Society is an integral sociocultural system consisting of a huge number of subsystems. One of them is social community. Any community implies an accumulation of people who have something the same (for example, interests, tasks or goals). People who unite in a community usually have similar ideas about life, perform similar social roles in society.
So, we can say that social community is a totality of human individuals united by similar living conditions, having the same interests, values, and aware of their social identity. The reasons for uniting people can be: their close interaction with each other, common activities, awareness of the similarity of interests, their own culture, formed on the basis of similar ideas about the goals of this community, moral concepts, etc., the existence of a system of self-government.
A number of sociologists believe that social communities and groups in most cases do not arise spontaneously. One concept of their occurrence was proposed by the American D. Homans, who believed that people, interacting with each other, are trying to achieve a certain good. The more significant this benefit is, the more efforts a person assumes to get closer to other people, for whom this benefit is also significant. In simple terms, according to the American sociologist, people come together in groups, form communities and communities only to achieve a specific goal.
One social community may differ from another by the purpose of its education, form and type. Types of such associations of people differ in the following ways:
- by time of existence: from several minutes (the audience of the concert hall, rally) to entire centuries (a single nation);
- according to the composition of the people they comprise: from two people to several thousand (members of a certain party);
- by the density of ties between the main representatives: from a closely knit team (office staff) to very amorphous, practically non-interacting entities (football fans).
Sociologists distinguish such a concept as mass social community, the distinguishing features of which are:
- instability of existence;
- the heterogeneity of the composition of its people, the impossibility of establishing their exact number;
- functioning on the basis of a particular activity and the impossibility of existence outside it.
As an example of a mass social community, one can cite fans of a certain pop star, fans of a sports club, and members of various associations. The tribe of the indigenous inhabitants of New Guinea, a single nation, race, crowd of protesters near the administration of the enterprise are also massive social communities.
A separate place among other associations is occupied by an ethnos - the totality of people who live a long period of time in a certain territory, have a stable own culture, differ in self-awareness, that is, they realize the difference between their association and other similar ones. An ethnic community is formed, as a rule, on the basis of a common territory for living, which creates all the necessary conditions for people to interact with each other. Further, when such a social community as an ethnos has already been formed, this trait becomes secondary or generally loses its significance. People belonging to a certain ethnicity can live in different parts of the Earth and, at the same time, remember and honor the traditions of their ethnic group, celebrate their holidays and adhere to their rules of conduct.
Socialization of a person is impossible without his interaction with other representatives of the human race. Each of us, to one degree or another, belongs not to one, but to several social communities at once. A person outside of society ceases to feel like a person, becomes an outcast.
