The Social COnstruction of Community

Ch. 6: The Social Construction of Community

“The social construction of community” looks inside communities. Not only how communities run but how people’s lives look within a certain community. In the previous chapters, communities were seen as structures with changing sociological situations. The previous chapter also looked away from the idea that community was made up of relationships with the people inside the communities. Throughout the chapter 6, it examines what types of relationships exist in different communities, and how communities react to outsiders.

Social constructionism is a way for sociologists to analyze communities. Social constructionism is the idea that societies and knowledge are created by actors within the system, rather than having any inherent truth on their own. Once community is understood to be essentially contested, that is when the attention can be shifted to the ways in which it is defined and deployed by social actors themselves. Within the social constructionist approach, people within the community are looked at as active, and that they have shared interests about their social reality. From that, sociologists thought it was important to understand society from their perspective. This shifts the focus from facts and casual relationships, to the way community members see their social worlds. This is important, because I believe that community has more depth than the facts that make the community. When looking into community the most important factors is the members within that community. Without their beliefs and their interpersonal relationships with one another, there would not be a community.

Studying the meaning dedicated to community among particular social groups involves the use of qual...

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...e members within that community. To gain trust within a community you need to show loyalty to the members before they will consider you part of their community.

Throughout this chapter, sociologists focus on different ways to explain communities. They did that by focusing only on the people within the community. The researcher’s focus more on the daily lives of the people instead of the political part. This shows that communities have more to them than a set of rules that people are expected to follow. Studying the daily lives of the members makes it feel more of a community than an institution. I feel that communities are stronger when there is more than one bond between the each member. Researching the similar belief and shared experience within a community shows a different side to communities, than if you were only to look at the mechanics of a community.