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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Civic and Community Engagement

Community

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Beyond The Neighborhood: Defining Membership In Diverse Community Contexts, Brad Forenza, Brian Dashew, Diana Cedeño, David T. Lardier Jan 2020

Beyond The Neighborhood: Defining Membership In Diverse Community Contexts, Brad Forenza, Brian Dashew, Diana Cedeño, David T. Lardier

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The purpose of this research is to form an overarching definition of community membership that encompasses all community contexts. Utilizing qualitative interviews with 102 members of five known community contexts (communities of action, circumstance, interest, place, and practice), the authors use cross-case analysis to explore common, transcendent themes of membership. Three takeaways emerge: first, that individuals identify with communities to address personal needs but come to see social benefits; second, that individuals join communities to deepen existing relationships, but develop new ones; and third, that through engagement, individuals strengthen a sense of self that is unique to community context. Through …


"Everything Has Changed": Narratives Of The Vietnamese American Community In Post-Katrina Mississippi, Yoosun Park, Joshua Miller, Bao Chau Van Sep 2010

"Everything Has Changed": Narratives Of The Vietnamese American Community In Post-Katrina Mississippi, Yoosun Park, Joshua Miller, Bao Chau Van

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In this qualitative study of the Vietnamese American community of Biloxi, Mississippi, conducted three years after Katrina, we attended not only to individual experiences but to the relationship of individuals to their collective and social worlds. The interlocked relationship of individual and collective loss and recovery are clearly demonstrated in respondents' narratives. The neighborhood and community of Little Saigon was significant not only as a symbolic source of identity but as a protected and familiar space of residence, livelihood, and social connections. The post-Katrina changes in the neighborhood are, in multiple ways, changing participants' experience of and relationship to their …