Community Variations
Communities fall into many categories, and in this post we will look at the differences and similarities between them
I’ve written before about a question that comes up time and again in the day to day course of my work – what makes this community a community of practice? Whilst I understand why it can and does matter in some instances, I’m generally of the opinion that there are so many more important questions to invest our time in than what type of community we christen ourselves as – my general preference is that unless someone is forcing you to explain or justify yourself, I would just say ‘community’ and leave it at that.
If I reflect on my feelings here it’s a bit strange that I’m so apathetic about what should be such a significant part of a group’s identity. Part of the reason I feel like this is because the overlap between all the different variations is so great – as we’ll see as this post progresses, many communities are actually a combination of one or two or more types of one community or another. This week’s post is largely based on what I learned reading this article by Nathan Beacom – its very good and well worth a read – when I think about my experiences working with communities of all sorts there a few that I recognise and find more common than others.
The first, most fundamental and, if I’m honest, probably the easiest to recognise is a Community of Care – communities of people who are defined by their geographic locality with each other. They are local groups of local people. They are made up of the people who can knock on your door to check in on you when you’re ill, that you can borrow or lend a bag of sugar, they are nearby and have lunch together, or they might work around the same computer, workbench, or in the same surgery or operating theatre. By definition, communities of care will likely be built on physical in person relationships – while they can be augmented by phone calls or emails or group chats, what defines them is their local and in person connectivity. Because of this, communities of care will often overlap with other communities that their members are part of that don’t depend on geographical closeness. Whilst they could consist of family members, neighbours, close friends, or simply people who work on the same bank of desks as you in the office, they may also take the form of ‘sub-communities that exist within a larger more distributed one. For those like me who work with communities that are spread across multiple offices and countries, members may join a community session and then, once finished, go to get a cup of tea with those members who are there with them and talk about the things that happened in the community session.
The next type of community worth discussing is a Community of Interest – generally these grow around a group of people who share a common interest in something, and these can be a lot more flexible. They might be local, global, virtual, hybrid, in person, formal, informal, tiny or enormous. This lack of consistent size and shape doesn’t mean they are less consistently valuable – to those who belong to them they can be incredibly meaningful and long lasting, or for others they could satisfy a short term need and their membership may only be transient. They don’t necessarily even have to form around something (outwardly) meaningful – a community of people may share an interest in football, watching or playing together. A community may be a book club, a food lover’s group, a Dungeons and Dragons club, or a woodworking group. The subject of focus can be any number of things, which is why these tend to be the most commonly occurring type of community.
Communities of interest share a lot of similarities with Communities of Practice, but differ in a few key areas. Communities of practice are communities of learning. They are a place where people come together – in person or virtually – around a particular shared domain space, where they are practitioners who desire to improve their practice, and connect with a shared sense of community. A community of interest does not exist with the purpose of improving the capability of its members in its particular area of focus, sometimes they exist just because they are fun. Similarly, communities of practice can and should be enjoyable places to be – learning together presents an opportunity to expand an individual’s ability to realise their potential far in excess of what could be achieved by learning alone, but that doesn’t mean that it should be a boring experience when doing so.
All of the communities we’ve covered so far represent something that is valuable to their members, and if done right can breed a real sense of connection and belonging amongst their membership and to the community itself. These places that we feel this connect to - like we belong to – are known as Communities of Place. They provide a sense of safety, connection, and association that lead to closer and more meaningful bonds amongst their membership, because their members WANT to be part of them. They represent a state that all types of community can aspire to, and generally exists in most of the more successful and enduring communities I have known or been part of.
Often – not always but sometimes – a community forms around a cause so important and meaningful to its members that transcends being considered an interest or a subject of learning. Sometimes the cause becomes impossible to ignore and fundamental to the lives and identities of those who pursue it. The people who congregate around these causes form Communities of Moral Calling – groups where their interests or focus of learning become passions and necessity. We only need look at organisations such as Greenpeace, Sea Shephard, Extinction Rebellion – these groups strive towards a cause that goes beyond just doing things because their members enjoy them, they strive towards them because they HAVE to. They require responsible leadership, because they go far beyond anything so ultimately trivial as a particular technology or game or sport. In the eyes of their members in many cases they fate of the world may depend on them.
I hope that it comes clear through reading about even these five different types of community classifications that there is significant overlap between them – one could easily have some or more elements of another two or three, whilst still being defined as one particular type of community. To me I think of it as more important to understand these types than to be defined by them, as what your community is to some may not be the same as it is to others. Some may feel a burning sense of connection to a community, whereas others may feel it is only one facet of their learning experience. Some may value more than anything else the local level opportunity for human connection, whilst others simply enjoy reading. The point is, you don’t and can’t know what the community means to all its members, so attempting to define it potentially exclude the relationship certain members have with it. So I stand by my opinion – unless you have to, just say ‘community’.
Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve enjoyed this post I’d really appreciate it if you could share it - alternatively you could always buy me a coffee :)