Community developmet essay help?

Community development?

Community development essay help ! ? ????

Essay question is...

social constructions have asserted that gender and race are entirely social constructs- discuss with refrences to community development.

any help would be amuch appreciated!

Community developmet essay help?myspace pics

I'm not sure what level of study you're at so forgive me if some of the following is simplistic.

A community is a group of people - could be a classroom; a neighbourhood; a town - any cluster of people who share some common characteristic constitute a community.

Social construction refers to the meaning that we attribute to things - especially to differences between members of a community. For example, have you ever noticed that little children of all races will play together without worrying about racial difference; they don't have a linguistic concept of the difference. However, as they acquire language and copy the meanings they see attributed to others; their attitude towards different others takes form.

So, differences may be by race; colour; style; interest; class; wealth; sex and other basic (inherent) and acquired attributes. The way we regard people who are different in some way depends on how we have learned to behave - that is; the knowledge that we've absorbed especially during developmental years.

The acquisition of knowledge (formal and informal - everything that we know about how to behave and function in society) is 'culture'.

One of the most fundamental differences that has been the basis of revolutions has been class - the poor versus those who hold the power over them. Those with power usually command the means of production - the economy.

Ideas vary about when it was decided that interventions to alleviate some problems at the community instead of the individual level could be effective. We can actually look back as far into history as we like to find examples of people pulling together to change their circumstances. In the modern, industrial era - community development was a way that people grouped together to take control over shared problems - poverty; sickness; work safety; housing; violence and so on.

The key (especially in the era of Human Rights which came together after WW2 ) is empowerment - meaning that people could share, find or create resources to manage their own communities without being so dependent on those in power.

It's a great thing - for example, residents in an inner city slum might cluster together to build a market garden or a safe play area for children. You can find lots of examples via Google.

The good side of community development is that rather than blame being placed on individuals; so that they were isolated in trying to improve their state of being; communities became strong and connected by solving problems as a group. There's a lot of dignity in that.

The downside is that community development can be a way of letting those who hold all the goodies ignore the problem - it can help absolve them of shouldering some of the load and responsibility for social problems. The idea of Human Rights is that all individuals in society should have a chance at fair access to society's resources. Landlords renting substandard but overpriced properties can ignore their responsibilities if everyone bands together to fix the buildings and grounds.

However, good community development includes not only immediate, hands on work on the problem, but also advocacy, protest and political activism and other strategies.

Gender and race are just two of many social constructs - the culture (the body of knowledge) that's transmitted between generations and from media and education etc - tell us how to define certain members of our society. The things we tend to accept as taken for granted truths are really quite malleable. Gender usually refers to the functions (roles - tasks and behaviours) of one sex or another.

Anyway, there are a couple of links below to start you off. One is about a classroom - it's like a microcosm of society that's analyzed there and maybe you could use a similar framework. Basically, work out who holds the power - all else seems to follow from that because whoever holds the power commands the culture that dictates how people think about different others.

Good luck with your work :)