Trends in Community Organization and Life

Author(s): T. Lynn Smith

Reviewed work(s):
Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Jun., 1940), pp. 325-334
Published by: American Sociological Association
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TRENDS IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION
AND LIFE*
T. LYNN SMITH
Louisiana State University
HIS DISCUSSION is limited almost entirely to the rural community. I
am not sure that the term has much meaning when applied to urban
situations, and in any case I know very little about cities. Further-
more, so much of social life is carried on at the community level that it is
impossible to discuss all the phases, so I have selected those aspects of the
subject which appear most significant to me.
The Concept"Community." Anydiscussion of communitytrends necessarily
will be greatly influenced by the specific connotations that are given to the
term community, which is not an easy one to define; all in all, community is
one of the most ambiguous words in sociological literature. For this reason,
it is highly important to set forth precisely the sense in which the term is
used in the following discussion.
An examination of the literature reveals two principal senses in which
community is used, both of them having very good authority in the Latin
derivation. One of these usages merely refers to qualities of solidarity or
togetherness; the second definitely denotes a body of people in a given
locality. MacIver combines the two to designate any social group with a
definite locality base. Said he in an early study:
By community I mean any area of common life, village, or town, or district, or
county, or even wider area. To deserve the name community, the area must be
somehow distinguished from further areas, the common life may have some charac-
teristics of its own such that the frontiers of the area have some meaning.'
And more recently he has written as follows:
Any circle of people who live together, who belong together, so that they share, not
this or that particular interest, but a whole set of interests wide enough and com-
plete enough to include their lives, is a community.2
From the strictly logical standpoint, probably there is little to quarrel
with in these definitions, but the most logical definition is not always the
most useful. On the basis of these criteria, who can determine the territorial
limits of any community? Who is to say if the locality, the incorporated
city, the county, the state, the section, the region, or even the nation can
qualify as a community? If sociology is to contribute useful frames of refer-
ence, something more specific must be attempted. For example, is such a
definition of community one that sociologists can offer to the officials of
*
Presented to the American Sociological Society, Philadelphia, December 27, I939.
1
R. M. MacIver, Community, 22, London, I917.
2
R. M. MacIver, Society: Its Structure and Changes, 9-IO, New York, I93I.
325
326 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
the United States Department of Agriculture for use in putting the agri-
cultural planning work of the nation on a community basis? For many
purposes, another definition must be attempted.
One of the most significant definitions of community comes out of the
work of Charles J. Galpin. For the reason that farmers in horse-and-buggy
days hauled their products to the most convenient railway station, there
were some early attempts to set the limits of the rural community in terms
of the "team haul," but for the most part Galpin was influenced by the
thinking of an age that regarded the farmer as a "man without a com-
munity." Out of his experiences as a rural school teacher in New York
state, as a resident in the "skims" of the Lake States' cutover area, and as
an organizer of farmers for a milk condensery in Walworth county, Wis-
consin, Galpin came to a realization that the farmer was not a man without
a community. At the University of Wisconsin, he formulated an objective
definition of
community
and
developed
a
relatively
accurate method of
determining its limits.
Walworth county was the laboratory for Galpin's classic study. From
the standpoint of the village or town center, his problem was to determine
all the land area under its influence; from the point of view of the farmer,
he sought to know what farms were connected with the same village or other
center. By means of ingenious mapping devices, Galpin determined the re-
lationships of each farm home in the county with the centers of the county,
and he also discovered the areas of influence of each of these centers. The
results of his studies revealed for the first time the real community structure
of the nation. Surrounding the twelve villages were twelve trade zones or
trade basins running in irregular lines, paying no regard to political bound-
aries, and overlapping each other to some extent. In the county tributary
to the trade and commercial centers were eleven banking zones, seven local
newspaper areas, twelve milk sheds, nine high school areas, and four library
areas. Galpin concluded:
It is difficult, if not impossible, to avoid the conclusion that the trade zone about
one of these rather complete agricultural civic centers forms the boundary of an
actual, if not legal, community, within which the apparent entanglement of human
life is resolved into a fairly unitary system of interrelatedness. The fundamental
community is a composite of many expanding and contracting feature communities
possessing the characteristic pulsating instability of all real life.3
Galpin's concept, as well as MacIver's, involves both of the senses which
the term community derives from the Latin. It includes social interaction
between people who belong together, social institutions, and a local ter-
ritorial unit. Such a community is the matrix of the forces of localism in
much the same way that the state is the matrix of national forces. Galpin's
3
Charles J. Galpin, The Social Anatomy of an
Agricultural Community, i8-i9,
Wisconsin
AES Bulletin
34, Madison, I9I5.
TRENDS IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 327
concept and methodology have been widely accepted and used by those
sociologists who have been directly faced with the problem of delimiting
specific community boundaries. The concept and methodology can be of-
fered for practical application in program planning activities. In this dis-
cussion, Galpin's definition of community is the one followed.
Changes in the Role of the Community Unit. Since the community and its
social structure are molds in which human personalities are set, it is impor-
tant to devote some of our attention to the changes in the size and nature
of the community itself as a social fact or unit. In this connection five
observations can be made: (i) the community is expanding in size; (2) com-
munities are gradually supplanting neighborhoods as the basic locality
groupings; (3) there is a tendency for the internal structure of the commu-
nity to become more differentiated;
(4)
the boundaries between communities
are becoming less distinct, or more blurred; and (5) local functions, es-
pecially of a governmental nature, are gradually being taken over by other
governmental units, notably the county and the state and more recently
the federal governments.
All of the soundings on the questions of size indicate that the limits of the
community are expanding. Studies by Sanderson and his students in New
York state are among the most painstaking. Their results reveal that the
larger villages are receiving increased patronage in business but not in
other social activities.4 Brunner and his associates have made some of the
most comprehensive studies. Between I924 and I930, there was a tendency
for the areas of influence of villages of all sizes to increase, although a large
part of the individual villages were static.5 Six years later, in I936, a second
re-survey revealed once more a gradual trend in the direction of expanded
community boundaries. This time, there was a significant increase in the
size of the trade basin in one third of the I40 communities studied.6
The contest between community and neighborhood is one of the great
dramas of American history. In a very real sense, these locality or territorial
groups are the units of which the "great society" is composed, and a priori
they would seem to merit the most painstaking study on the part of the
sociologist. Just as the biologist has observed, segregated, grouped, classi-
fied, and arranged the various species of plant and animal life into a series
of orderly categories, the sociologist should collect and systematize essen-
tial facts concerning locality groupings. There is still much to be accom-
plished in this direction.
It would seem that colonial society was very largely cut to the neighbor-
hood pattern. With minor exceptions, the principal locality groupings were
I
Dwight Sanderson, Rural Social and Economic Areas in Central New York,
93-94,
Cornell AES Bulletin
64, Ithaca, I934.
6 Edmund deS. Brunner and John H. Kolb, Rural Social Trends, 94, New York, I933.
6
Edmund deS. Brunner and Irving Lorge, Rural Trends in Depression Years,
85,
New
York, I937.
328 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
small in size, were comprised of persons closely knit together by the most
intimate of social bonds, were areas within which the social interaction was
almost exclusively on a face-to-face basis, and included groupings so limited
in scope that, despite a high degree of family self-sufficiency, it was neces-
sary to go outside the limits of the group for the satisfaction of many of the
elemental needs of life. As the frontier edged forward from the Appalachians
to the Pacific, neighborhoods were the principal locality groups utilized in
the process of establishing orderly social relationships among the pioneers
and their descendants.
Locality groups have tended to enlarge their boundaries, and this has
had the effect of making the community supplant the neighborhood as the
basic locality group in American life. This trend has been under way for
many years. It has been fostered most of all by the development and dif-
fusion of rapid means of travel and communication, especially the automo-
bile and good roads. During the last two decades, these forces have done
much to change the map of rural America. In the areas surveyed by Brunner
and his associates, over one-third of all the locality groupings classed as
neighborhoods disappeared between I924 and I936, and nearly one fourth
of them had fallen by the way between I930 and I936.7 Especially in the
South, according to observations of the writer, does it seem that there is
occurring before our eyes a very rapid transformation of society from a
neighborhood to a community basis. Consolidation of schools and the elimi-
nation of the circuit system in church organization are among the important
factors responsible for the changes.
As the community becomes larger, as neighborhood lines become in-
distinct, as a community declines in importance to the extent that it be-
comes a mere satellite or neighborhood within the influence of another, and
as the internal structure of the community becomes differentiated, it be-
comes harder to distinguish precisely where the limits of one community
end and those of another begin. As re-survey has succeeded re-survey,
Brunner and his associates report increasing difficulty in determining the
limits of the communities in their sample.8
The tendency towards greater differentiation in the internal structure of
the community can best be portrayed against a background of theoretical
projections and factual studies. Attempts to project trends in community
size and structure and to forecast the nature of social organization in the
future have been few. One of the most significant of these and one that has
had the greatest influence upon contemporary thinking is the concept of
rurbanization formulated by Charles J. Galpin. In addition to developing
a most useful definition of the community and demonstrating a simple
and objective means for determining its boundaries, Galpin tried to foresee
7
Ibid., 93.
8
Ibid.,
85.
TRENDS IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 329
the nature of the social organization in the future. He looked forward to the
time when the confused pattern of social relationships existing in the period,
around
i9iS
to i920 would become simplified; when, out of the maze of
some I 5,o0o competing and conflicting trade centers of all kinds and sizes,
would come about 5ooo fairly large, complete, farm trade centers; when the
business and commercial groups residing in these centers of trade would
clearly see their true relationships with the farmers in the surrounding
areas; and when each farm family would attach itself definitely and com-
pletely to one of these self-sufficient centers. To this hypothetical combina-
tion of the future in which the fairly large business center offering all es-
sential services would completely dominate a trade and social basin some
fifteen or twenty miles in diameter, Galpin gave the name urbann com-
munity." To use his own words:
Then the Federal Government took out of the countryside the crossroads post-office,
and substituted the rural free-delivery for mail, changing the farmer's mail address
to the larger town. A decline at once began in the crossroads post-office hamlet. The
farmer began to relate himself a little more fully to the larger town. The hamlets and
villages maintaining a few restricted lines of trade thereupon began running an
endurance test for life. The automobile has not made it any easier for these ineffi-
cient centers to survive, and at present (i920) we can watch the phenomenon of the
passing of the hoe-farmer's hamlet and the rise of the machine-farmer's business
center.... It may be a long time before the present partial hamlet centers will be
positively abandoned by the farmer; possibly many, surviving one type of disaster,
will find new life in another type of adjustment; but sooner or later the slow process
of the greater business economy will, if the present tendency continues, relate each
farmstead quite definitely to a single, complete,
retail business center, and the ma-
chine-farmer will tend to become a business man in his own natural business center.9
That a combination of the rural and urban modes of living, i.e., rurbani-
zation, is taking place few will be inclined to doubt, but there seems to be
little evidence that it is following the lines projected by Dr. Galpin. Such
a development would represent a considerable simplification of the locality-
group structure of the nation. The facts seem to be that such social rela-
tionships actually are becoming more complex.
On the basis of intensive studies of i2 communities in the states of
Indiana, Minnesota, and North Dakota, and of all
locality groupings in the
state of Louisiana over a thirty-year period, the writer has tried to describe
the observed trends in locality group relationships. These are as follows:
There has been a tendency for centers of various sizes to distribute themselves more
uniformly with regard to the area, population and resources of the State. Or, the
changes seem to be in the direction of a more efficient pattern of rural organization.
This redistribution of centers in
conjunction with improved methods of communi-
cation and transportation has placed each family
in
frequent contact with several
trade centers, which means that the
loyalty
of the farm
family
is divided among sev-
9
Charles Josiah Galpin, RuralLife, 9i, New York, 1920; cf. Galpin, Rural Social Problems,
22I-227, New York, I924.
330 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
eral centers instead of being confined to one. This, too, makes for heterogeneity in
the locality group and decreases the differences between various locality groups.
From i9oi to I93I important alterations took place in the internal structures of
the trade centers. A fundamental tendency towards specialization and division of
labor between trade centers was found to be underway. Analysis of the existing situ-
ation in I93I showed that, despite much over-lapping, the small centers were spe-
cializing in certain types of services, medium-sized centers in others, and the largest
centers in still others. Analysis of changes since i9oi showed that this division of
labor had become much more evident during the thirty-year period. In general small
centers nearest the farms are ceasing the attempt to provide all services and concen-
trating their efforts upon certain types of enterprises for which their location gives
them a comparative advantage. The types of enterprises offered by the smallest cen-
ters are: those which are most undifferentiated, those satisfying the most immediate
needs, those most closely connected with agricultural production and those which
process farm products. As centers became larger, these types became relatively less
important, and more highly specialized types made their appearance. This has an
immediate influence upon the behavior of the farm family. Small centers near the
farm are resorted to for securing services which meet many of the most pressing
needs; larger centers at a greater distance, for services satisfying other less immedi-
ate needs; and even the largest centers at considerable distance, for supplying some
of the least pressing needs of the farm family.
The manner in which centers are now distributed, and the internal changes they
have been undergoing lead to the belief that small centers are not doomed to extinc-
tion. Probably part of the small centers, those which are poorly situated with re-
spect to modern arteries of communication and transportation, will continue to de-
cline and disappear, but others more favorably located will continue to serve many
of the pressing and basic needs of the population immediately surrounding them.10
The results of all the New York studies as digested by Sanderson seem
to be in agreement. According to him, the typical open country family in
New York state now resorts to the local village or hamlet at a distance not
exceeding three miles for one half of all services. Groceries, auto repairs,
hardware, feed, church, grange, and school make up the bulk of these.
Four out of ten families go not over four miles to a slightly larger village for
similar services. From a still larger village distant four to six miles, three
fourths of all families receive services such as banking, groceries, drugs,
furniture, work clothes, movies, physician, high school, lodge, hardware,
shoes, and weekly newspaper. Nine out of ten families patronize a city
distant i
s miles or more for dress clothes, furniture, shopping goods, and
luxuries. Finally, the mail order firm is resorted to by one tenth of the
families for clothing, hardware, and automobile equipment, and sundries."
John H. Kolb, writing in Wisconsin some i
5
years after Galpin, has arrived
at essentially the same conclusion.'2
10 T. Lynn Smith, Farm Trade Centers in Louisiana 1901 to 1931, 54-55, Louisiana AES
Bulletin 234, Baton Rouge,
I933.
1
Sanderson, op. cit., 95.
12 Trends in Town-Country Relations, 28, Wisconsin AES Research Bulletin II7, Madison,
I933.
TRENDS IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 331
The growing tendency for county, state, and federal governments to as-
sume responsibility for functions once thought to be strictly of local concern
is well known. County, state, and even federal support for schools has
brought with it more centralized control and direction. The state operating
very largely through the county has assumed a considerable measure of re-
sponsibility for local health and sanitation. The building and maintenance
of roads and highways, once a community and county function, has been
taken over very largely by the state and federal governments. Gradually,
the police power and the administration of justice generally are being trans-
ferred to levels of government not centering in the community. These are
merely examples of the widely ramifying changes that are underway.
Thus the facts seem to be: (i) both the neighborhood and the community
are losing exclusive claim to the loyalty and patronage of the individual
family; (2) neighborhoods are not doomed to extinction, but will find their
principal role as a complementary part of the enlarged community; (3) com-
munities are developing complementary and supplementary relationships
among themselves, are allowing the neighborhood to play a definite role,
and are seeing the individual families participate in the activities of the
great society in an extracommunity capacity; (4) the family is gradually
dividing its attachments and loyalty among the surrounding neighborhood,
the encompassing community, and the centers of industry and trade whose
influences envelop the community; and
(5)
many necessary functions of
social living, once directed by the forces of localism operating through the
community, are now carried on at the county, state, and national levels of
government.
Changes in the Structure of the Community Unit. The increased social dif-
ferentiation within the community has already been treated in another
connection. Two other important structural changes next receive attention.
These are the changes in social solidarity and in social stratification.
Social Solidarity. The nature and basis of the social solidarity or cohesion
within the community is undergoing a rather fundamental change. Gradual
though this is, it is nevertheless of basic importance. Definitely on the
wane is the cohesion which results from likenesses and similarities, called
by Giddings "consciousness of kind," by T6nnies "gemeinschaft," and by
Durkheim "mechanistic solidarity." In other words, what Sorokin, Zim-
merman, and Galpin have called the cumulative group is being replaced
by what Kolb has designated as special interest groups. With the increasing
heterogeneity of the social relationships in a given area, the community
must depend more and more for its unity and cohesion upon that type of
social solidarity which develops out of division of labor, specialization,
and
the consequent lack of self-sufficiency on the part of the individual. The
resulting interdependence-buttressed by give-and-take, live-and-let-live
attitudes and a contractual type of cooperation-provides much of the
332 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
unity to be found in the present-day communities. In the past, this type of
solidarity, which Durkheim called organic, has been much less important;
in the future, its role promises to be much greater in the community.
Today, the nature of this change can best be observed in certain areas
where geographic and cultural factors have held off the forces of change
until recently. I quote a conclusion from a recent study of a Mormon village
in the Utah Valley:
... Salem in its early history represented a type of social relationship in which ...
"gemeinschaftliche" elements largely predominated. It was based on common bonds
like interests, and similarity of experience. These "community" elements became
strong and were developed after the settlement of Salem. Though some members of
the village were related by blood and marriage these connections were not the prin-
cipal
basis for the formation of the
community.
Rather it was the common
accep-
tance of and belief in Mormonism. Since that time certain "associational" elements
have tended to weaken these common bonds. Relationships of a more contractual
nature have arisen and expressed themselves. The church, in order to meet these
new and challenging forces, has adopted various measures, some of which have been
partially successful. In other respects it is finding it exceedingly difficult to maintain
its authority and influence. This trend toward an increase of the "associational"
elements in the village can only be explained in the light of the great and rapid
changes which have occurred in our present-day society. Urbanization and all its in-
fluences have made themselves felt in the most remote rural districts and as a result
certain traits of an "associational" nature have tended to arise. Salem at present is
still in a period of transition. What the eventual adjustment will be will have to be
left to the future.13
Earlier it was observed and described in less isolated areas as follows:
... Neighborhood groups are no longer the important organization unit. Grouping
arrangements are along new lines. These groups are more largely determined by the
interests, the deliberate intent, the purposive action of the people. Locality groups
have lateral or geographic dimension. Interest groups have psycho-cultural or
perpendicular dimension. Locality groups depend upon proximity, common life,
and residence in a recognized physical area. Interest groups depend upon polarity,
promotion, special concerns, leadership, and deliberate effort. The polarity implies
the fields of magnetic influence, when thus released from locality restrictions people
are attracted to certain places of interest.14
The essential fact is that the nature of community solidarity is shifting
very rapidly from the type based upon likenesses and consciousness of kind
to one based upon a conscious recognition of basic differences, lack of self-
sufficiency, and mutual interdependence of parts.
Social Stratification. There seems little doubt that increased social strati-
fication is one of the fundamental trends now remolding the community.
13 Reed H. Bradford, a Mormon Village: a Study in Rural Social Organization, 64, a thesis
submitted to the faculty of the Louisiana State University in partial fulfillment of the require-
ment for the master's degree, I939.
14 J. H. Kolb and A. F. Wileden, Special Interest Groups in Rural Society, 2, University of
Wisconsin AES Bulletin 84, I929.
TRENDS IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 333
Zimmerman sees this as a result of the centralization of governmental func-
tions and authority and the decline of local self-government.'5 Nelson in-
dicates how increased differences between the classes have come about by
people becoming identified as "relief" and "nonrelief," "signers and non-
signers," "eligible" and "ineligible," "employed" and "unemployed."'6
0. E. Baker and others stress the fact that farmers are
gradually losing
control of the land, with a result that farm society is becoming more and
more constituted of landless tenants and laborers. Paul S. Taylor reveals
startling facts concerning the large rural proletariat at the bottom of the
social pyramid who follow migratory labor as a mode of life, who never
succeed in gaining acceptance as part of any established community, who
can never attach themselves to established institutions, who live for the
most part in poverty, and who have a large share in the seemingly efficient
production in some areas of large-scale agriculture.17 Furthermore, it seems
likely that not only is social stratification developing in extent, but that a
sort of hardening of the social arteries is bringing about a greater degree of
caste in the vertical social structure of the community.
Changes in the Social Processes. Within the limits of this paper it is im-
possible to treat adequately all of the significant changes in the functioning
of society on the community level. The discussion is therefore limited to two
of the more significant social processes: conflict and cooperation.
Social Conflict. The nature of social conflict has greatly altered in response
to changes in the structure and solidarity of the community. Formerly,
lines of cleavage between various social groupings were abrupt, sharply
defined, and unbridged by class differences. In a community possessing a
high degree of mechanistic social solidarity, the limits of the most important
social groupings tended to coincide; political, religious, kinship, and oc-
cupational lines followed one another closely. Today, much of this has
changed. As increased social differentiation has added new social groupings,
the lines of demarcation have followed new channels. Old lines of cleavage
have become blurred. The limits of a group's influence have become more
vague and ill-defined. Much overlapping has occurred, and there is much
less tendency for the boundaries of one social grouping to parallel those of
another; political groupings within the community no longer follow family
lines so closely; religious cleavages cut across occupational lines; and a new
class consciousness has cut across all these groupings. It should not be fore-
gotten that a method of sampling which made possible accurate forecasts
of i928 and I932 elections, by I936 was no longer valid.
15
Care C. Zimmerman, The Changing Community, 648-653, New York, I938.
16
Lowry Nelson, "National Policies and Rural Social Organization," Rural Sociology, I
(1936), 87.
17 "Migratory Farm Labor in the United States," Monthly Labor Review, XLIV (March,
I937), 9-II.
334 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
All of these changes mean much from the standpoint of social conflict.
Misunderstandings between groups of one variety over differences in one
sphere are much less likely to be aggravated by differences of another kind.
Political struggle within the community is not so strongly drawn up along
town-country lines; family feuds are not so strongly reinforced by occupa-
tional, political, and religious differences; and religious struggle is not so
likely to be at the same time a conflict between different economic strata,
kinship groups, political entities, and occupational alliances. Except for the
intensification of class struggle, all of this confusion tends to weaken the
intensity and shorten the duration of inter- and intracommunity conflict.
Blood feuds extending generation after generation are unthinkable in a
community whose soldarity is of the organic type. At the present time, it is
possible for a large part of the population of the community to play the
role of mere spectator in connection with local conflict situations.
Cooperation. The nature of cooperation and of cooperative activities also
is rapidly undergoing a fundamental transformation in the communities
of the nation. Cooperative activities range all the way from the unconscious,
spontaneous, neighboring and mutual-aid practices of the pioneer group, to
the calculated, contractual forms of united effort embodied in cooperative
marketing associations, credit unions, and consumer-owned retail outlets.
Of primary importance in colonial days and on the frontier, noncontractual
mutual-aid practices have long held a fundamental place in the social ac-
tivities of most rural communities, but with the coming of the automobile,
good roads, and the increased mobility of population, such practices lose
much of their efficiency. As social differentiation and division of labor have
replaced mechanistic soldarity with that of an organic type, cooperative
activities within the community have been changing from a mutual-aid
basis to a more deliberate and contractual type. This kind of cooperation
operates through a formally constituted organization, possessed of specific
rules, and is set up on a strict give-and-take basis. Unlike the former, it is
not spontaneous; it must be promoted. It need not be personal, and in fact
is frequently highly impersonal. Adjustment to this contractual variety of
cooperation is one of the basic problems confronting the communities of the
nation.
Conclusion. In conclusion, I would say that the locality-group structure
of society is undergoing a rapid transformation. The future promises a
social structure in which the horizon of the individual family is greatly
extended and its relations with locality groupings are much wider and more
complex than in the past. Group cohesion seems likely to be based even
more on conscious recognition of mutual interdependence; social conflict
promises to be more prevalent but more intermittent and less deep-seated;
and mutual aid is likely to give away still more to cooperation of the con-
tractual type.