DEFINITIONS OF

COMMUNITY
Social Science Perspective
The social sciences are regarded simply as the study of
people and societies. Throughout history, social sciences
concentrated on the factors that shaped and dictated the
course of our civilization. A study is social science
demands a deeper understanding of people’s behaviors
and processes in relation to the scheme of societal order.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Communities are the driving force for civilizations. Human evolution itself
came from the mold of these evolutionary shifts and has drastically
accelerated human development.
Renowned naturalist Charles Darwin’s discovery of human evolution
through natural selection highlights the idea that development stemmed
from the ability of a certain species to adapt and therefore survive its
environment.
Paleolithic Age (Old-Stone Age)- Hunter-Gatherers
Human development was marked by the development of their tools, which
started with the Oldowan stone tool industry which is the earliest known
period where men first attained such feats of craftsmanship.
At around 1.6 million years ago, humans started to slowly improved their
tools as they had more robust construction and are more symmetrical,
marking the Acheulean tradition. This also signifies the earliest period where
humans exhibited a form of communal behavior. Foraging is one of the
earliest forms of social stratification where roles were given to certain
members of the group. The formation of these roles emphasized the need
for the earliest humans to form relationships among themselves to improve
their chances of survival.
Hunting and foraging may be the start of how societies evolved but if we
were to study the act itself, we can draw some definitive conclusions about
how their systems worked. For them to hunt for food, they scoured the land
they prey and depending on the animal to be hunted, they needed the
efforts of other members to take down their intended targets. Hunting
demands the physical tools to do the work; therefore, it was mainly a task
for males. Women were known to gather wild plants and smaller preys.
This was the first evidence of how men categorized roles through the
division of labor.
Mesolithic Age (Middle Stone Age)- Horticultural and Agricultural
The Mesolithic Age (9,600 BCE, right after the Ice Age) is arguably the
turning point of human evolution. It was during this time that
hunter-gatherers were having a less vital communal function. This was
because during this time, due to changing environment they were in, human
started to cultivate more sustainable sources of food. They cultivated plants
and the later, they formed an agricultural society.
Many of our earliest ancestors opted to settle near bodies of water
because fish was more abundant and easier to catch than it is to hunt for
animals that may be riskier and even life-threatening in some instances.
Cultivation of plants was essential in building communities that were less
nomadic. It was the start of communal settlements.
Neolithic Age- Agrarian
In this age, communes were more efficient than in the previous two ages,
Herding was added to agriculture as their main sources of food. Having
evolved from hunting and gathering, herding was the start of a more
complex society moving away from foraging as the commune’s primary
task. It was also in this period of development where humans evolved
culturally.
Since settlements were more permanent and work was becoming more
structured, it gave more time for the communes to use their free time in
other pursuits than foraging. This resulted in the materialization of societal
relations and dynamics in the commune became more grounded and
systematized, ushering the dawn of civilization.
This gave birth to the earliest known civilizations, such as Mesopotamia,
Egypt, China, and the Indus Valley, which later on became the origins of
modern states.
Agriculture was scaled down during this period as more efficient ways of
farming were developed. Humans developed tools using sturdier materials
such as metals, which they developed later as farming equipment. As the
knowledge from the thousands of years contributed to more optimum
techniques of cultivating the land, they also developed water irrigation.
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Sociology is a branch of social science that analyzes the history, evolution,
structure, and functions of societies. Sociology is employed in observing
the community in a more sociological perspective, by focusing on the
subject across agencies, from the individual (micro level) to a larger and
broader subject (macro level) which includes institutions and other groups.
The tools for studying societies vary from direct participation or more
empirical bases to critical analogies of social phenomena. In traditional
study of sociology, the focus of the study falls within these topics:
1. Social stratification 4. Religion
2. Social class 5. Sexuality
3. Social mobility 6. Deviance
Social Stratification
To study society, a scholar needs to have a cluster of
identifiable traits to distinguish individuals and groups from one
another. To do this, social scientist use social stratification to
delineate subjects. Based on the individual or group’s shared
characteristics, they identify individuals or group as cohorts
sharing common experiences. Such as categorizations may be
based on work, wealth or wage. The resulting classification
usually will split subjects into lower class, middle class, and
upper class to identify the various strata within societies.
Social Class
A social class is the direct result of classifying people in
accordance to material wealth, relative social value, or other
traits. It is determined based on a specified set of observable
and quantifiable characteristics relative to a set benchmark.
Social Mobility
Social Mobility is the study of how individuals or groups move
across classifications and stratifications. Mobility, in this regard,
is the transition of subjects in various social identities within a
determined structure. Here we can see stature on wealth,
social prestige, and other factors than can determine the
current and historical progress of different sets of collectives.
Religion
It is how people or groups are classified by using core religious
beliefs and practices as an identifiable social characteristic. In
sociology, religion is recognized as one of the primary
influences that contribute to individual identity and social norms
and thus is one of the factors to be studied.
Sexuality
Sexuality is one of the topics that identify people and groups
through their sexual norms, orientation, interest, and behavior.
These characteristics are manifested from the obvious, like
fashion or aesthetic preference, to a more abstract and less
identifiable, such as sexual preference and emotional and
spiritual characteristics. Sexuality, as part of human biological
functions, cuts across other classifications and is one of the
most popular studies in current literature.
Deviance
In sociology, studying deviance is rooted on the interaction of
society with a certain social anomaly such as deviant act or
norm-defying stunt. To become a deviant, it must be against a
preset rule or agreed-upon norm. Sociology studies the
interaction of deviants to emphasize the dynamics within social
systems.
POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE
Political science views communities as composed of citizens guided
under one constitution or government. Individuals are considered
as constituents whose identification can be summed by their
citizenship proven by a contract such as a passport of birth
certificate. An individual is granted with various rights and
privileges such as the right to vote and is expected to comply
with the rules and duties set by the state for its citizens.
NATION, STATE, and NATION-STATE
NATION is composed of individuals that share a common
background such as language, history, or religion.
while a STATE is a political entity that has the four characteristics:
population, territory, sovereignty, and government.
NATION-STATE is when both nation and state come together to
form a unified body that has all four aforementioned
characteristics bound by a common identification of culture,
language, and history.
POPULATION- The people sharing a geographical space (towns,
cities, countries)

TERRITORY- Physical area under the rule or jurisdiction under a

political system or ruler

SOVEREIGNTY- Authority of a state for self-governance and rule

GOVERNMENT- A group of individuals that administers the function

of state
A nation meets these four characteristics; this is why NATIONAL
INTEREST prioritizes the protection of its population, territories,
sovereignty and its government, and the continuation of their
cultural identity to ensure their survival and relevance.
The government, as a representative of its people, has the power,
legitimacy, amd authority to represent the nation through its
FOREIGN POLICY which is directed toward other nation-states.
Foreign policy is the intersection of national interest and local
governance. It is considered to be a derivation of local politics.