ABSTRACT
DEPTH and breadth are two dimensions which, with time, pro-vide directions and limitations to all social enquiry. Social or cultural anthropologists fall into two main classes. One group tends to study culture in its breadth, seeking to inventory the characteristics of human expression as they have been bounded by tribal experience. The other, directed towards the examination of social processes, uses as its data the behaviour of human beings as, together, they wrestle with the problems of everyday life. An anthropologist in the field can know only so many people. He therefore tries to choose a field situation which brings people together in ordinary circumstances. A village community is the ideal which can be observed most commonly by those who choose to work in depth rather than breadth, and it is no accident that the most revealing anthropological treatises have for the most part been based upon careful observation of village life. The village can be the microcosm of wider society.
