Crittically Examine The Use Of The Term
Community Essay, Research Paper
Critically analyze the usage of the term? community? in the 1990? s. The essay should be structured in such a manner that it incorporates mention to Social Policy, Legislation and pattern issues. Students will be required to do usage of theoretical surveies, peculiarly from relevant academic and other beginnings such as books, diaries and relevant publications.
The significance of community is a slippery 1. It is used in many different contexts and is a construct that means really different things to different people. A utile starting point is in the book Keywords by Raymond Williams. His research on the word community indicates that it has been portion of English linguistic communication since the fourteenth century, originally used to mention to the common people as opposed to those of rank, or to province or organised society. By the sixteenth century it was used to mention to? the quality of holding something in common? and? to a sense of common individuality and characteristics. ? In clip Community besides came to mention to a peculiar quality of relationship, every bit good as a differentiation between community and civil society on one manus and the province on the other.
There are many different types of community and the word is really equivocal, but it is possible to separate between several types harmonizing to their contrasting characteristics and features, such as denseness of their societal webs, the grade of their openness and their continuance.
Sociologically it is normally taken to average people who live in a common geographical country or it can be defined in footings of common involvement. It implies some sort of association, possibly even sharing, and engagement in common relationships. It is in these shared features which bind people together where we start to understand the term and its deductions, although even within sociology community takes many different signifiers. In 1995 research worker Hillery found 94 sociological definitions and the lone common yarn was that they all dealt with people.
The authoritative signifier of community which many think of when they here the word is the traditional on the job category communities found throughout industrial Britain during the earlier portion of the twentieth century. These were tightly knit colonies of workers and their households who grew up around the mines, mills, ports and other workplaces. However with an progressively efficient conveyance web many British industries came under menace from cheaper and better quality merchandises from abroad, and within those industries that Britain still held, the workers were replaced with machines.
This loss of industry had a disabling consequence on local countries, many of which had grown up around the industry. Research into such countries revealed that such communities are really conservative. They are besides seeped in tradition related to these political orientations. Such traditions include a moral duty to keep a respectable criterion of life and a strong committedness to the work moral principle.
Howe? s research on a on the job category territory of Eastlough in Protestant East Belfast showed despite a high unemployment rate the dole was still seen as an break of work, and it was legitimate employment which was sought and desired. This was strongly supported by long standing attitudes and values. Bing on the dole induced strong feelings of private shame, which, in bend frequently led people to retreat from the community. As a consequence Howe found their lives to go farther impoverished by? societal isolation, atomization and misgiving? ( Howe 1990 ) .
With the diminution of these alleged? occupational communities? comes the impression that the construct of community is non relevant in the twenty-first century. The Elderly who one time belonged to such so called? occupational? communities reminisce about the good old yearss, when everyone knew and looked out for each other. They talk about a strong community consciousness generated by common abode and common necessity & # 8211 ; a societal support web that they feel is missing in modern twenty-four hours society.
Not merely among the aged but in general, there is a widely held belief that modern times have witnessed a diminution of community. In my sentiment this comes approximately because selective, romanticised positions of the yesteryear are frequently adopted and the less sentimental memories of features and events from the yesteryear are frequently forgotten. The struggles and internal tensenesss of life are omitted and alternatively replaced with forms of affinity and community solidarity. My personal position is that this is untrue and community is still of import in all our lives, it merely manifests itself otherwise
Thingss have changed dramatically since our grandparents were immature. The rapid growing of urban sprawl? s accompanied by people? s new desire to go and non remain in the topographic point they were born meant that in general people are a batch more anon. in society. Many aged people as a consequence feel they live in a? universe of aliens? .
Wellman et al carried out research on the altering nature of local communities in metropoliss. As a consequence of this he came up with three footings: Community lost, community saved and community liberated.
Community lost is this impression of a diminution of community. Larger, denser metropoliss led to the dislocation of vicinity based or community life and local, face to confront relationships were replaced with secondary links through workplace and involvement groups. Importantly, ties to vicinity are less of import and persons are alternatively submerged in the general namelessness of metropolis life. In one portion of North London dominated by big lodging estates, one survey found that merely 2 in 5 people felt like they belong to a community. ( Although as we? ve seen what 1 individual agencies by community may be wholly different to the following )
Community saved is the counter statement. This acknowledges that vicinity and affinity webs continue to boom in the metropolis and vicinity and primary ties do in fact still exist. It is the statement that urban populations have merely sifted into a mosaic of more similar residential countries where the communal desire for informal societal control exerts itself. U.S and U.K surveies have shown that people in metropoliss draw on the same beginnings of support as people in rural areas- family neighbors and friends.
Community liberated is a point someplace between these two, which sees communities as holding evolved and taking a different signifier. Community still exists but in webs instead than vicinities. Simply because community is non about vicinity does non intend it no longer exists. This thought recognises the importance of community ties and the assortment of links people have within the larger metropolitan country in webs. It this 3rd point of view that I think best describes the impression of community in the twenty-first century.
The construct of community nevertheless is non entirely based within the subject of sociology. In modern times the term is frequently used with political orientation with mention to societal policy, statute law and pattern issues. Community has become a? bombilation? word with respects to political issues such as these. Areas such as community development, community attention community policing, community instruction all draw on the thought of community and its political orientations. The inclusion of community as a subject in these policies represents a more modern expression at the jobs of the people. The construct rejects the more antique bureaucratic, large-scale attack to policy devising and alternatively brings in more participatory, antiphonal, theoretical accounts. While I think this is right line to take the word is frequently misused.
? Today authoritiess utilize? community? as if it were an rousing can, to be sprayed on any societal programme, giving it a more progressive and sympathetic seal? ( Cochrane 1986 )
One such policy that demonstrates this different manner of thought is? attention in the community? . A high profile policy in which community is an indispensable portion.
Traditionally people with disenabling physical and mental conditions were institutionalised. This involved societal segregation and basically removed them from society, lodging them in big refuge type adjustment. This manner of covering with the handicapped is nevertheless no longer acceptable, or so possible. First new ways of thought and increased consciousness of human rights meant that it was non acceptable to insulate people from the remainder of the universe merely because they were different. Second demographic displacements which had accompanied industrial development, meant that people were populating much longer so the figure of people who needed rather high degree of support increased significantly. Medical progresss meant people whose disablements would hold caused them to decease at birth were living, and life anticipation in general had increased. Mass institutionalisation was non acceptab
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The traditional societal support webs found in the close knit occupational communities were besides losing due to the diminution of the close knit community. This was taken one measure farther when in the 1880ss, the desire to privatize public endeavors and cut down public outgo, including industrial subsidies led to a rapid diminution of fabrication in the early 1980? s and led to historically high degrees of unemployment. Which as we have seen weakens a communities societal support web.
Over the last 20 old ages the chief manner societal policy has responded to these jobs is by promoting the development of community attention enterprises, these can be split into two chief classs? Care in the community? and? Care by the community? . Care by the community largely applies to the aged and puts accent on informal attention by friends and household. Formal attention plays a critical supporting function nevertheless, and enables friends and household attention for the individual with services such as place aid and repasts on wheels. Care in the community is rather different. This applies largely to those with mental or physical disablements or conditions and normally involves people with similar types of disablement life in the same place, with changing grade of intercession by nurses or carers depending on the badness of the disablement. This attention differs from the old manner institutional attention because where the units are smaller the person should ideally be able to populate a more? normal? lifestyle. Each occupant should be allowed some pick over their actions and agendas and the integrating into the environing community is encouraged.
The authorities has a great trade of control over communities and it is of import to understand that today they are frequently active creative activities. In the twentieth century many efforts have been made to build communities and today the type of community found in different countries is greatly influenced by societal policy, statute law and the allotment of financess carried out through cardinal and local authoritiess. In the 1940? s? New Towns? such as Milton Keynes were built to alleviate the force per unit area on older urban locations which were fastly going congested and overcrowded. Politicians and contrivers worked together to seek and make the community spirit they saw as being so desirable. Part of their thought was to accomplish a societal balance as they saw individual category colonies as socially unwanted and politically unsafe, they attempted to make this by suiting societal groups approximately in proportions harmonizing to the national norm and provided a assortment of lodging types, sizes and term of offices. The town would supply a broad scope of occupations and would non be dependent on one industry. The aim of the new towns were for them to go a? microcosm of modern-day British society? ( Aldridge 1979 ) .
The success of this varied between topographic points although in general the authorities? s Utopian ideal was somewhat unrealistic. The people who moved to the new towns were typically in-between category, and? skilled manual workers were over represented about everyplace. The age scope of people was besides rather limited because most of the migrators were immature households. More significantly Deakin and Ungerson? s survey of migration out of London to New Towns showed migrators? were drawn from countries and societal groups non preponderantly in greatest demand? therefore the bulk of those populating in the interior metropolis countries the New Towns were designed to live over were still at that place. The selective form of migration could even be seen as declining the job of interior metropolis countries by concentrating farther the deprived groups at that place.
Extreme want is a job that faces many topographic points in Britain. Often in interior metropolis countries but non ever it is seen in territories or vicinities where people are non acquiring the same opportunities in life due to a scope of societal jobs. Unemployment, offense, hapless lodging and life conditions, individual parents, hooliganism, vandalism and racial torment all create a hapless criterion of life in which people are trapped. New Labours thought as to how to renew vicinities that are deprived in this manner is the Social Exclusion Unit.
Set up in 1997 and based in Downing Street, its purpose was to better people? s criterion of life and to give everyone equal opportunities in life. ? The National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal? . Is an effort by the New Labour authorities? to develop incorporate and sustainable attacks to the jobs of the worst lodging estates, including offense, drugs, unemployment, community dislocation and bad schools? . The thought of the unit is non to supply easy solutions for the short term, but to aim the grass roots of the job, assisting people to assist themselves. This thought is typically New Labour, a point someplace between the value systems adhered to by the New right and the Old Left.
In the brochure? A National Strategy for vicinity Renewal: a model for audience? produced by the authorities it has proposals as to how to resuscitate communities in disadvantaged countries.
The first impression is to assist occupants to undertake jobs that threaten to sabotage the community by taking a difficult line on anti societal behavior, utilizing neighbourhood warden strategies ( community patroling ) to cut down offense and fright and by bettering lodging allowing policies.
The 2nd purpose is to excite community activity, presumptively to try to unite people and convey back some of the? community spirit? found in occupational communities. This will go on through promoting more meeting topographic points and chances possibly with installations and stores, and by premoting humanistic disciplines and athleticss in disadvantaged countries.
Third its purpose is to acquire the occupants themselves involved in turning around their vicinities by doing it easier for community and voluntary administrations to acquire support and effort to construct on what they call? community? capacity and leading.
The units work falls under 3 chief classs. Funding regeneration plans in disadvantaged vicinities, Giving? New Deals? to the unemployed, solitary parents and the handicapped, and guaranting coherency and a authorities united on the issues. 18 policy action squads were formed who were each assigned to different countries and undertakings. Their work fell under 5 wide subjects. Geting people to work, acquiring the country to work, constructing a hereafter for immature people, guaranting everyone has entree to public services and doing the authorities work better.
Community normally tends to be used as a warmly persuasive word and about ever in a favorable context. It is often championed as a beginning of individuality, moral and societal stableness, shared significance and common intensions, yet by nature it can besides be seen to hold forceful negative intensions.
The first is a menace to individuality. Plant et al 1980 and Nisbit 1967 saw the construct of community as a morally charged instrument of authorization warranting province intercession in mundane life. Wiener 1981 and colls and dodd in 86 stated:
? Romantic and nostalgic thought has frequently resorted to the supplication of a lost stable societal hierarchy of community in order to warrant socially inhibitory policies?
Because community is seen as something inactive it poses bounds on individuality controlled by tradition and passively accepted local civilization. Even as a beginning of category based and anti constitution strength community can be seen as subordinating the person for the interest of communal solidarity. So secondly community can be seen as a vehicle for the reproduction and prolongation of traditional gendered societal functions, -the atomic household and the subordinate function of adult females in a male dominated society.
Good or bad, the thought of community is about the interaction between people, and it is of import because it effects the manner people think about themselves and produces their personal individuality. Community is still a relevant impression in the twenty-first century although it is of import to look past geographical boundaries and vicinity and alternatively see community in the broader sense of societal webs. While it is clear that community is an built-in portion of human nature, its hereafter and what form it will take is yet to be seen.
Bibliography:
Wayne K.D.Davies, David T Herbert ( 1993 ) communities within metropoliss, Belhaven imperativeness
Graham Crow, Grahem Allan ( 1994 ) Community life, Harvester Wheatsheaf
Marjorie Mayo ( 1994 ) Communities and caring-The assorted economic system of public assistance, Macmillan imperativeness
Michael Keith, Steve heap ( 1993 ) Topographic point and the political relations of individuality, Routledge
Andy Furlong, Fred Cartmel ( 1997 ) Young people and societal alteration, Open University imperativeness
National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal: a model for audience ( March 2000 ) New Labour
