Community of predeal a diagnosis of social problems
| Author | Andreea Mardache |
| Position | Department of Sociology-Philosophy, <I>Transilvania</I> University of Braşov. |
| Pages | 33-40 |
Page 33
As the majority of the Romanian communities of our days, the community of Predeal presents acute necessities of development. The census of the population from Predeal carried out during the summer of the year 2006, as well as the opinion poll about the inhabitants' perceptions with respect to the social problems of the town, carried out during the same period, unveiled many of the problems that the inhabitants of this area are confronted to and, implicitly, part of the their solutions and the possible directions of development. An important aspect as regards the succees of identifying and implementing a strategy of development is that the Townhall of Predeal has already been endeavoring to outline this strategy, and it may be a collaborator of great help in realizing and implementing this strategy.
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1972) defines community as a "population living within the legally set limits of a town". There is further specified that the term is very rarely used so as to describe a regular metropolitan area, a commercial area or an entity defined by other functions than the political ones. The issue of determining the borders of a community is unsolvable (excepi the arbitrary means) as it is acknowledged bythe fact that decisions taken externally may have a significant impact upon the allotment of the values and upon important private or public decisions within the community. The main preoccupation outlined in the literature with respect to the community power consists in outlining and sharing these values and decisions.
Encyclopedia Universalis specifies the fact that the word community raises issues that have not been solved yet. It identifies two types of non-operational definitions: general definitions, among which there is C.M. Arensberg's definition, for whom "communities stand for structural units of organization and cultural and social transmission". A second definition of this type, inspired by the works of G.A.Hillery, who in 1955 gathered 94 definitions of the community from the Anglo-Saxon literature, takes into account all types of possible communities: "a community is a collectivityPage 34whose members are connected through a strong feeling of participation". In the category of the particular definitions, we find the definitions of rural communities.
The Encyclopedia of Social Development (2007) defines community as "an enduring social formation, gathering a relatively small number of individuals, with a similar cultural background and social statuses, who inhabit a little extended surface and among whom there are well defined and persistent relations of cooperation, there succeeding thereby the exercise of an efficient social control on the level of the respective group".
Dumitru Sandu (2005) states the fact that it (community) "designates a human grouping characterized through an increased probability of their members' value unit. Operationally speaking, the community is acknowledged through at least one of the following three attributes: its members' cultural similarity; intense interaction among the members of the group; status similarity among the members of the group (occupation, education, age, localization etc.)".
Within Romania, there have been increasingly experienced schemes of community or regional social intervention, based on ideas of partnership, local participation, social capital mobilization etc, pre-eminently taken over from the practice and supported by international institutions and organizations pertaining to the European Union, to the World Bank etc.
Cătălin Zamfir (2006) asserts that the paradigm of local community development has focused on identifying the specific manner of supporting local communities in developing auto-management processes destined for solving their problems, especially for leaving the "backwardness" behind. The preoccupation towards community development has pre-eminently come out within severely and chronically underdeveloped countries wherein the frailty of the economic system offers for the majority of the communities a deficit of opportunities towards integrating within the global development process. The essential tools of these strategies are creating a community cohesion and crystallizing the cooperation capacity; the concept of social capital standing for the central point of this strategy.
Dumitru Sandu (2005) appreciates that community development refers to voluntary changes in, through and for community. "In other words, there is about a family of changes in the social (not individual) plan for whom there are specified the place, the manner of achievement and the purpose. All these four elements - motivation, space, manner of achievement and purpose - are called for by the change so as to fulfill the requirement of fitting within the community type".
The same author considers that the main agents of community development are local public administrations and NGO-s, which interact in this sense, to this purpose (in terms of cooperation, competition, or reciprocal control). There is likewise of importance the participative dimension, related to stirring up the community members. As regards the number of group members who should participate so that the action might fit within the community type, Sandu states it is of no relevance, this is a matter of involving a part of the group voluntarily or co-interestedly for the community benefit. He achieves a simple classification of the motivations stirring up to common interest, depending on co-interest and volunteering, into four types of situations: des-interested / altruist, through co-interest, in group and forced participation.
The targets of community interventions may be summarized this way (Sandu 2005): -reducing poverty; -manufacturing public wares;Page 35-changing institutions;
-changing mentalities.
Local or community participation refers to the process of committing the members of a local community in actions aiming at satisfying requirements of a local, preeminently local and public character or in- group. In other words, local participation is the participation to community actions, which means to actions wherein "the main actors and...
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