Community Engagement, Solidarity, and Citizenship

Module 2: Definitions of Community

LESSON 1: SOCIAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE

Communities are diverse. They are never static entities that are simplistic and narrow.

The interpretation itself of what a community is has been debated by social scientists and thought leaders. This
diversity of a common idea exposes the narrative that is vibrant and ever changing or evolving until this day.

The constant struggle to find identity in the science of communities is dependent upon the context used. The
different branches of knowledge look into the subject of communities in varied ways as lenses of inquiry shift in
every direction with the slightest change on technical terms or environment.

The community and the foundation of meaning we use to discuss communities must be delineated across
fields and ideas.

This unit focuses on threshing out the definitions of the "community" to its most basic and understandable form.
The students are challenged to apply these categorizations into an understanding of their real world.

COMMUNITY IN A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Sociology is a branch of social science that analyzes the history, evolution, structure, and functions of
societies. Sociology is employed in observing the community in a more sociological perspective, by focusing
on the subject across agencies, from the individual (micro level) to a larger and broader subject (macro level)
which includes institutions and other groups. The tools for studying societies vary from direct participation or
more empirical bases to critical analogies of social phenomena. In traditional study of sociology, the focus of
the study falls within these topics:

1. Social stratification
2. Social class
3. Social mobility
4. Religion
5. Sexuality
6. Deviance

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Social Stratification

To study society, a scholar needs to have a cluster of identifiable traits to distinguish individuals and groups
from one another. To do this, social scientists use social stratification to delineate subjects. Based on the
individual or group's shared characteristics, they identify individuals or groups as cohorts sharing common
experiences. Such categorizations may be based on work, wealth, or wage. The resulting classification usually
will split subjects into lower class, middle class, and upper class to identify the various strata within societies.

Social Class
A social class is the direct result of classifying people in accordance to material wealth, relative social value, or
other traits. It is determined based on a specified set of observable and quantifiable characteristics relative to a
set benchmark.

Social Mobility
Societies today are not only classified and identified by where they are based or situated. More than ever,
people and groups are more mobile and transient. Social mobility is the study of how individuals or groups
move across classifications and stratifications. Mobility, in this regard, is the transition of subjects in various
social identities within a determined structure. Here we can see statues on wealth, social prestige, and other
factors that can determine the current and historical progress of different sets of collectives.

Religion
It is how people or groups are classified by using core religious beliefs and practices as an identifiable social
characteristic. In sociology, religion is recognized as one of primary influences that contribute to individual
identity and social norms and thus is one of the factors to be studied.

Sexuality

Studying people also demands a more personal approach in identifying subjects. Sexuality is one of the topics
that identify people and groups through their sexual norms, orientation, interest, and behavior. These
characteristics are manifested from the more obvious, like fashion or aesthetic preference, to a more abstract
and less identifiable, such as sexual preference and emotional and spiritual characteristics. Sexuality, as part
of the human biological functions, cuts across other classifications and is one of the more popular studies in
current literature.

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Deviance
When we hear the word society, we often associate it with the idea of conformity. On the contrary, once we
hear the word deviance or deviant, we often have a feeling of unease. In sociology, studying deviance is rooted
in the interaction of society with a certain social anomaly such as a deviant act or norm-defying stunt. To
become a deviant, it must be against a preset rule or agreed-upon norm. Sociology studies the interaction of
deviants to emphasize the dynamics within social systems.

COMMUNITY IN AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Communities are the driving force for civilizations. Human evolution itself came from the mold of these
evolutionary shifts and has drastically accelerated human development.

Renowned naturalist Charles Darwin's discovery of human evolution through natural selection highlights the
idea that development stemmed from the ability of a certain species to adapt and therefore survive its
environment. This shattered the long-established notion that species retain their characteristics through the
course of time. Darwin's discovery overturned the commonly held logic and has changed the way we view not
only human development but also other ideas. Now, if we glance into how biological forms survive, we can also
use this to map out not only on how humans survived with the help of their biological characteristics and
advantages but also on how the creation of our own social mechanisms secured our place at the top of the
evolutionary chain.

Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age) — Hunters and gatherers

Around 2.5 million years ago, our earliest human ancestors survived as hunter-gatherers during this era.
Through sheer human ingenuity, the earliest men crafted tools from rocks and other materials they could find.
These tools were used basically for cutting and chopping.

Human development was marked by the development of their tools, which started with the Oldowan stone tool
industry which is the earliest known period where men first attained such feats of craftsmanship. Moving on, at
around 1.6 million years ago, humans started to slowly improve their tools as they had more robust

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construction and were more symmetrical, marking the Acheulean tradition. This also signifies the earliest
period where humans exhibited a form of communal behavior. Foraging is one of the earliest forms of social
stratification where roles were given to certain members of the group. The formation of these roles emphasized
the need for the earliest humans to form relationships among themselves to improve their chances of survival.

Hunting and foraging may be the start of how societies evolved but if we were to study the act itself, we can
draw some definitive conclusions about how their systems worked. For them to hunt for food, they scoured the
land for prey and depending on the animal to be hunted, they needed the efforts of other members to take
down their intended targets. Hunting demands the physical tools to do the work, therefore, it was mainly a task
for males. Women were known to gather wild plants and smaller prey. This was the first evidence of how men
categorized roles through the division of labor.

Mesolithic Age (Middle Stone Age) — Horticultural and Agricultural

The Mesolithic Age (9,600 BCE, right after the Ice Age) is arguably the turning point of human evolution. It was
during this time that hunter-gatherers were having a less vital communal function.

This was because during this time, due to the changing environment they were in, humans started to cultivate
more sustainable sources of food. They cultivated plants and then later, they formed an agricultural society.
However, this arc did not happen at the same rate because the evolution of many of these primitive
communities was also affected by the environment in which the humans were situated. Many of our earliest
ancestors opted to settle near bodies of water because fish was more abundant and easier to catch than it is to
hunt for animals that may be riskier and even life-threatening in some instances. Parts of the diet of our
ancestors were nuts, plants, fish, and other animals. Cultivation of plants was essential in building communities
that were less nomadic. It was the start of communal settlements.

Having a less nomadic and sustainable way to find food, humans in this period finally found a way on how to
provide food for themselves, thus causing the creation of more populous communes.

Neolithic Age — Agrarian

In this age, communes were more efficient than in the previous two ages. Herding was added to agriculture as
their main sources of food. Having evolved from hunting and gathering, herding was the start of a more
complex society moving away from foraging as the commune's primary task. It was also in this period of
development where humans evolved culturally. Since settlements were more permanent and work was
becoming more structured, it gave time for the communes to use their free time in other pursuits than foraging.
This resulted in the materialization of societal relations and dynamics in the commune became more grounded

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and systematized, ushering the dawn of civilization. This gave birth to the earliest known civilizations, such as
Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and the Indus Valley, which later on became the origins of modern states.

Agriculture was scaled down during this period as more efficient ways of farming were developed. Humans
developed tools using sturdier materials such as metals, which they developed later as farming equipment. As
the knowledge from thousands of years contributed to more optimum techniques of cultivating the land, they
also developed water irrigation.

COMMUNITY IN A POLITICAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE

The study of politics, some say, is all about the interplay of power and society. According to Harold Lasswell,
the study of politics can be summed up as to "who gets what, when, and how." If we were to closely scrutinize
this view, we can unravel power relationships in this simple yet powerful statement and in which other
disciplines, such as economics, can be used to interpret it. Politics is not just the study of power or systems,
nor is it about leaders or laws. Political science, as a field of study, intersects other branches of knowledge and
inquiry; it is, in fact, multidisciplinary. The study of politics cuts across all these dimensions in an attempt to
explain political action and behavior and the distribution of power and authority in the real world.

Political science views communities as composed of citizens guided under one constitution or government.
Individuals are considered as constituents whose identification can be summed by their citizenship proven by a
contract such as a passport or birth certificate. An individual is granted with various rights and privileges such
as the right to vote and is expected to comply with the rules and duties set by the state for its citizens.

Nation, State, and Nation-State

We often hear these words from the media and are often misused in some cases since these are interrelated
but are not interchangeable. A nation is composed of individuals that share a common background such as
language, history, or religion; while a state is a political entity that has the four characteristics: population,
territory, sovereignty, and government. A nation-state is when both nation and state come together to form a
unified body that has all four aforementioned characteristics bound by a common identification of culture,
language, and history.

Population - The people sharing a geographical space (towns, cities, countries)

Territory - Physical area under the rule or jurisdiction under a political system or ruler
Sovereignty - Authority of a state for self-governance and rule
Government - A group of individuals that administers the functions of the state

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A nation meets these four characteristics; this is why national interest prioritizes the protection of its population,
territories, sovereignty and its government, and the continuation of their cultural identity to ensure their survival
and relevance.

The government, as a representative of its people, has the power, legitimacy, and authority to represent the
nation through its foreign policy which is directed toward other nation-states. Foreign policy is the intersection
of national interest and local governance. It is considered to be a derivation of local politics.

What do you think are the national priorities of our country? Take time to think and read a newspaper. After
reading, look back into what was just discussed and reflect on our current national situation.

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