Talk:Sense of community

Intro

"Sense Community... focuses on the experience of community." Seems a bit circular, eh? -Vibration 17:29, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Then it achieved its purpose, which was to say the same thing another way, in order to highlight the idea from a slightly different angle. "Experience of community" is a rephrasing rather than a definition, so this shouldn't really be criticized as "circular"; definitions appear later in the article. -DoctorW 07:03, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Psychological perspective versus other perspectives

Dr., I'm concerned primarily about two things in relation to this article. The first is that your discussion of community seems entirely reliant on the english language word "community" in all its varied meanings from the local codependant group to an amorphous, faceless collection of people or things sharing some trait in common. These are very different entities and are not functionaly equivalent even if they are lumped together in one english word. The second involves the lack of interdisciplinary refernces. My own research is in the archeology of community and I am fairly well read in the works on community in Anthropology and in History which are quite extensive. Indeed, community studies are and always have been central to Anthropology. I don't mean to sound territorial here, but psychology is something of a Johnny-come-Lately to the field. Actually I find your article quite informative as, other than Nisbet, I am unfamiliar with the researchers you discuss. The concepts however, are often familiar and echo discussion in the anthro literature going all the way back to Ibn Khaldhun and his asabiyah lectures. I think this article would benefit greatly from the addition of reference to community/identity based research beyond the boundaries of Social Psychology such, for example, as the liguistic research of Labov, the Primatology of Goodall, and the culture studies of Redfield and Netting. 17, january, 2006(DHBoggs)

I definitely agree, especially on your second concern. The problem is that before Wikipedia has multiple perspectives on a topic, someone has to write about them! You're absolutely right in commenting that psychology is a Johnny-come-lately to the field. When I named this article I debated whether to call it "Sense of community" (favored by the leading psychological researchers in the area) or "Psychological sense of community" (also used by other psychological researchers in the area). I decided that it would be best to put it under the general name for now. I envisioned that when more articles were written from other perspectives such as Anthropology (and especially Sociology) that the "Sense of community" article could become one having a brief summary of those various perspectives and the psychological perspective represented here could be moved to "Psychological sense of community," and "Sense of community (Psychology)" could forward to it. The same could be done with main articles from other perspectives. As even more is written on this topic just from the psychological perspective, the content in the present article might eventually have to be named something like "Theory of psychological sense of community."

The article Community - an even more general title, of greater importance - was dreadful when I first saw it. I was tempted to delete the whole thing and provide an outline for a requested article in its place. I see now that it is, thankfully, much improved, but I still think it would benefit from the same kind of treatment I just mentioned: sections summarizing the various perspectives on community, such as Sociological, Anthropological, Psychological, Biological, perhaps Community development, and certainly some others. It would be a way to give the article structure and avoid conflicts over subtopics that are due to nothing more than variations in approach.

The English Wikipedia entries for "Community" and for "Sense of community" must necessarily relate to the English word "Community," which is broad, but various fields have attempted to define community in ways that make this at least somewhat more manageable. So my approach of breaking up the topic ("Community" or "Sense of community") by field would also address your first concern.

I am somewhat surprised by the way the issue is described as being a part of social psychology, and that research in other disciplines is declared as just additional at best. The author's intention is clearly to defend the turf (of social psychologists). There might be areas of interest where social psychologists are the only to treat an issue but concerning sense of community this attitude makes you smile. As a reaction against the focus on "hard" explanations of the Chicago School of social ecology in 1945 Walter Firey was the first to work on exactly this issue. As a starter :

* Walter Firey 1945 Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables. American Sociological Review 10, 2, 140-148.

* Albert Hunter (1975) The Loss of Community: An Empirical Test Through Replication. American Sociological Review 40, 5, 537-552.

Urban sociology, especially neighbourhood sociology, focussed for years on the community experience of urban dwellers. See only

* Susan Keller 1968. The Urban Neighborhood. Random House

Also it seems to me that the authors of the article only know Englisch-language publications. What about looking for the research on "Heimat" (Hermann Bausinger) in German cultural anthrology in the 1950s ? Or about research on "Ortsbindung", locational attachment in German urban geography in the 1980/90s ? If any more literature shold be needed to show my argument just answer here. I am happy to answer.

For me the author has just not read outside his own discipline and mother language. Therefore the article lacks in quality.

--Ft93110 (talk) 14:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

An interim solution, before complete articles from alternative perspectives are fully written, might be to leave this article as the main article, and include links at the top to stubs representing those other perspectives. -DoctorW 19:02, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Community studies

I came across a stub "community studies" that might be a promising place to cover multi-disciplinary treatment of the topic. It looks like the writer has geared it toward anthropology and sociology touching urban studies as well. I'm wondering who uses the term and how broad its use might be. It seems like a rather broad and generic term to me. I noticed that DHBoggs in his January post above used it half-way through. I'd like to learn of your thoughts on that article, DoctorW. • CQ 00:50, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Copyright issues

I'm afraid I didn't understand Wikipedia's copyright issues when I originally put this article up here. I will be deleting most of the copyrighted material and writing at least a little new material for this article, and if anyone wants to add something to make the article work better they certainly may do so. -DoctorW 17:28, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Content from "Unity"

The following content has been excerpted from the coat-rack article Unity. (The sole reference has been inlined to avoid any side effects on this talk page.) The first paragraph has a certain resemblance to this article at present, so perhaps they already cover the same ground -- but it would be great if someone could take a look at it and see if there is anything here that would be of benefit if added to this article. -- Perey (talk) 14:50, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Sense of community (or psychological sense of community) is a concept in social psychology (or more narrowly, in community psychology), as well as in several other research disciplines, such as urban sociology, which focuses on the experience of community rather than its structure, formation, setting, or other features. Sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, and others have theorized about and carried out empirical research on community, but the psychological approach asks questions about the individual's perception, understanding, attitudes, feelings, etc. about community and his or her relationship to it and to others' participation – indeed to the complete, multifaceted community experience. (Human services and resource networks, By Seymour Bernard Sarason, Published by Jossey-Bass, 1977, Original from the University of California)

In his seminal 1974 book, psychologist Seymour B. Sarason proposed that Psychological Sense of Community become the conceptual center for the psychology of community, asserting that it "is one of the major bases for self-definition." By 1986 it was regarded as a central overarching concept for Community Psychology (Sarason, 1986; Chavis & Pretty, 1999).

Among theories of Sense of Community proposed by psychologists, McMillan & Chavis's (1986) is by far the most influential, and is the starting point for most of the recent research in the field. It is discussed in detail below.

Psychology Wiki is better

I note that the Psychology Wiki page on this topic is more coherent and includes more detail (e.g., discussion of boundaries). The Wikipedia page has a few extra miscellanea. Can content be copyied from a Fandom site? I suspect not. - Reagle (talk) 21:31, 13 December 2022 (UTC)