LEARNING COMPETENCY:
ANALYZE FUNCTIONS OF
COMMUNITIES IN TERMS OF
STRUCTURES, DYNAMICS AND
PROCESSES
TOPIC:
The Concepts of Community
Structure, Processes and
Dynamics Community
Structure
Cooperation is important because it allows
people and various groups to work together
in achieving a common goal or derive
mutual benefits.
COMPRISES A
COMMUNITY
Early Joiners
- are frontrunners that lay down
the norms for what can be
deemed as acceptable
behavior in the community and
ensure that it is adhered to.
Information Specialists are
the ones whose members
look to for getting
connected new information.
Conversationalists are the
ones who mainly contribute to
discussions that have been
initiated by other members but
normally don’t initiate
discussions on their own.
Persuaders are the ones who
are powerful advocates of the
community message and
spread the word.
Connectors are the people
who have a big network of
friends and acquaintances they
can introduce to the
community.
Laggards are the
late joiners.
Temporary Members are
the members that might be
there in the community only
for the achievement of a
specific objective.
A community is not just
created or established for
the sake of having a so-
called community. Rather it
is put up to serve its purpose
and to be of service to its
members.
COMMUNITY STRUCTURE
- Demographic features
(how the community is
comprised and how it is
physically made-up)
Further, the community’s physical
structure is described according to
some indicators like abiotic factors
(topography), geographical factors,
heterogeneity of the environment,
occurrence of disturbances or
disruptive incidents and others.
Community structure, according to
www.ymparisto.fi, would also include
“the internal structure of an employment
area, town, city, neighborhood or
another urban area, the housing, jobs
and production, service and leisure time
areas, along with transport routes and
technical networks, their location and
relationships.”
COMMUNITY PROCESSES
- a community is powered-
up by several processes and
it could not withstand
existence if it does not go
through these processes.
- First, we talk about community
organizing where anything which
pertains to it shall be put together. This is
the process of starting things with the
community.
- Then comes the interactional
community, a process which
presupposes that the people who live
therein associate and communicate
with each other as frequent as they
can and this sustains the existence of a
community.
Next, we talk about the process where
activities or projects or programs are
effected in the community through
which the community developmental
objectives are accomplished and social
bonding and networking is fortified.
Still another community process
refers to comprehensive primary
health care, which logically
entails heath care program/s.
Community development is
another community process,
which obviously talks about
progress in every aspect of the
community.
As per www.cmmon-org.wis.edu/ , community
development “encompasses issues related to
neighborhood planning, citizen participation,
grassroots organizing, housing, economic
development, social welfare, public safety,
health, education, recreation, the environment
and other aspects of community life.”
Still another community process is labeled
as coordination. Coordination as a process
has been defined by Warren, Rose and
Bergunder (1974)
(https://link.springer.com/) as “those sets of
behavior through which the complex nature
of interrelated events are maintained.”
Community Dynamics
- If we look deeper into the
concept, community dynamics
is actually one of the processes
of a community because it
affects its existence.
TOPIC:
Functions of the Community in
terms of Structure, Processes
and Dynamics
1. Social Participation. To the people
(population), it is incumbent in the
community to promote unity despite the
diversity through programs or activities
which bring people together instead of
tearing them apart,
2. Social Control.
- First, under this the function, it is deemed
necessary that community shall strictly
implement and monitor programs for
population growth
- Second, the community is to be well-aware of
what is going on within and outside of its area-
of-responsibility,
- Third, there has to be a way of prompting the
people to comply to the laws and other norms
of behavior set forth therein.
3. Socialization
- the community takes responsibility in
the transmission of local norms of
behavior- laws, mores and folkways,
as well as the education, inclusive of
the most minute information, of the
people.
- Physical factor and the social or
personal factors
4. Preparedness and Protection.
- First, to its physical structure, it is as natural
a function of the community to ensure
balance of whatever is in its ecological
domain, like bodies of water- usually the
rivers, creeks, or falls; rice fields or
agricultural lands; fishing areas; villages and
mountains; forests; or subdivision areas, and
the like.
5. Economic
- It is incumbent in the community
to sustain its existence, thereby
taking responsibility over the so-
called production and distribution
of goods and extension of services
to the people.
6. Health Care
- This function is as significant
because this would help sustain the
existence of the people and the
community.
