COMMUNITYspecification, association, and limited area) re-
quire a territorial context. George Hillary (1955),
in a content analysis of ninety-four definitions of
community advanced in sociological literature,
discovered basic consensus on only three definitional
elements: social interaction between people, one
or more shared ties, and an area context. Howev-
er, Hillary noted that area context was the least
required of these three definitional elements. Oth-
ers (e.g., Lindeman 1930; Bender 1978; McMillan
and Chavis 1986) argue that community can be
achieved independently of territorial context where
social networks exist sufficiently to sustain a
Gemeinschaft quality of interaction and association.
According to this point of view, territory is neither
a necessary nor a sufficient condition to define the
existence of community. In this vein, David McMillan
and David Chavis suggest a state of community
exists when four elements co-exist: membership,
influence, integration and fulfillment of needs,
and shared emotional connections. They argue
that communities can be defined either in rela-
tional terms or territorial terms as long as these
four elements are present together.
MAJOR QUESTIONS IN THE SOCIOLOGY
OF COMMUNITYThe major questions that concern the sociology of
community include the distinguishing characteris-
tics and definition of community, the bases of
communal experience and integration, the unique
functions and tasks of community, the units of
social structure within the community and the
relationships and interactions between structural
units, the economic and social bases of the com-
munity social structure, the relationship and dis-
tinction between internal community social struc-
ture and macrosocial structures external to the
community, the relationship between individual
experience and behavior and communal experi-
ence and behavior, the causes and processes of
transformation from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft
states of social existence, and processes of commu-
nity persistence and adaptation in the face of
social change.
COMMUNITY STUDIESCommunity studies undertaken by sociologists
over the past sixty years have to a large extent
sought to address some if not all of these issues.
The most famous and controversial include Rob-
ert and Helen Lynd’s Middletown studies (1929,
1937) and the Yankee City series by W. Lloyd
Warner and his associates (1963). The more well-
known studies that have focused on the problem
of community within large cities have included
William Whyte’s Street Corner Society and Gerald
Suttles’s The Social Order of the Slum, which them-
selves are aligned with earlier Robert Park and
Ernest Burgess conceptions of the ‘‘natural com-
munity’’ arising within the confines of a seemingly
faceless, anonymous, large city (Suttles 1972, pp.
7–9). Descriptive studies that emphasize field work
and examine social structure as a spatial phenome-
non are the hallmark of the highly influential
Chicago School that arose and flourished under
Robert Park and Ernest Burgess of the University
of Chicago Department of Sociology during the
1920s and 1930s.Robert and Helen Lynd carried out two stud-
ies (1929, 1937) involving extensive personal field
work on the town of Muncie, Indiana: Middletown
(1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937). In the
first Middletown study, the Lynds spent the years
1924–1925 participating in and observing the com-
munity life of Middletown (population 36,500),
and performing extensive survey work. Their ob-
jective was to address all aspects of social life and
social structure of the community. A fundamental
focus of the Lynds’ earlier analysis concerned the
consequences of technological change (industri-
alization) on the social structure of Middletown, in
particular the emergence of social class conflicts
subsequent to turn-of-the-century industrialization.Although the Lynds found distinctions be-
tween the living conditions and opportunity struc-
tures of business and working-class families that
were consistent with their Marxist expectations
(i.e., children of the working class were more likely
to drop out of school to help support the family,
working-class families labored longer hours for
less pay and less financial security, and living con-
ditions in general were more harsh for working-
class families), they failed to discover a disparate
value structure or alienation among the working
class. At all levels of social class, the Middletown of
1925 shared a common conservative value struc-
ture that entailed self-reliance, faith in the future,
and a belief in hard work. The subsequent study,
undertaken in 1935 by Robert Lynd and a staff of