Power Structure and Sociocultural Change in Latin American Communities

Abstract

The article explores the proposition, as community power becomes increasingly rationalized, the local sociocultural system will become less parochial and increasingly similar to the national system. A power structure index and a culture elemtent index are established and applied to 19 community studies drawn from eight Latin American countries. Communities with less than 70 percent of the national culture elements are analyzed to derive a model of community power and sociocultural change in Latin America. The model suggests that the movement from folk to national cultural orientation at the community level is stimulated by an expanding population and brought about when the structure of community power loses its dependence upon local religious-nmagic institutions and assumes a greater autonomy. T hroughout Latin America communities are changing and something does the changing. That something can be termed power. Before defining power more explicitly the following quotation is offered to introduce a type case of a community in transi-