Talk:Sense of community

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[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.

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)

[edit] 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)