ABSTRACT
In the opening decades of the twentieth century a variety of influences contributed to the emergence of a form of social research known as the ‘community study’, which occupied a position of some significance during the early development of academic sociology. Brook and Finn (1978: 141-3) list well over a hundred British and American sources produced between the late 1930s and early 1970s in which the concept of community plays a central part (for a full account of such researches, see Bell and Newby 1971; also Frankenberg 1966; Stein 1964). Relevant influences included the work of social surveyors and statisticians, who collected data on different local populations and sought to understand how they varied from one another, for instance in their demographic profiles; social anthropologists, whose emphasis on understanding the distinctive ‘ways of life’ of small social collectivities through techniques of participant observation and ‘total immersion’ showed how even very unfamiliar and sometimes bizarre patterns of behaviour could make sense once they were set properly in context; social geographers, who were interested in drawing contrasts between urban and rural types of community, and seeing how they developed over time; and political scientists, for some of whom the ideals of ‘small town democracy’ and community activism held particular value. The different tools and methodologies used by these various groups of social scientists were combined in a somewhat
eclectic style of work, which converged on the investigation of relatively small and supposedly self-contained social units, regarded as constituting distinct and varied social worlds, or ‘communities’. The community study was intended to show what was distinctive about a particular community, and to provide an account of how it worked that was as complete as possible. It was a ‘holistic’ enterprise, aimed at a total understanding of a community’s nature.
