Creating community

Cohering a grouping of people who are aware of some commonality and who may be organized to act in a concerted fashion.

Community has a variety of meanings, including: (a) Physical community is the larger domiciliary unit surrounding a family residence. (b) Social community is the larger immediate social unit which an individual or group perceives themselves to be part of. The close-knit relationships which may be evidenced between families living in proximate dwellings such as in villages, or in neighbourhoods in towns and cities, and the identification of these co-residents with shared concerns. Thus there is a physical community and a social or psychological one. (c) Regional community and neighbourhood, that is, the social and physical aspects of a local society, coincide in the tribal and rural worlds, with kinship making a third, biological link. Thus the extended family or clan may constitute the community. (d) A social aggregate created expressly for religious, ideological or economic reasons, for example, a monastery constituting a religious community, or a cooperative craft commune, or the social and economic integration of a farming, religious sect. (e) An economic and legal administrative entity organized at various levels of government, from the smallest settlements, to large towns and provinces, up to national levels. (f) Various specialized uses, as the community of nations, community of scholars, European Community, etc.