Examines these questions: What are life histories? What problems and people are best suited for them? What motivates people to write them? Does the collection procedure affect the content? and How should the material be analyzed? (Author/SK)

Attempts to delineate some grounds for expansion of the knowledge base within the field of minority studies and more generally within sociology: minority research is seen as one acute instance of a general malaise in sociology. (Author/JM)

Documenting the development of monographs on the rural community in Poland, this paper discusses: (1) development of monographic community studies from the beginning of the 19th century to the contemporary period (ethnographic, socioeconomic, socio-historical, economic, historical-sociological, and sociological monographs); (2) the present state…

Focus is the measurement of power at the community level considering the social organizational context. (SE)

A manual is presented which provides a common, preliminary frame of reference for seminar participants who desire to develop procedures for studying major social problems through the use of the urban community as a laboratory. Broadly, the seminar concentrates upon providing access to data and facilitation data collection and analyses. Although…

Reputational and pluralistic methods of community analysis differ; their findings, conclusions, and philosophies are frequently at variance. Reputationalists find an economically dominated power elite. They picture a community's power and influence structure as pyramidal -- the power elite forming a monolithic power pyramid. Thus, according to…