Conceptualizing Community

"How we conceptualize community powerfully influences what we see and do in community practice" (Walter 67).

This quote, although seemingly obvious, really made me start thinking (again) about what community is and how we can define it. I've been constantly thinking about defining community for the last 12 weeks, and each week it seems like my old definition is thrown out the window, and I start all over again. Or maybe I don't. Maybe I build on the fallacies of my previous definitions to create a more concrete (and perhaps "better") definition of community for myself. Because, let's face it, community is a pretty complex thing. There are so many ways to define it, and these definitions, as Walter says, influence our work in the community.

The traditional definition of community (Warren 1963) is a boundaried social or demographic unit (Walter 67), but, as Walter says, it doesn't take into account our work in the community. Our work in the community influences and, in a way, defines the community. And there are also multiple consciousnesses in play here that are not always taken into account. To ignore these consciousnesses issues may be oversimplified (Walter 68). Oversimplifying issues is never a good way to help the community.

This got me thinking about my own work in the community through various institutions. I'll use my service learning for TE 250 as an example. I really think that the issues here were oversimplified, and therefore, did not help the community as was originally intended. In TE 250 it was assumed that urban schools needed our help. Fine. That sounds great. I know that there are usually lower reading scores, etc., in urban schools, and I'm all for raising them. However, I was placed in a science class and was basically just there to help manage the classroom. Sometimes I tutored kids or gave them extra help, but I don't really think it enhanced their learning in any meaningful way. What if all the students in my class had chosen one school to work at, picked an issue with the help of administrators and professors and then did our service learning focused on that? That would've gotten to the heart of the issue and provided real help to the students.

We didn't take into account all the forces and all the relationships that helped to define that school community. So we oversimplified and didn't provide any real help. I just got my hours and my grade. If we're going to go out into the community, we should help the community more than ourselves.

So what do I think a community is this week?? Well, I think that it's basically formed by interactions of people with similar concerns and that there are many factors that come into play when forming a community.

I have three more weeks to come up with a concrete definition... Can I do it?? ;)