Social structures

In previous blogs I wrote about a general definition of community and about types of communities. Both distinctions give a general picture of a social structure and its purpose, but they are not enough to understand how the structure was formed, where it can develop, and which other structures exist in the environment in which it operates.

In many cases, community organizers treat a social structure as a community when what actually exists is a small core crew or a one-off action group. This conceptual confusion is not only semantic: it makes cooperation harder, and it can lead to planning intervention processes that do not fit.

This is why we need to conceptualize social structures and understand the relationships and differences between them. This blog presents a conceptual analysis of seven social structures, arranges most of them on a single development axis, and shows how distinguishing between them helps in choosing the direction of an intervention: both in strengthening an existing social structure and in social development within a defined area (a neighborhood, an industry, a scene...), in connection with Community Mechanics.

Conceptual analysis

Basic concepts

Before defining social structures, four basic concepts are needed:

• Individual – a single person with their own identity, needs, abilities and ties, the basic unit of reference in any analysis. Each person can be connected to several social structures at the same time and with different intensities (active in a group, belonging to a community...) and fill a different role in each of them.
• Place – a physical area where people are present, pass through, stay or act, such as a neighborhood garden, a community center, a classroom, company offices or a house of worship. How long people stay in a place and how they behave there affect the chance of getting acquainted and forming ties. Some places are deliberately designed to encourage interaction (Placemaking) and some less so.
• Space – a digital communication infrastructure in which people are present, consume information and communicate without shared physical presence, such as a WhatsApp group, an online forum or an organizational communication channel. Communication in a space can happen in real time or asynchronously. As with places, some spaces are held in a way that encourages interaction, through quality and engaging content, moderation and clear rules of conduct, and some less so.
• Area – a shared living context that includes individuals and the places and spaces that serve them. A neighborhood area, for example, includes the residents, the gardens and public institutions, alongside the message groups and digital spaces in which they communicate. An area does not have to be defined geographically, and its boundary can also be a content field, an institution or an organizational framework, for example the students, the university buildings and the social media groups relevant to them.

Place, space and area are not social structures in themselves: people can share them without having meaningful ties, a shared identity or shared activity. They are the infrastructure within which social structures can form, grow stronger or weaken. It follows that deliberately designing the places and spaces in an area so that they encourage interaction increases the chance that social structures will form within it.

Social structures

Social structures are dynamic and change over time, so the definitions below are phrased in general terms. The distinction between them does not rest only on the number of participants, but also on the nature of the ties between them, the presence of a shared identity, the formation of leadership, the way they operate and more. This is why ten people can be a crew, a group or a small audience. These characteristics exist to different degrees, so most structures can be arranged on a single development axis along which they intensify and consolidate. The further along the axis, the more a structure can contain the ones before it; a community, for example, can contain groups and crews. The audience is the exception and is examined separately.

• Friendship – a mutual tie between two people, without a collective identity and without leadership. The tie is not necessarily symmetrical; sometimes one side initiates more and maintains its continuity, but both contribute to its existence. A friendship can be temporary and tied to the framework in which it was formed, such as a workplace or a period of study, or it can last beyond it.
• Crew – a few people who maintain personal ties and want to be together, without a defined goal and without organized leadership. It usually forms from an accumulation of friendships and acquaintances, and sometimes a central figure or natural leader emerges in it, without this becoming a formal role. Its activity is spontaneous or habit-based, such as meetups, going out or mutual help.
• Group – organizes around a shared goal or task, with a group identity and some form of leadership. Leadership can be held by a natural leader, a person with a defined role or several members working together, and as the group develops, additional roles emerge. A group can dissolve once the task is complete, or continue to operate around an ongoing goal.
• Community – an ongoing structure that includes individuals, crews and groups, connected to each other by social ties, a shared identity and leadership that enables them to act together. A community usually has several conversation circles: a main circle connecting all members, a leading circle that shapes the activity, and secondary circles around areas of interest. Community members share knowledge, resources and support, and in this way create and receive value from their participation. A community can expand by creating new circles, or shrink when circles weaken and stop operating.
• Movement – an organizational framework connecting communities and groups operating in different areas around a shared identity and overarching goal. Ties exist on two levels: locally within each community or group, and hierarchically between the movement's leadership and the units that make it up, through which knowledge, training and resources flow. This allows the movement to pool resources and achieve broader impact than any single community.
• Stream – a broad, decentralized structure of people and structures connected by an idea, a worldview or a cultural identity, without a single organizational framework. It has no leadership authorized to decide on behalf of all participants, but opinion leaders and creators shape its language and norms. Ideas spread between communities, groups and people without a central mechanism that manages their distribution.

One more structure exists outside the axis:

• Audience – individuals who gather around a shared focus, such as a content creator or a brand. The main tie is between each individual and the focus, usually in one direction (content consumption), and usually there is no meaningful tie between the individuals themselves. Because of this unique tie structure, an audience is not a stage on the development axis, but it can serve as a basis for building a social structure, when ties form between its individuals and their involvement in shaping the structure grows.

Intervention proposals

As mentioned, beyond creating a shared language, the concepts and the development axis also help in practice, in sharpening intervention processes: strengthening a specific social structure, or strengthening the social fabric in a particular area. Below is a short description of intervention processes that advance these goals.

Strengthening a specific social structure

When the goal is to strengthen a social structure, the concepts and the development axis make it possible to diagnose the existing structure, understand where it is located and what it lacks in order to develop to the next stage. Using the Community Mechanics methodology helps close the gaps efficiently.

For example, a few parents who meet regularly in a community garden after picking up their children are a crew: the ties are personal, there is no distinct identity, no organized leadership and the activity is spontaneous. For the crew to become a group, several changes are needed: forming a shared goal, such as improving the playground (the identity system), forming a leading team (the drive system) and creating an activity routine (the happening system).

To bring about these changes, a process can be built that includes the following steps:

1. Kickoff meeting – a meeting at the neighborhood café where the group's goals and identity expressions, such as a name and branding, are set.
2. Open call – a post inviting people to join the initiative on social media and in relevant places in the neighborhood.
3. Leading team – forming the team and setting regular meetings in the schedule.
4. Activity plan – an annual Gantt chart that anchors peak events in the garden alongside discussion meetings focused on developing it.
5. Partnerships – identifying potential partners: municipal officials, business owners and relevant nonprofits.

Strengthening the social fabric in a particular area

When the goal is to strengthen the social fabric, in order to advance goals such as increasing personal safety in a neighborhood or increasing entrepreneurial activity in a particular industry, the concepts and the development axis make it possible to produce an organized social mapping: the main places and spaces, the social structures operating in the area, the central figures in them, and the movements or streams influencing the population. Such a mapping helps create a picture of the current state, from which the most effective way to achieve the goal is derived.

For example, if the goal is to increase entrepreneurial innovation among business administration students, the area of action will consist of about 450 students (150 in each year), who spend time in places such as the library, the faculty corridors and the cafeteria, and in spaces such as the year-group WhatsApp groups and the mailing list. It can be estimated that there are about 75 crews in the area (the number of students divided by an average crew size of 6), that in terms of groups the student council operates there and perhaps also a group or community dealing with entrepreneurship, and that there is an ideological stream of academic innovation influencing the faculty and, indirectly, the students. Such a social mapping, alongside classic stakeholder mapping, will sharpen an intervention process that could look like this:

1. Social and stakeholder mapping – interviews and questionnaires for students, lecturers and entrepreneurs who graduated from the faculty. Posting in the relevant places and spaces will help market the process and collect responses.
2. Strengthening existing structures – subject to resources, inviting representatives of the relevant social structures and central figures to a round-table discussion or a mentoring process. Based on the mapping, measurable goals can be presented as a communication funnel: a phone call with a representative of each group and community (100%), a coffee meeting (80%), a follow-up conversation (70%) and the creation of a collaboration (65%).
3. Building new structures – where needed, such as establishing an innovation hub. To do this, marketing tracks can be created for students as individuals or as part of an existing crew, for example a prize competition for teams of six students. After such a competition it will be easier to develop the crews into groups or communities.
4. Developing the ecosystem – building an annual plan relevant to the existing structures, combining content with peak events. Content can be drawn from publications by central figures in the innovation stream that was mapped, and peak events can be promoted and held in the main places that were identified. Such a plan will allow more students to learn about the activity and join it.

Summary

Diagnosing the type of community is not enough to plan an optimal intervention process. Distinguishing between social structures and arranging them on a development axis makes it possible to identify which structure is involved, where it is located and what is needed to move it to the next stage. In a defined area, the same concepts make it possible to map the structures operating in it and choose where and how to intervene. In both cases diagnosis is the starting point, and from there the Community Mechanics approach offers a methodology for social and community development.