Community, Culture, and Group

Community

The word community derived from French word “comuneté”, comes from the Latin communitas which indicates “things held in common”. The Macmillan Dictionary of Anthropology defines the term community as; “it may refer to any group of persons united by a community of interest”. The community includes “association”, “institutions”, “collection of people”, “group”, and “residential unit” who have been living within the defined geographical territory, i.e. village, friends, town, neighbor, club, voluntary association and lesbian community. In the community, people share the common values and sharing the same interest. Communities are informally organized such communities are small, closed and isolated from the other. The community people share the common values, norms, values and behavior with another to fulfil their demands where they have a strong sense of identity. Community might be racial, religious and caste based beside the national and international community. Within the community there is interdependent ans interpersonal relationship within the member of the groups. In the community, the social capitals seem to be strong—where social and economic resources are embedded. In the community, the relationship which are not locally operative, but exist at a more abstract, ideological level (Jary and Jary, 2000). Within the community we could also observe varieties of social, economic, religious and political activities among the people who share the common interest and goals.

 Definitions of community

Community is a group or collection of group that inhabit in locally. -Ogburn and Nimkoff

 An informally organized social entity which is characterized by a sense of identity. -White

 A group of people living in the same defined area sharing the same basic values, organization and interests.

-Rifkin

Characteristics of Community

• Sense of we feeling


• Organized interaction within the members


• Informal rules and regulation


• Social control


• Common faiths, beliefs and values


• Close connections and linkage between the community members


• Strong integration and identity


• Homogeneous characteristics


• Strong sentiments and sympathy among the members

Culture

Oxford Dictionary of Sociology defines; "culture is a symbolic and learned aspects of human society". Culture is transmitted one generation to another and modified over time due to the influence of different technologies. E. B. Tylor wrote, "Culture is learned complex knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws and customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society". In fact, it includes symbols and values, beliefs and attitudes. The behavior of a human being is largely influenced by the cultural practices. Culture is total ways of life not a simple part of life for instance, reading sacred texts, playing piano, drinking liquor, performing dance and so on. It simply includes what people do and their everyday practice. The member of the society shared the cultural traits and behavior. It also concerned with human behavior, thoughts, and actions. People commonly share the cultural characteristics within ethnic, religious and occupational groups. Culture is not only sharing within the member of the society but also learned. We look at the variation within the member of society, particularly in their behavior and habits. It includes all walks of our life, such as behavior, ethics, morals, customs, arts, traditions, politics and economy.

Definitions

"Culture consists of the derivates of experience, more or less organized, learned or created by the individuals of a population, including those images or encondement and their interpretations (meaning) transmitted from past generations, from contemporaries or formed by individuals.  -T. Schwartz 1992

"[Culture] is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another". -Hofstede 1994

"... the set of attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors shared by a group of people, but different for each individual, communicated from one generation to the next". -Matsumoto 1996

"The realm of styles of values, of emotional attachments and of intellectual adventures". -MacIver and Page

Characteristics of Culture

1. Culture is learnt: Culture is learnt socially mainly their behavior, including blessing, wishing, dressing, walking, blinking, eating, singing and so on. They learn their everyday practice from the family members, friends, teachers and neighbor.


2. Culture is social: Culture is a social production, particularly through the interpretation within the members of the society. It is shared within the member of the society. It never sustains in the isolated form, without association there is no possibility to acquire the culture. The interaction and association enhance the quality of human being.


3. Culture is shared: Culture needs to be shared, particularly believe, values, customs, morals, and art. It should be shared within the members of the society. The individual alone could not possess the entire culture.


4. Culture is transmitted: Culture transmitted its traits and characteristics from one generation to another through the language mainly reading, writing and speaking. They learn through the imitation from one another.


5. Culture is cumulative: culture is continuous from one generation to next it flows like rivers.


6. Culture is consistent and integrated: Culture is made up by the different units, for example, and system is closely connected with religion, rituals, morals, ideas, customs and ideologies.


7. Culture is dynamic: any culture would not be exist in constant position and changing overtime. It depends on time and context. It is also adaptive. The process of adaptation depends on physical environment and available resources. The available environment condition and adaptive strategies determine the culture.


8. Culture is gratifying: culture provides the space and means of satisfaction to meet the every desire. These needs might be biological and social. Culture provides the food, shelter, cloth, status, fame, money and so on.


9. Culture varies from society to society: cultures are not uniform. Cultural elements such as tradition, customs, moral, ideal, beliefs, practices and philosophies are varies from place to place and time to time and these are not same everywhere.


10. Culture is super organic and ideational: According to Herbert Spenser culture is neither organic not inorganic but super organic. It has been concerned with meaning such as national flag that represents the nation and plays the significant role for the national unity.

Types of Culture

1. Material culture 2. Non-material culture.


2. Material culture: Material culture concern with manmade objects, for example, tools, furniture, automobile, building, road, and bridges. It includes technical and material equipments which are also useful to meet the demand of human being. The material culture is visible and simply observed.


3. Non-material culture: non-material culture is something internal and valuable. It reflects the nature of human being. The non-material culture is not simply visible which concern with beliefs, language, ritual, value and virtue, customs, feeling and so on. The non-material culture simply leads the everyday life of the people.

Functions of culture

1. Culture is the treasury of knowledge: culture preserves the knowledge. It provides the many things through the different practices. It provides and preserves many skills and knowledge to the people and helps to transmit one generation to generation.


2. Culture defines the situation: Culture often defines and determines the situation. Human being often followed its activities as per its situation i.e. to drink, to dance, to sleep, to work and to weep.


3. Culture defines attitude, values and goals: The attitude mainly associated with the tendency and act, value concern with goodness and desirability likewise goals concern with attainment. Attitude includes the religion, morality, marriage, science, family planning and prostitutions. The value includes the private property, rights, representative government and romantic love, similarly goal meet desired objectives, win game and understand their world.


4. Culture decides our career: Culture provides the certain limitations and choice, particularly what we want to do. Every culture runs in accordance with certain cultural framework. As per its framework or limitation, their career would be decided and it also leads their profession. Nomadic Raute of Nepal would not be modern doctor or engineer because they have been resisting the modern education.


5. Culture provides a behavior pattern: Culture decides the individual behavior. It has a certain set of rules and duties. It decides the noble and profane works.

Group

A group consists of two or more people who have a sense of identity and belonging under the specific norms and values, for example, school classes, clubs, sports teams, associations, religious communities, and volunteer organizations. The group is a set of “people” and “collectivity”–who have more or less permanent relation, co-operation and coordination. It refers to the collectivity and solidarity within the members of the groups. Horton argues that any member of people who share the consciousness of membership together and of interest. The member of the group has close relation to one another. The member of society share their values and beliefs within the members of the society. Within the groups there is sense of belongings and emotion. The groups that are relatively small, informal, and involve close ties with the personal. There is frequent interaction within the members of the society and there is positive sentimental. There are two groups in the society Primary and secondary.

Types of groups

Primary group: Primary group are those where there are frequent interactions within the members. The core members participate together; for instance family, neighbor and play groups.  whereas in the secondary groups members are infrequent participate among the members. This is called the nursery of human nature where we could observe the human sentiment one another. In the primary group there is face-to-face interaction, high sentiment; loyalty and emotion within the members of the group. In the primary group there is common values and beliefs among the members of the society. Primary groups are small in size. In the primary, there is a sense of unity is high.  There is give and take relation, beside cooperation, trust and solidarity within the members of the society as well.

Secondary group: This is the moral type of group where there are no close connections within the members of the society as the Primary groups. There is no emotion, sentiment and unity among the members of the society; for instance the National Bank, University and Lions clubs. There is no close identity within the members. Within the groups they may not know closely one to another. In the secondary there is little or no emotional sentiments among the members of the group. The societal member seems to more competitive and co-operative that contributes to the prosperity of the organization at large. This process enhances the economy of  the organization. There is less or no intimate relation within the member of the society. In the secondary group there is formal interaction among the members of the group; the secondary group is large in size which has been running in the bureaucratic structure. Organizations make the formal rules and regulation to run its activities in the decent order. There is a hierarchy among the members.

Some features of groups

• There is continuous interaction and interdependent relationship with one another.


• Members are acquired in accordance with the goal and interest.


• The group can be both permanent and temporary.


• There might be social boundary among the members and non-members of the society


• Functionally members of the society integrate one another.


• Group is bounded by the certain set of rules and regulation


• There is sense of identification within the members of group.


• Members are functionally integrated through role and status relationship in the group structure; and


• In the group there is a systematic division of labor.