Project on Dharavi

Section 1: A review of Community definitions and various facets of Community

Section 1 of this dissertation will explore the different ways in which community is defined by academics as well as through policy and politics. This includes the key features of a community; what it generally consists of and the different interpretations of community by different elements or stakeholders, especially the people that make up the community. Further, the introduction will also reflect on the implications of these concepts and features of community in the context of the redevelopment plans in Dharavi. 

1.1.            Community in General

The term “community” comes from the ancient latin term “communities” which actually means comrade or well structured society (Messing,2009). In Communities, purpose, faith, resources, choices and hazards are some of the influencing variables that are common and they impact upon the behavior and identity of the participants of the community and their mutual bonding.

In today’s times, an ideal definition of community would include mutual ethics, shared individual care among fellows, and concern for one another (Peck, 1987). This idea strengthens the 'communitarian' idea of social equality, wherein nationality essentially involves shared responsibilities deprived of which discrete rights would not be imaginable. According to Dwyer (2004), “a solid logic of 'community', described here as 'an entity with certain shared standards, rules and objectives wherein every adherent aspect it is where the shared objective is as their own', is a general requirement for communitarians. Hence it can be said that Community makes distinct independence promising by guarding and supporting its adherents and is capable to ask for and defend distinct faithfulness to mutually described responsibilities and exercises that are specific and definite to a selected community”.

1.2. View of Modern sociologists

Modern sociologists employ the notion of community largely to denote the communal procedures of communication and the exchange of functioning within assemblies, instead of labeling assemblies that are obvious and recognizable on the platform (Crow and Allan, 1994; Day and Murdoch, 1993). But, the notion of a native community     defines certain logic of common personality, that persons who reside in a region are far more than merely its ‘populace’: "residing in a region gives a possible chance for shared contribution and participation with others living there as well". (Crow and Allan, 1994) In the works of Putman (2000), the ironic engagement of lives which occurs inside native communities is perceived to establish valued communal wealth for the government, along with the distinct inhabitants themselves (Halpern, 2005; Prime et al, 2002). But, the procedures which together create and reinforce a community give evidence that can be freely used to recognize that community.

1.3. Community as Space

Peck remarked that building a sense of community is easy but maintaining this sense of community is difficult in the modern world and the idea of ‘space’ is extensively involved on strength, strategy, equality and citizenship. Webster and Engberg Petersen (2002) denote to ‘political spaces’ as those official networks, political treatises and communal and political rehearses by means of which the deprived and those groups operational with them can trail poverty drop.

A few writers review ‘democratic spaces’ wherein inhabitants can involve themselves in demanding nationality and impact governance procedures (Cornwall and Coelho 2006). Andrea Cornwall through are writings highlights, that these spaces for contribution are not impartial, however are themselves formed by strength and relationships, which both border and go in them (Cornwall 2002). Between all, she pulls upon French societal philosophers (Lefebvre, Foucault, and Bourdieu) for whom the idea of strength and the idea of space are intensely related. Citing Lefebvre:

Improving citizenship involvement needs far more than just appealing or comprising people to contribute. And it demands more than merely creating place accessible for people to present their requirements and movements in collective ‘voices’. Actual contribution needs allowing people access to data on which to base planning or to drum up to declare their privileges and claim responsibility. To do the same needs dynamic involvement in developing voice, constructing serious awareness, promoting for the presence of females, kids, uneducated, deprived and excluded people, forcing open cracks to broaden places for engagement in policy making and constructing the political abilities for independent involvement, it calls for procedure that reinforce the potentials  of dynamic resident involvement with four of the official kinds recognized here; both those protracted by the influential, and those by which residents create and frame their own circumstance of involvement and discover and employ their individual voice. And it depend on policies to improve residents’ political abilities in the public policy field’ from the capability to make nous of compound financial or spending statistics, to having the linguistic with which to claim with technical authorities: on preparing common man with the ‘arms of the influential’.

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