World Scanning

COMMUNITY

Description

Community in the world model essentially encompasses the different ways people live together with some degree of mutual interdependence. The word community is used rather than society because in seeking to understand the interactions of the eleven other world model factors with groups of people, it is communities that increasingly determine reaction and response.

Inherent in the term 'community' is a sense of the value in the quality of relationships between members. Communities may bring together a number of elements, such as solidarity, commitment, mutuality and trust, or they may have a particular focus, such as communities of location, virtual communities, communities of practice, of culture (including need or identity) and community organisations. However, the focus in the world model is particularly on how communities that are physically local and dependent on each other, whether in urban, suburban or rural conditions, survive, thrive or disintegrate.

Community is also used to cover the intergenerational aspects of society, especially education. Especially relevant in the present is the extent to which communities are resilient, that is to say how well they are able to bounce back after shocks and even disasters.