Psy 423
Community Psychology
Spring 2004
STUDENT WRITINGS
I.
Definitions of "Community"
Community: A system of symbiotic relationships
within a group of beings.
Community : the process of coming together and
interacting
A Definition of Community:
A group of individual beings that intentionally
or unintentionally share common resources.
In class, my group came up with the following
definition, "A group witha shared experience." After pondering this definition,
I wanted to add the following: I still think a community is a group with
a shared experience with any combination of the following qualities: negative
or positive, lasting or transient, geographical or virtual, personal and
impersonal, altruistic or exploitative, culturally relativistic or ethnocentric,
old or new, large or small, age related or ageless, etc... These qualities
remind me of the differing aspects of the commons; furthermore, the key
component defining community, is the grouping and sharing which takes place
in any capacity.
This was a difficult question to ponder, and I
realize there is plenty of room for more elaboration.
Marie Cantrell
After listening to and agreeing with my classmates
my understanding of community has changed. My enlightened impression is
that 'community' is a group of living organisms inhabiting the same region,
interacting with each other, and organized in such ways as to use beneficial
behaviors, which utilizes resources in such useful systems as to manipulate,
and exploit, waste material as a main and pivotal resource.
Thank you,
SK
Jaques Posell-Wilson: My definition of
community: a group with a shared experience (social, geographic, economic,
physical, biological, etc.).
Art Warmoth: My definition is primarily based on considerations
of size and reflects Fredinand tönnies disrinction between gemeinschaft
(community) and
gesellschaft (society):
Community: A group that is larger
than an extended family or therapy group but small enough so that the members
may know one another a distinct individuals. In practice, this probaly
means no more than a few hundered people
Society: A group so large that members
need to deal with the identities of at least some other members as abstract
categories.
II.
Executive Summaries of "Technology and the Postmodern University" and Greater
Expectations
Brooke Bernal
Danielle Blevins
Jessica Froiland
Jonathan Mattice
Steve Mercer
Sean Montgomery
Jeff Nighman
Jacques Posell-Wilson
David L. Schwatrz
Ruth Schwertscharf
III. GROUP DOCUMENTS