My name is David Wellman and I moved to St. George 5 years ago from Central Oregon. I first started school here at Dixie with the idea of becoming a personal trainer. I changed my mind after my first year of school and decided to take up Psychology. Interestingly enough I did not enjoy that so I took up Criminal Justice. I loved my Criminal Justice classes and found that Integrated Studies was the only degree with Criminal Justice at the time (that has since changed). Recently I decided I missed using Math in school so I dropped Psychology and took on Business. I am currently a Junior but I am in my fourth year here at DSU.
My initial concept of neighborhood compared to community was that community could be anything from your close friends to an entire town. Community in my mind was a group of people that had similar interests or goals. An example of a community could be an adult softball league, the people in the league could be from all different "neighborhoods" within a town but have formed their own community. Adversely, a neighborhood was a specific location within a town or state (small towns generally are just one neighborhood). However, neighborhoods could be communities as well. After reading and watching the posted videos I feel my understanding of the two terms is fairly accurate.
I liked how the reading addresses each factor that influence neighborhoods and clearly lines out what is to come throughout the rest of the book. I am curious to read about how dramatic neighborhood effects actually create individuals. Chicago is a perfect city to perform such a study due to it's diversity and larger size. Chicago also has a unique setting with it's higher crime rate compared to much of the rest of the country.
The sense of community as potentially a much smaller circle than a neighborhood is intriguing because other students have pointed out that a community can also incorporate many neighborhoods. Is this a paradox? And David also brings up the question of how neighborhood effects can create individuals and not just the other way around. Are we locked in a maze, or is this a knot we can tease apart as we research through various interdisciplinary perspectives?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that community can be as small as your close friends and family. I think a community is a group of people who share the same ideas, values, and unity.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your ideas on community. I have been around the world and seen that even though an ocean can divide people it doesn't end the community feeling and the fact that they feel together and connected.
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