Jewish community

I joined a Jewish meeting a couple weeks ago. The meeting was pretty interesting since a few Jewish are in Japan. I have never met Jewish in Japan.

According to one of them joining the meeting, they sometimes get together and enjoy talking together. I think most of them were born in the U.S. However, they have a strong solidarity and never forget their culture.

Perhaps, not only Jewish but also other ethnic living in the U.S. often have meetings and try to keep their own cultures.

I am interested in how they think about their identities. Do they think they are American? Or don't they?

There are mainority groups in Japan. However, most of us forget about it and tend to think only one ethnic exists in Japan, no minority groups. In fact, however, minorities in Japan also try to keep their cultures by using various ways, for example, establishing particular schools for their groups.

Some minorities are losing thier culutures or languages, but they are trying to keep them. We should not forge about it.

Thanksgiving and communities

Thanksgiving day is coming.... This is my favorite American traditinal holidays.

Thanksgiving day's mood pretty looks like that of Japanese New Year's Day. For example, we cook traditional and special foods for New Year's Day, have family function, and relax all day. Therefore, I recall New Year's Day in Japan when Thanksgiving day is coming.

However, the mood of New Year's Day in Japan has been changing. Like the U.S., all shops and restaurants used to be close on that day, but many are open recently. when I was a kid, my parents went shopping before New Year's Day before all shops were close. And then, we relaxed at home on New Year's Day. However, we currently do not have to rush at the end of the year because most shops are open on New Year's Day.

It is more convinient. Yes, it is. But I feel kind sad. I am feeling we are losing traditional mood.

In addition, some of us are losing communications between our families including our relatives by changing tradition. Some of us go to the theater or shopping on New Year's Day instead of meeting our relatives.

Family is a fundamental of communities. Thus, if we lose communications among families, it would mean that our communities also may lose communications.

We need to reconsider the importance of traditional events and holidays that contribute to promote communications among families and communities.

Glossary

Networks

When we hear “network”, we would think about intelligence nets or human networks. We can get much information through networks, i.e. networks are important for surviving in human societies. Then, in terms of community, how do networks work? Perhaps networks in communities can be defined as cooperation among community members. For example, if someone gets sick, other ones would sit by that person’s bed or give medicines. Alternatively, when someone needs to prepare a wedding party or a funeral ceremony, other ones would help for the preparations. That is, networks are key factors that ensure members’ lives in communities.

Building Up the Concept of Sustainable Development 1

In order to build up my own concept of sustainable development, I first write my thought for sustainable development up on the blog. I have many ideas for sustainable development, but have not summarized them successfully yet. Also, I have read articles about sustainable development a little so far. I am thinking what I need to do is building up the concept of sustainable development with my own thought and reading more related articles to sophisticate my theory. And then, I will need to combine my thought and knowledge gained from articles.

Here is the first draft of the concept of sustainable development.....

The term sustainable is the key word for community development, because community is able to ensure people’s lives and safe by developing or existing sustainability. In order to develop or exist sustainability, community should care about not only ensuring community members’ lives economically but also conserving community’s properties such as natural and human resources that contribute to development of the community.

Then, in order to develop or exist sustainability, what do communities need? As mentioned above, communities need to conserve their properties for sustainable development. Actually, people did know the importance of their properties in the past time. The people of the past really cared about their properties; they admonished abuse of natural resources to avoid losing them, and they fostered youth by conveying their knowledge, experiences, and skills. These were done in the community and conveyed there across several generations. In short, sustainability was naturally implemented in many communities.

On the other hand, sustainability became being considered less serious after the modern age started. People focused on economic development, which ignored conservation of their properties, but did not attempt to develop in a balanced manner economically and environmentally. It was only after people faced serious environmental degradation, which affected economic development negatively, they finally realized the importance of their properties and the need of their conservation.Having above experience, people became aiming to learn the people of the past that cared about their properties and were actualizing sustainable development. Concretely, they focus on natural resource conservation, fostering human resources and avoiding abuse of their properties.

Note: Brint (2001), Gemeinschaft Revisited: A Critique and Reconstruction of the Community Concept

Community has been studying by many scholars with various aspects for a long time. Among these scholars, scholars who took the lead for development of community concepts were Toennies and Durkheim. Toennies explicated the types of community: gemeinschaft and gesellschaft. Gemeinschaft is the community which focuses on interaction among the community’s members. Gesellschaft is the community which seeks members’ profits. Using the author’s term, gemeinschaft represents the childhood of humanity and gesellschaft its maturity. Toennies defined characteristics of these two types as the following;

Gemeinschaf is associated with:
- common ways of life,
- common beliefs,
- concentrated ties and frequent interaction,
- small numbers of people,
- distance from centers of power,
- familiarity,
- continuity, and
- emotional bonds

Gesellschaft is associated with:
- dissimilar ways of life,
- dissimilar beliefs,
- dispersed ties and infrequent interaction,
- large numbers of people,
- proximity to centers of power,
- rules to overcome distrust,
- temporary arrangements, and
- regulated competition

That is to say, gemeinschaft is higher homogeneous than gesellschaft. Perhaps major communities used to be gemeinschaft in the pre-modern society.

On the other hand, Durkheim analyzed community with variable properties that the community had and his approach is called disaggregating approach. Variables that Durkheim used are structural and cultural variables. Structural variables are; (1) dense and demanding social ties, (2) social attachments to and involvements in institutions, (3) ritual occasions, and (4) small group size. Cultural variables are; (1) perceptions of similarity with the physical characteristics, expressive style, way of life, or historical experience of others, and (2) common beliefs in an idea system, a moral order, an institution, or a group. If combining Toennies’ formulation with Durkheim’s approach, we could analyze each community more detail.

Glossaries

Capacity:

In terms of community, a capacity could mean the following: the size like population, area or employment rate and the number of types of social services like education, medical care, or services for the social vulnerable, etc. The capacity could be defined as comprehensive fundamentals that the community can gain. In short, the capacity can be a measure that indicates how people in the community are protected or how much they can enjoy supports by the community. More the size of the capacity, more people in the community could be satisfied with living in the community.

Adaptive Ability:

We need adaptive abilities when we live in human societies. An adaptive ability means how much or fast you can adjust communities. As societies become industrialized, many people get to move their community to another one. When people get into new community, they have to adjust it to live there successfully. If they try not to adjust new community, people already living there would not want to accept these strangers. In order to adjust new community, you would need to obey rules of the community.

Capital:

Capital is goods that the community has: human, lands, natural resources, factories, etc. In short, capitals are factors that can develop the community or improve living standards in the community. Generally, capitals exist naturally in the community, for example, land and natural resources. However, we can produce or improve some capitals like factories and human capitals. Also, we can buy or sell our capitals to other communities. For example, we can import or export natural resources like oil or gas. Human capital is also able to be “transacted”. People want to move places that they can get higher education, good pays, or good social services. These factors can be defined as capacities mentioned above. That is to say, the community can get skilled human capital with its capacities. Thus, capacities are highly related to capitals.

What is the community?

Community can be generally defined as things that consist of homogeneous groups. Homogeneous groups are groups consist of people who have same backgrounds such as culture, language, and religion, etc. Communities have played a role that encourages people in the community to cooperative each other and protect them socially. However, communities have facilitated exclusiveness in the society and promote reject people living in other societies. These features actually are keeping originalities of each community.

I divide types of communities into two main categories: traditional communities and modern ones. A former type is age-old communities existing in agricultural villages or ethnic societies, which are categorized as traditional and highly homogeneous societies. A later one is communities that appeared or are appearing in modern society like global communities or virtual communities.

Typical traditional communities are territorial connections and blood relationships. Considering the past time, most people hardly moved but stayed their communities until they died (even present age, many people mostly spend their lives in their communities). They share common knowledge, information, culture, concepts, experiences, and history under traditional communities. Under their communities, people are strongly protected at the social end while they are subject to restrictions. For example, members in the community have to participate in some events or keep the rules in their community. They can get social securities in exchange for losing their freedom.

On the other hand, modern communities are comparatively a new concept and consist of broader areas, fields, or more various types of people than traditional ones. Typical modern communities are global communities and virtual ones. There are significant differences between traditional communities and modern ones: modern communities do not require community members to share same backgrounds such as culture, history, or language, and members in communities often do not know about other members well.

Global communities are organized among regions or countries sharing common interests. For example, European Union (EU) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are typical global communities, and share common interests with different backgrounds. Although, in many cases, members of global communities have similar culture and concepts, they do not have to share same ones. However, members in global communities are required to keep the rules of their communities to obtain social securities as well as traditional communities. Global communities can also get into the category of traditional ones in that way.

Virtual communities are called e-community or online community, and composed of people who know each other through the Internet. Most members have never seen each other or do not know any information about other members, but connect in same interests or hobbies. It does not matter if members have quite different backgrounds such as languages, cultures, or concepts, since they connect by common hobbies or interests. Therefore, connection among members in virtual communities often tends to weak, because it is hard for them to achieve unities with strangers. A virtual communities’ feature that other three do not have is virtual communities do not guarantee social securities for members.

Communities have been staying around as a basic function in societies since human history started and its meanings are expanding after reaching modern age. However, in terms of a function that homogeneous groups gather, an essence of communities never changes.