The Community by René König; Edward FitzgeraldReview by: Georg KarlssonActa Sociologica, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1969), p. 46Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4193692 .

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that precise mathematical theories at present often deal with trivial and uninteresting topics, should have been taken into account earlier. The formalized parts of the chapter suffer from inadequate proof-reading (vide figures and symbols, pp. 177-178) and from logical inadequacies. (P. 174: in making a model more complex, the perhaps unintended complication is added of a third value in a two-valued distinction; pp. 173-175: the author initially insists that "balance" is anchored in the point of view of a given person, then apparently abandons this reference; pp. 174-176 give entirely disparate definitions of balance - why not indicate how both are instances of a more gen- eral concept of balance?).

The book is an overambitious attempt to integrate the classics with current theory in a text- book for beginning students. The book should be revised in accordance with a more modest aim. If possible the ambivalence (p. 21) between a positivistic program and more flexible views in sociology should be resolved as well. Perhaps we could get a good textbook on the history of sociology rather than a very uneven treatment of nearly everything, including Zuni language and Markov chains.

Odd Ratitsoy University of Oslo

The Conmmunity. By Rene K6nig. Translated by Edward Fitzgerald. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968, 218 pp., 25/.

This book on the sociology of the community is primarily a very careful summary of the literature that has been written on this subject. The attention paid to European literature is particularly valuable. The book is thus a very convenient reference for anyone who wants to get an easy survey of the field.

The terminological difficulties are evidently important in the study of the community. Even the definition of community offers certain difficulties. Konig arrives at the result that a community always has a certain geographical extension, but any populated area is not a community. A certain size is required and also a certain co-operation between the members of the community as regards their total life situation. On the other hand, conflict within the community must be allowed so the requirements on the co-operation must not be exaggerated.

The emphasis on conflict as a universal aspect of community life is an important contribution of this book. Careful attention is also given to the differences between large and small communities and other community typologies. The social structure of communities and their stratification sys- tems are dealt with extensively. A short history of community research and a survey of research methods are also included.

The impression one gathers from a volume of this kind is that the sociology of the communitv has a strong structural bias. The methods of describing and analyzing community structures are fairly advanced and are in common use. To some extent this may be so because the methods are fairly easy to develop and use, to some extent the reason may be the demand from planners and politicians for structural characteristics of communities, like distributions of people and others over fairly simple categories.

On the other hand, the study of community processes is not very well developed. There may be many reasons for this. I would like to mention only one here because it is connected with a type of research procedure that I think should be considered in this connection. I believe that few have observed the possibilities of this procedure.

When we study social processes we normally want to reach results that are as general as possible. Obviously, we cannot use community studies very well in trying to get general results since each community is unique in several ways. But the processes in any given community are instances of more general processes. We thus should be able to use the knowledge we have about social processes in general to predict what processes are going on in any studied community from the characteristics of the people living there and the social structure observed.

By conducting research in this way we would get a deeper insight into how social systems actually work and if we do a number of community studies the added evidence for the different hypotheses tested will be considerable. I am convinced that in the long run even the planners would be intercsted in the knowledge that can be accumulated in this way since basically they are as interested as anyone else in understanding how a community really functions.

Georg Karisson University of Umel

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