Communities are the subsystems that make up society. People unite in a community according to some criterion - according to goals, interests, tasks, and so on. Members of the same community are distinguished by similar behavior and performance of similar social roles in society.
What is community
So, a community is a collection of individuals who are united by similar interests, values, conditions of life. In addition, these individuals as part of a community are aware of their social identity. Some sociologists believe that communities appear for a reason. American scientist D. Homans believes that people as part of a community strive to achieve a certain good. Moreover, the more important this benefit is, the more strength a person exerts to interact with other people. It turns out that communities are formed only to achieve a common goal.
Types and structure of communities
The classification of communities is usually carried out according to various criteria. This may be a temporary sign, i.e. the lifetime of a community can take several minutes (for example, the audience of a meeting), or maybe several centuries (here we are talking about entire nations). According to the quantitative criterion of community, they are graduated from two people (for example, a stage team) to several thousand (members of one party). Another sign is the density of connections between representatives of the community: it can be a tightly knit team (such as a team of employees in a separate office) or an amorphous formation in which people hardly interact with each other (football fans).
There is also the concept of a mass social community. Such a community is unstable and heterogeneous in composition, and it is impossible to accurately determine the number of people included in it. A mass social community functions on the basis of some kind of activity - there is no community existence for it. These social entities include rock star fans and sports fans. A separate nation or race is also considered a mass community. This also includes the crowd of protesters.
A special place is occupied by the unification of people in a community based on ethnicity. People of the same ethnicity have a common territory of residence, a solid history, their own culture and their own identity, which puts members of an ethnic community somewhat apart from other nations and nationalities, forcing them to realize their differences from them. At the beginning of the formation of an ethnic community, the fundamental feature is living in a common territory. In the future, this feature ceases to be the main one. For example, people who consider themselves Russian live all over the world and at the same time do not forget the traditions of their ethnic group.
