ABSTRACT
When more than three decades ago we were first introduced to the study of communities in complex societies, anthropologists were relatively little interested in that field. Sociologists did community surveys, but they were interested in social probiems rather than in the characterization and comparison of ways of life. Cultural and social anthropologists were as yet little concerned with peoples other than the preliterate ones, and the subsequent inclusion of many European, Asian and Latin-American national cultures, of complex and developed civilizations, in the comparative analysis of institutions and culture patterns and in cross-cultural ethnology had not yet been effected. A beginning had been made in the appearance of the first of the Lynds' volumes on Middletown (in the Midwest) and in Warner's team study of Yankee City (in New England), but these were declaredly pioneer efforts, the first attempts to put anthropological field work, method, and whole-culture analysis to work on literate, complex communities.
