Ken Dempsey’s Community Essay Example

members from the resources of their own area and their own people. Yet despite the persistence of this viewpoint, the reality today is that no settlement in the Western world is economically, politically or culturally autonomous. Nor do the inhabitants of any community have all, or even most, of their needs met within the boundaries of the community. It is also becoming increasingly unlikely that ost of the significant social ties will be restricted by those boundaries, so in this sense it can be said that we are moving beyond the idea of community as a place where the members are restricted by territory. Dempsy relies mainly on a structural perspective for discussing the nature and experience of community. He focuses mainly on community of place and in particular that of small rural towns, where he states there is a strong sense of belonging to community, as ‘everyone knows everyone’.

However, we cannot assume that community members have strong feelings of attachment to one another. In arguing that community exists when a sufficient number of people know one another we focus on the form and not the content or substance of relationships. Psychologically, communities of place are potentially important to their members because people need to feel a part of something. Attachment to place and people informs their personal sense of identity.