1.Community – what's that?
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The concept
In the most generic sense, community is a collection of living things sharing a common environment. The 'living things' may refer to humans, but not necessarily - we can also view the fauna of a lake as a community. On the other hand, the environment may be physical (e.g. same location, like a village) but increasingly also virtual (as seen at a large number of online communities where participants may never meet face to face).
Examples of (human) communities:
- a number of people living at the same place (sharing the physical environment)
- a number of people doing the same thing (may be physical or virtual)
- a number of people having a common feature (may be physical or virtual)
One explanation: coming from Latin cum (with, together) + munus (gift)
=> a company giving gifts to each other
keywords: common activity, also equality
Communities throughout the ages
- the Flintstones pursuing a dinosaur
- the Roman Forum
- Middle Ages: a village, a guild
- Modern Age: a firm, a trade union
- the postmodernism: the cult of the Individual
- the information age: return of the communities (best seen in but not limited to IT sector)
Charles Handy: return of the guilds
Robert Theobald: the mindquake
Weakening of the traditional community
- losing the roots
- the mishmash of worldviews
- a man is the ... of the fellow man
- the triumph of individualism
- consumer mentality
... and the birth of new communities
- new technologies
- lots of choice
- timeless time
- increasingly unmet need for communication
- educational aspirations, lifelong learning
- lots of free time
- needs for 'something real'
- sometimes also direct altruism