Communecology 3

Sense of Community

In a seminal 1986 study, McMillan and Chavis identify four elements of "sense of community": membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection.


Membership includes five attributes:

• boundaries
• emotional safety
• a sense of belonging and identification
• personal investment
• a common symbol system

Influence works both ways: members need to feel that they have some influence in the group, and some influence by the group on its members is needed for group cohesion.


Integration and fulfillment of needs
Members feel rewarded in some way for their participation in the community.


Shared emotional connection
The "definitive element for true community," it includes shared history and shared participation (or at least identification with the history).


They give the following example of the interplay between these factors:

Someone puts an announcement on the dormitory bulletin board about the formation of an intramural dormitory basketball team. People attend the organizational meeting as strangers out of their individual needs (integration and fulfillment of needs). The team is bound by place of residence (membership boundaries are set) and spends time together in practice (the contact hypothesis). They play a game and win (successful shared talent event). While playing, members exert energy on behalf of the team (personal investment in the group). As the team continues to win, team members become recognized and congratulated (gaining honor and status for being members), Influencing new members to join and continue to do the same. Someone suggests that they all buy matching shirts and shoes (common symbols) and they do so (influence).

Spirit, Trust, Trade, and Art

This article revisits the theory of sense of community originally developed in 1976 and subsequently presented by McMillan and Chavis (1986).

It extends the principles offered by McMillan and Chavis.

The same four elements remain but are rearranged and renamed as follows:

Spirit, Trust, Trade, and Art. Presently, I view Sense of Community as a spirit of belonging together, a feeling that there is an authority structure that can be trusted, an awareness that trade, and mutual benefit come from being together, and a spirit that comes from shared experiences that are preserved as art."

Sense of Community - David W. McMillan

http://www.drdavidmcmillan.com/article-2/