Ley de las Cualificaciones y de la Formación Profesional

A logical commencement point for any study of CBT is to examine the concept of ‘community’ as it relates to the community or communities in question. Sherlock (1999) comments that the concept of community, though widely used by practitioners, governments, NGOs and the general public is ‘a deeply problematic term’ (p. 126). Studdert (2005) notes themes concerning community have reached all levels of politics and is championed by social science investigators. He believes this fevered interest can be attributed to ‘widespread concerns over social cohesion and the degenerative effects on community of two decades of neo- liberalism and globalization’ (p. 9). Specifically, the key forces playing upon the destruction of social cohesion in communities can be identified as a decline in voluntary association in communities, a lack of confidence toward political and NGO institutions, a loss of confidence with governmental institutions, the rise of neo-liberal individualism, the breaking down of traditional industrial communities as a result of globalization and the breaking down of cultural codes and values as a result of the cultural upheavals in the 1960s (Bauman, 1992; Etzioni, 1993; Giddens, 1998; Hirst, 1994; Putnam, 2000; Rifkin, 1995).

The result of these forces is the idea of conceptualizing communities as a fluid concept. Esposito’s (2010) opening remarks from his philosophical manuscript examining the origin and destiny of communities suggest the misery of new individualisms have caused the failure of all communisms. He argues ‘nothing seems more appropriate today than thinking community; nothing more necessary, demanded and heralded’ (p. 1). Esposito (2010) then draws attention to narratives promoting that ‘community is not translatable into a political-philosophical lexicon except by completely distorting it as occurred in the last century’ (p. 1). This refers to societies radically altering discourses of community and diminishing the concept to simply an object. This could be conceptualized by appreciating the notion of individualism and its influence on society and communities over time. Barzun (2000) explores the theory that over the past century ideas and habits have chiefly shaped, united and divided cultural life. He identifies one result of this being individualism, conceptualizing it by suggesting ‘primitive societies had no strong sense of self as individual apart from the community, and that reflects a fundamental truth, as it is only via relationships to others that one can develop and sustain a sense of who one is and what one represents’ (Leiper, 2003, p. 66). Esposito’s (2010) narrative appears to support Barzun’s (2000) work, both connecting individualism as the destructive force that has eroded the collectivism and social cohesiveness of communities.

Block (2008) provides a more contemporary examination of communities. He suggests the traits of modern communities are isolation and self-interest. He offers a response to this

through suggesting the challenge is to reconnect elements of community fostering a ‘caring for the whole’ (p. 1). Block identifies the isolation and self-interest existing in modern communities is a result of ‘western culture, our individualistic narrative, the inward attention from our institutions and our professionals, and the messages from media’ (p. 2). The underlying principle of Block’s methodology to reconnect communities is the ability to develop sociality between members.

The above narrative has highlighted the forces contributing to the plight of modern communities, chiefly the decrease in sociality. The task is now to examine definitions of ‘community’ that may be suitable to conceptualize communities holistically rather than geographically. Mattessich and Monsey’s (2004) definition provides a possible insight to better understand the fundamentals of a modern community: ‘people who live within a geographically defined area and who have social and psychological ties with each other and with the place where they live’ (p. 56). They also suggest the majority of ‘community’ definitions refer to the elements that connect the community together and the geographic locality of the community, for example: ‘a grouping of people who live close to one another and are untied by common interests and mutual aid’ (p. 56).

Mattessich and Monsey’s (2004) definitions imply the human element is just as important as the physical and spatial element. Without the human element communities simply become a collection of innate buildings, parks, streets and mailboxes. We then have Scott and Marshall’s (2009) definition emphasizing the importance of relationships and identity:

The concept of community concerns a particularly constituted set of social relationships based on something which the participants have in common— usually a common sense of identity. It is, to paraphrase Talcott Parsons, frequently used to denote a wide-ranging relationship of solidarity over a rather undefined area of life and interests (para. 1).

Beeton (2006) argues the importance of seeing beyond the popular geographic and political definitions commonly applied to identify communities and provides a more robust concept of community:

A community is an amalgamation of living things that share an environment. What truly delineates a community are the acts of sharing reciprocity and interaction, which can be realised in a number of ways. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs and a multitude of other conditions may be different for some community members, which in turn influence the mixture of that community. Nevertheless, the definitive driver of community is that all individual subjects in the mix have something in common. Such complexity can be seen in any community group, particularly those based on geographic boundaries (which is often the case in tourism as people tend to visit

places or destinations), as their members are continually changing, evolving and developing (p. 6).

Esposito (2010) moves away from these definitions and explores the word ‘common’ as applied to community stating:

What is common is that which unites the ethnic, territorial, and spiritual property of every one of its members. They have in common what is most properly their own; they are the owners of what is common to them all (p. 3).

I make reference to words such as ‘ties’, ‘uniting’, ‘common’, and ‘ownership’ that bind these definitions together. Another predominant theme emerging from the definitional literature is the concept of socialization, and the importance of this activity providing communities and their members with a sense of connectedness, of being-ness. Studdert (2005) suggests that communities are ‘never in a fixed state’ (p. 2). He applies the example of expatriate interactions to explain this concept, stating ‘expatriates may belong to multiple communities and communal multiplicity is not something the expatriate has control over’ (p. 2). Moreover, communal multiplicity ‘is created in the act of sociality, in the social being-ness’ (p. 2) the expatriate brings to the community. Studdert (2005) then argues any community that may have new members joining it, and as expatriates join, communities will be ‘constructed as a hybrid outcome of all our previous socialities and histories’ (p. 2). He then concludes community should be considered as a verb. The reason given identifies the outcome of sociality as an action or speech and as impossible to perform in the context of community without other people present. Simply, without ‘action and sociality, community cannot exist’ (p. 3). Therefore to be considered a member of a community the person must be engaging in ‘social action— sociality’ (p. 3). Rather than define ‘community’ Studdert (2005) offers five elements that are common to all communities and the concept of sociality:

• Multiplicity

• Hybridity

• Action, not thought as creative of community

• Communality as something constructed by some form of conscious or unconscious agreement

• Community as something more than the individual (p. 3).

A similar approach is taken by Bridger and Alter (2009), who stated most definitions of community have four commonalities: locality, local society, collective actions and a mutual identity. They note that each of these elements has become problematic in the 21st _century;

however, there appears to be one constant of communities and local life providing the community with an identity, and that is social interaction. The above concepts have varying applicability to communities in Cambodia. However, as I will document, the development of social interaction, kinship and bonds in Cambodian communities have contributed to their

resilience through times of significant change and hardships. In turn this has provided the catalyst for the development of community social capital with the potential for it to become an asset.