Human Services,
2011.

United Nation Population Fund. “The Human Rights-Based Approach.” 2014. Accessed
November 2, 2020.
https://www.unfpa.org/human-rights-based-approach.

Verona, MC. “Understanding Community Really Important?” Unpublished manuscript,

September 10, 2018. Typescript.

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