Sense of Community in a Context of Community Violence

Abstract

The following study analyzes the concept of sense of community of a group of people living in a shanty town in a district in the eastern outskirts of Lima, characterized by processes of community violence. With this in mind, a mixed methodology and a concurrent design were chosen, applying the Scale of Sense of Community, SCI-2, a question to measure the perceived level of danger through a Likert scale, and five individual interviews with the population. The results show that the higher the level of danger perceived in the zone, the lower the sense of community is. Likewise, in this group of people their sense of community is based above all on an emotional shared connection and on a strong feeling of membership. On the contrary, the difficulty to satisfy their collective needs through organization and the weak relationship that exists between the population and its leaders, decrease and deteriorate the sense of community in this group.

Keywords:

• community violence
• sense of community
• urban violence