Feasibility and Implementation of Comparative Community Research: With Special Reference to the Human Relations Area Files

Abstract

JNTEREST in the community is diverse. For some it is primarily theoretical, being directed, for example, toward the analysis of the structured relationships of individuals within the community, as into social classes or castes, or into institutions like those of the church, the school, cooperatives, or municipal government. For others the interest takes a practical form; the community is the recognized locus for the implementation of programs of education, public health, nutrition, social work, relief and rehabilitation, agricultural extension work, and the like. Some few may even be responsible for planning the establishment of new communities, as in reclamation and resettlement projects. Whatever these varied interests, however, they all come to a common focus in the structure and functioning of the community. The broader and deeper the scientific knowledge of the community, the better equipped each specialist will be to carry out his own specific task. In this paper, consequently the problem of the community will be approached from the broadest possible comparative or cross-cultural point of view. The first point to be noted is that the local community is a universal social group. It shares with the nuclear or biological family -and with it alone-the distinction of being present and functionally significant in every one of the thousands of societies known to ethnography and history, from the simplest primitive cultures to the most complex modern civilizations. Specialists interested in public schools or cooperativeseven those concerned with the courts or the church-are dealing with historically limited or culture-bound phenomena which can be