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The article discusses the problems faced by Coffee producers in Costa Rica in handling the seasonal demand of labor supply. Coffee production requires large numbers of laborers for a few months of the year during the harvest season, but for the remainder of the year only a small skeleton crew is needed to cultivate the coffee. The colono system was introduced in the year 1915 . The colono is a person who: contracts with the landowner to care for and harvest, under the supervision of an employee of the landowner, a lot of coffee for a fixed price per "fanega" of coffee produced. At the end of the harvest, the "colono" is paid any difference due him after the total of weekly advances he has received is deducted from the value of the crop at the contract rate. The farm administration has undertaken to organize the colonos into neighborhood work crews to carry out the more crucial tasks on their lots under the surveillance of a foreman. The article points out that other large hacienda owners have looked upon this colono experiment as "socialistic" or even "communistic," it seems likely that the plan actually serves to increase the interdependence of the colono and the hacienda administration.

This is a brief ecological study of bureaucracy in an economically underdeveloped country, Costa Rica. Data from a questionnaire administered to bureaucrats in two agencies of the public administration are resented and three preliminary hypotheses are outlined: (1) If a strong modern party is established, this does not necessarily lead to the development of a society nor to political control of the administrative process. (2) If politics in a transitional society are immobilized, then the public administration will also be immobilized. (3) If the ideal type model dichotomizing politics and administration is assumed, it will be found no more relevant in Costa Rica and possibly in other transitional societies than it is in analyses of the economically developed societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes economically the causes of internal migration in Costa Rica. Internal migration rates; Migration differentials among individuals by migration status; Empirical model of internal in-migration.

Describes the experience of the National Institute of Apprenticeship (INA) in Costa Rica to demonstrate the financial savings obtained by vocational selection and guidance. Neglect of industrial psychology and psychological testing techniques in developing countries; Analysis of the scientific methods used to select INA apprentices; Reduction achieved in the number of drop-outs and unsuitable candidates accepted for training.

This study examines the effects of occupational and educational mobility in two Latin American countries, Costa Rica and Mexico, and in the United States. We hypothesized that the mobile person in Costa Rica or Mexico will experience more normlessness (anomia) than nonmobile persons from his class of origin and his class of destination; but in the United States, where mobility is said to be more commonly expected, the socially mobile person will experience no more normlessness than nonmobile persons in his class of origin or class of destination. Powerlessness was expected to be a function of occupational level and downward occupational and educational mobility. We found some evidence that: (1) educational and occupational mobility produces intense normlessness in the more ascriptive societies but not in the United States; (2) downward educational mobility produces an intense sense of powerlessness in all three countries; (3) there are large differences between the United States and the Latin American countries in terms of both normlessness and powerlessness; and (4) a negative relationship between normlessness and occupational level appears in the United States but not in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data regarding the junction of work-related values in community status structures Were collected in a peasant village in Guatemala, a factory town in Costa Rica, and a rural village in northern Michigan. These communities differ in terms of their exposure to urban, industrial values and in the extent to which people of unequal occupational prestige regularly interact. Work-related values are shown to be most important for status assignment in the Costa Rican village and least important in the Guatemalan village with the Michigan village in an intermediate position. Ideologies with respect to status placement in all three communities, however, are couched primarily in terms of valued personal attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A typology is proposed for the classification of settlements in Costa Rica into distinct sociocultural types, only one of which is considered primarily rural. Common characterizations of Latin culture approach accuracy only for the urban types. Relatively small and remote villages serving mainly as marketing and administrative centers share many characteristics with relatively large urban centers and are thus classified as urban. The rural type is typically stratified into two main status groupings, the dominant one characterized by such "Puritanic" traits as frugality and a high evaluation of manual labor, the subordinate stratum being distinctive enough to constitute a subculture of its own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a study of rural population stability as it varies between large plantations and small owner-operated farms in an area which has been successfully settled only in the past sixty years. The small owner-operators were found to have lived at their present places for the longest average time, and the family heads on large plantations had the shortest tenure at their present places. The latter were mostly landless day-wage workers. However, on one large plantation stability was greater than among the small owners, due to more favorable conditions for the workers. A new method of measuring and presenting data on population stability is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In February 1951, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. collaborated with the Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences in organizing an Extension Training Center in Turrialba, Costa Rica. Courses were given on extension methods and on evaluation, and a third course dealt with social factors influencing extension work. The participants in this course were asked to submit a daily summary of discussion notes. This article represents a digest and analysis of the daily discussion summaries prepared by participants. Hence, this is an account of the evaluations made by the participants in the course and does not necessarily agree with observations made by the persons responsible for the course.

This article focuses on the background of public opinion in Costa Rica. Costa Rica, a nation about the size of West Virginia, lies on the Central American mainland, between Panama and Nicaragua. The reaction of an individual to a new object in the social environment is dependent not merely upon the objective nature of that event but upon how the individual perceives it, what he relates it to in his previous experience, and what it means to him personally. To Costa Ricans, then, Pan-Americanism or Inter-Americanism is a real psychological fact, much more of a real fact than it is to people in the US. The future historian may find it surprising, though commendable, that the government of the U.S. has so earnestly promoted a doctrine of Pan-Americanism, for that doctrine does not flow so readily from the attitudes of the general public in this country as it may elsewhere. With respect to the Costa Ricans' stereotyped impressions about members of other nationalities, there is one point that is especially worth mentioning because of its pertinence to the possible training of Americans who go to work abroad.

Latin American nations have often been characterized as dual societies, that is, ones in which economic and value differences separate middle class from lower class and urban dweller from rural dweller. Whereas the economic differences have been well documented, value differences generally have been assumed. The findings of one empirical study of value differences in Latin America, a study conducted some years ago in Costa Rica, support the "dual society" thesis. This article reexamines that study and discovers that value homogeneity is a more accurate description of Costa Rican society. Improved, more appropriate data analysis techniques are responsible for the new finding. The implication is that if similar techniques were applied to other studies of Latin America, the dual society thesis might be invalidated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the study about the properties of some natural waters in a tropical wet forest in Costa Rica. According to the study, rainwater acts as a solvent for several important mineral nutrient elements that are cycled within a forest ecosystem. It showed that the excess water may also result in the loss of nutrients from the ecosystem to the drainage. The movement of nutrients with water within and from forest ecosystem has been extensively studied in many different areas of the temperate regions.

The article cites a research which examines the carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange of a tropical rain forest in Bosque de Florencia in Turrialba, Costa Rica. The researchers have determined that the photosynthesis and respiration rates of a tropical rain forest are approximately 1/10 of the peak rates of temperate region forests as well as agricultural crops. The study also reveals that those rates agree with laboratory values of leaf photosynthesis and respiration. The similarity between the diurnal variation in carbon dioxide concentration of the bulk air and active terrestrial plant communities in temperate regions has likewise been observed.

This paper reports the results of a survey of child-feeding practices and related social phenomena in Costa Rica, a country representative of many maturing, less developed nations. The data were collected for use in developing a remedial nutrition programme and to provide a basis for a later evaluation of that programme.The results show that child-feeding practices are in need of improvement, particularly among mothers with relatively little formal education and especially during the first year of life and during periods of sickness. More mothers, regardless of their educational level, should be encouraged to breast-feed and to do so for longer periods. The data also showed a need to improve the general health environment in large families as a means of reducing infant mortality, especially when the mother is relatively uneducated. Radio is a particularly promising channel of health communication, especially for the relatively uneducated. Ways in which mass communications media could be used for health education should be explored.