1.Community – what's that?
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
Main 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
Various factors
- size
- lifespan
- coverage (local, international, global)
- mono- or multicultural
- official or unofficial
- cooperation vs competition
- physical, virtual or both
Yet common ground
- belonging
- certain models of communication
- network of relation (not hierarchy)
- support mechanisms
Charles Handy in his Future of Work (1984): the time of mass production (both in industry and offices) is up. Production is done by gangs equipped with modern technology.
Handy's gang is also a community - see also the hacker model of software development.
