ASSIGNMENT ON PARTICIPATORY DEVELOPMENT APPROACH (AERD805)

WHAT IS COMMUNITY AND IDENTIFY THE COMMUNITY YOU COME FROM IN

NIGERIA.

ALABI SALIHU IBRAHIM

P21AGAE8005

SUBMITTED TO Dr E.Y. DODO

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT,
FACULTY OF AGRICULTURE, AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA.

JANUARY, 2023
Introduction

Community Concept Movement and School of Thought

 Affinity (sociology) – in terms of sociology, refers to "kinship of spirit", interest and

other interpersonal commonalities

 Collectivism – school of thought, antithetical to Individualism, in which the collective

takes precedence over the individual

 Communitarianism – group of related but distinct philosophies advocating phenomena

such as civil society

 Communitas – Latin noun for the spirit of community having significance in cultural
anthropology and the social sciences.

 Consanguinity – quality of being descended from the same ancestor as another person

 Group (sociology) – collection of people who share characteristics, interact and have a
common identity

 Internationalism (politics) – political movement which advocates cooperation between

nations for the benefit of all

 Meritocracy – form of government based on rule by ability (merit) rather than by wealth
or other determinants of social position.

 Organization – formal group of people with one or more shared goals

 Socialization – process by which people learn to adopt the behavior patterns of the
community in which they live

 Solidarity (sociology) – feeling or condition of unity based on common goals, interests,

and sympathies among a group's members/organization.

The English-language word "community" derives from the Old French comuneté (Modern
French: communauté), which comes from the Latin communitas "community", "public spirit"
(from Latin communis, "common")

A community is a social unit (a group of living things) which shares things such as place, norms,
religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given
geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighbourhood) or in virtual space through
communication platforms such as facebook, instagram, whatsapp etc. long time good relations
that extend beyond immediate famiily ties also define a sense of community, important to their
identity, practice, and roles in social institutions such as family, home, work, government,
society, or humanity at large. Although communities are usually small relative to personal social
ties, "community" may also refer to large group affiliations such as national communities,
international communities, and virtual communities. Human communities may have intent,
belief, resources, preferences, needs, and risks in common, affecting the identity of the
participants and their degree of solidarity.

Definition of Community in Different Fields of Study

Archaeology

Archaeological studies of social communities use the term "community" in two ways, paralleling
usage in other areas. The first is an informal definition of community as a place where people
used to live. In this sense it is synonymous with the concept of an ancient settlement - whether a
hamlet, village, town, or city. The second meaning resembles the usage of the term in other
social sciences: a community is a group of people living near one another who interact socially.

Ecology

In ecology, a community is an assemblage of populations - potentially of different species -

interacting with one another. Community ecology is the branch of ecology that studies
interactions between and among species. It considers how such interactions, along with
interactions between species and the abiotic environment, affect social structure and species
richness, diversity and patterns of abundance. Species interact in three ways: competition,
predation and mutualism:

The two main types of ecological communities are major communities, which are self-sustaining
and self-regulating (such as a forest or a lake), and minor communities, which rely on other
communities (like fungi decomposing a log) and are the building blocks of major communities.

Semantics

The concept of "community" often has a positive semantic connotation, exploited rhetorically by
populist politicians and by advertisers[6] to promote feelings and associations of mutual well-
being, happiness and togetherness- veering towards an almost-achievable utopian community, in
fact.

In contrast, the epidemiological term "community transmission" can have negative implications;
and instead of a "criminal community" one often speaks of a "criminal underworld" or of the
"criminal fraternity".

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

In Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887), German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies described two
types of human association: Gemeinschaft (usually translated as "community") and Gesellschaft
("society" or "association"). Tönnies proposed the Gemeinschaft–Gesellschaft dichotomy as a
way to think about social ties. No group is exclusively one or the other. Gemeinschaft stress
personal social interactions, and the roles, values, and beliefs based on such interactions.
Gesellschaft stress indirect interactions, impersonal roles, formal values, and beliefs based on
such interactions.

Sense of Community

In a seminal 1986 study, McMillan and Chavis identify four elements of "sense of community":

1. Membership: feeling of belonging or of sharing a sense of personal relatedness,

2. Influence: mattering, making a difference to a group and of the group mattering to its members

3. Reinforcement: integration and fulfillment of needs,

4. Shared emotional connection.

To what extent do participants in joint activities experience a sense of community?

A "sense of community index" (SCI) was developed by Chavis and colleagues, and revised and
adapted by others. Although originally designed to assess sense of community in neighborhoods,
the index has been adapted for use in schools, the workplace, and a variety of types of
communities.

Studies conducted by the APPA[who?] indicate that young adults who feel a sense of belonging
in a community, particularly small communities, develop fewer psychiatric and depressive
disorders than those who do not have the feeling of love and belonging.

Socialization

The process of learning to adopt the behavior patterns of the community is called socialization.
The most fertile time of socialization is usually the early stages of life, during which individuals
develop the skills and knowledge and learn the roles necessary to function within their culture
and social environment. For some psychologists, especially those in the psychodynamic
tradition, the most important period of socialization is between the ages of one and ten. But
socialization also includes adults moving into a significantly different environment where they
must learn a new set of behaviors.

Community Development

In human world, the continuous rise in needs individual and collectively triggers changes in their
approach and tends to make efforts to improve communities which will result to community
development, it can be economical, social or technological. Community development can be
achieved through: community planning, community organizing, community practice, community
building, community service and community economic development.

Community development is often linked with community work or community planning, and may
involve stakeholders, foundations, governments, or contracted entities including non-government
organisations (NGOs), universities or government agencies to progress the social well-being of
local, regional and, sometimes, national communities. More grassroots efforts, called community
building or community organizing, seek to empower individuals and groups of people by
providing them with the skills they need to effect change in their own communities. These skills
often assist in building political power through the formation of large social groups working for a
common agenda. Community development practitioners must understand both how to work with
individuals and how to affect communities' positions within the context of larger social
institutions. Public administrators, in contrast, need to understand community development in the
context of rural and urban development, housing and economic development, and community,
organizational and business development.

At the intersection between community development and community building are a number of
programs and organizations with community development tools. One example of this is the
program of the Asset Based Community Development Institute of Northwestern University. The
institute makes available downloadable tools to assess community assets and make connections
between non-profit groups and other organizations that can help in community building. The
Institute focuses on helping communities develop by "mobilizing neighborhood assets" –
building from the inside out rather than the outside in. In the disability field, community building
was prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s with roots in John McKnight's approaches.

Community Building and Organizing

In The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace (1987) Scott Peck argues that the almost
accidental sense of community that exists at times of crisis can be consciously built. Peck
believes that conscious community building is a process of deliberate design based on the
knowledge and application of certain rules. He states that this process goes through four stages:

1. Pseudocommunity: When people first come together, they try to be "nice" and present what
they feel are their most personable and friendly characteristics.

2. Chaos: People move beyond the inauthenticity of pseudo-community and feel safe enough to
present their "shadow" selves.

3. Emptiness: Moves beyond the attempts to fix, heal and convert of the chaos stage, when all
people become capable of acknowledging their own woundedness and brokenness, common to
human beings.
4. True community: Deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this
community.

Community Building
Community building can use a wide variety of practices, ranging from simple events (e.g.,
potlucks, small book clubs) to larger-scale efforts (e.g., mass festivals, construction projects that
involve local participants rather than outside contractors).

Community building that is geared toward citizen action is usually termed "community
organizing".[27] In these cases, organized community groups seek accountability from elected
officials and increased direct representation within decision-making bodies. Where good-faith
negotiations fail, these constituency-led organizations seek to pressure the decision-makers
through a variety of means, including picketing, boycotting, sit-ins, petitioning, and electoral
politics.

Types of Community

1. Location-based Communities: Starting from the local neighbourhood, suburb, village, town or
city, region, nation or even the planet as a whole. These are also called communities of place.

2. Identity-based Communities: range from the local clique, sub-culture, ethnic group, religious,
multicultural or pluralistic civilisation, or the global community cultures of today. They may be
included as communities of need or identity, such as disabled persons, or frail aged people.

3. Organizationally-based Communities: range from communities organized informally around

family or network-based guilds and associations to more formal incorporated associations,
political decision making structures, economic enterprises, or professional associations at a
small, national or international scale.

4. Intentional Communities: a mix of all three previous types, these are highly cohesive
residential communities with a common social or spiritual purpose, ranging from monasteries
and ashrams to modern ecovillages and housing cooperatives.

The usual categorizations of community relations have a number of problems: They tend to give
the impression that a particular community can be defined as just this kind or another; They tend
to conflate modern and customary community relations; They tend to take sociological
categories such as ethnicity or race as given, forgetting that different ethnically defined persons
live in different kinds of communities —grounded, interest-based, diasporic, etc.

5. Internet Community

In general, virtual communities value knowledge and information as currency or social resource.
What differentiates virtual communities from their physical counterparts is the extent and impact
of "weak ties", which are the relationships acquaintances or strangers form to acquire
information through online networks. Relationships among members in a virtual community
tend to focus on information exchange about specific topics. A survey conducted by Pew Internet
and The American Life Project in 2001 found those involved in entertainment, professional, and
sports virtual-groups focused their activities on obtaining information. Virtual community
Virtual community – group of people communicating with each other by means of information
technologies:

My Community?

In reference to the type of communities mentioned above, my community is in the category of

the Location-Based Community which is also called Community of Place.

In broad, geographically, my community is located on the planet earth, out of the seven continent
in the world, my community falls within the Africa continent, West Africa to be precise. Nigeria,
with six Geo-Political zones in Nigeria, my community situated in the Nortth-Central zone, Kogi
State (Confluence State) in particular, out of the 21 local Governent in Kogi State, my
community is located in Adavi Local Government which comprises of eleven wards, my
community is located in Nagazi Farm-Centre ward, and the name of my community is Nagazi-
Uvete Community.
Adavi is located in between latitudes 7015N' to 8o51'E with total land area of 718km2 and total
population of 202,194 (2006 census), the postal code of the area is 264. The people of Adavi are
predominantly Ebira(TAO), we speak Ebira language. Our occupation (source of economy) is
mostly farming and also our women engage in off farm activities like marketing of farm produce
plus weaving of cloth. Ebira women are well known in weaving of traditional cloth with different
patterns. Other than Christmas, Salah and New Year celebration, Adavi (Ebira) people also have
a series of festivities in our culture, they include; Ekuechi festiva, Echa'ne festiva (during Yam
festiva), E'be festiva, all these are done for different reasons but with the sole aim of promoting
peace and love within Ebira people and Ebira land. among our favorite food are pounded yam,
bean and apapa.
The natural resources present in and around my community are iron ore, feldspar, marble, mica
etc.

Conclusion
In my own words, community is as old as human and can be defined as a natural or associative
selection of people that comes together to create and maintain the natural and human resource
within their reach for the development of the place they find their self. community is a smaller
part of a society, people of the same communityy are mostly inter related and families that have
the same ancestral origin.
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