Community, to me, sounds like the coming together of people who have similar interests or goals. For example, that show on television called Community where a group of college students attend a small community college and get into a mess of trouble. I believe everyone at Dixie is in a "community" of sorts. We all share the common interest in obtaining an education and graduating with a degree. From the first day of class until finals week, we all live within close proximity of each other. Whether that be at the library or the college dorms we all make up a community of students.
Neighborhood sounds more like rows of houses that make up a particular neighborhood. In a neighborhood people live within close proximity of each other. In a neighborhood, you cannot always choose who your neighbors will be. However, you often learn the importance of living in a good neighborhood with good neighbors.
I really enjoyed the magazine blurb about the book. I myself moved from a ghetto Santa Ana neighborhood in California to a clean cut caucasian St. George neighborhood. So I can relate to the differences the writer talks about when it comes to neighborhoods and crime rates. And that is what gets me really pumped up for this course. Learning how to blend two disciplines that may have little or nothing to do with each other but then end up discovering that the two actually have some things in common. Which can also be the challenge of an interdisciplinary course. Finding where those two meet and hoping your professor gives you a passing grade.
You raise a good point, Erica, about bringing disparate disciplines together. And, since you raise it in the context of your two neighborhoods, the first one in Santa Ana, the second in St. George, it also suggests a nice analogy: good interdisciplinary research is often like trying to integrate two very different neighborhoods. And here's another analogy that your first post suggests to me: the very words, "community" and "neighborhood" are similar to different disciplinary approaches to the same concept. Can they be integrated? How?
ReplyDeleteI am origionally from Las Vegas Nevada and although I didn't actually live in a 'Ghetto' like neighborhood, I knew of many and knew people who lived there. I have always found it very interesting to observe the type and variety of people who lived in different types of neighborhoods. I appreciate your perspective relating to your move from the neighborhood you lived in in California, to the nice neighborhood you live in in St. George. What a contrast. I find that very interesting to observe.
ReplyDeleteErica, I really like how you pointed out that Dixie is a community. From certain groups I have been in here on campus I have learned that the college, no matter how close or fat people are, is a community. I have met people literally all over the world supporting and loving this school.
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