The Community as a Social Group

Abstract

WHETHER A community may be regarded as a social group depends not on the definitions offered but on the discoverable characteristics of systems that are designated as communities and groups. However, the observation and the identification of these characteristics depend on the conceptual scheme adopted. The viewpoint here taken, hypothetically, is that a group is a social system comprising identifiable elements which also are found in the composition of an analytical community, so that the latter may be regarded as a type of social group amenable to analysis by methods suitable to the study of social groups in general. Although communities have, at least by implication, been called groups,' apparently the literature dealing with this subject has not attempted an inductive comparison of these two types of social structures. For this reason, a brief statement as to the suggested analytic characteristics of social groups is desirable. This will serve to illustrate the method employed, as well as to characterize the community as a logical class of social forms. In briefest terms, we may say that a social group comprises persons acting with reference to given aims, in the prosecution of which an integration of roles and an ordering of social relations come into play. At least four analytical elements are identifiable in this descriptive statement: (I) a personnel (members); (2) a test of admission to membership; (3) distinctive roles or functions of the members; and (4) norms regulating the conduct of the personnel. This restriction of the characterizing elements implies that a group is distinguished from a society with its diverse complexes of folkways and that the groups comprised within such a society share in the various aspects of this culture. However, any culture trait or complex may become a differentiating element of a class of social groups. For the present, our attention is directed toward the generic elements. The sociologist constructs