ABSTRACT
The structural form may change little, though the actual social structure is constantly being renewed and changes with the birth and death of members and their changing relations with one another. The real problem is that in social structure people are always faced with parts and relations of diverse nature and variability. There may be parts and relations which recur in all situations in which the organization or institution people are studying emerges, and others which seem to occur only by chance. The former may be constant in some respect but variable in others, corresponding in some ways to the statistician’s independent variable; the latter may be a normal’ usage or institution in an ‘abnormal’ context. The application of statistical concepts will show that the concept of ‘structure’ is most appropriately used for the kind of abstract or generalized description which Radcliffe-Brown calls ‘structural form’.
