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Aspiration to community: Community responses to rejection
Author(s) -
Fisher Adrian T.,
Sonn Christopher C.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.585
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1520-6629
pISSN - 0090-4392
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1520-6629(199911)27:6<715::aid-jcop6>3.0.co;2-5
Subject(s) - oppression , privilege (computing) , indigenous , social psychology , sociology , racism , social group , ethnic group , gender studies , psychology , political science , politics , anthropology , law , ecology , biology
While people may belong to multiple psychological communities, each has a primary community which reinforces norms, values, identities, and provides structures and social support systems that are crucial to the well‐being of its members. In some situations, people aspire to membership in a community, but are rejected. This paper examines the responses of colored South Africans and Anglo‐Indians in their aspirations to membership in European communities. By the use of status borrowing, relative advantage, and social comparison, these groups tried to enhance the language and culture they shared with the Europeans, while rejecting the indigenous parts of their heritage. However, the European groups rejected them as “inferiors,” while still providing them with some degree of status and privilege above that of the indigenous groups. It was found that socially constructed differences and social distances between communities, racism, and other negative outcomes associated with rejection and marginality operated at social and psychological levels to suppress the members of the aspirant groups. It is recommended that understandings of response to oppression and marginalization should go beyond the individual level to include community level responses.© 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.