ETHNOGRAPHIC METHOD IN THE REAL COMMUNITY.

The article presents a study in sociology and authors' efforts to derive a suitable method for sociological study of community. The author says sociologists have often debated the integrity of the community as a unit of sociological study. Communities differ in the degrees to which they comprise the social worlds of their members. The author says that prolonged observation of a locality by the social anthropologist, trained to observe the processes of cultures, should enable him to conclude that the community either is or is not a reality. For drawing conclusions the author has selected Whalsay, an island community in Shetland, Scotland. The author says that even when forms of social organization and behavior in one social context appear phenomenally similar to those in another, they do not always mean the same thing to the people in those two situations. The author emphasizes that it is grossly misleading to treat a piece of structure or some behavioral phenomenon as understandable in its own isolated terms without knowing the nature of the cultural influence by which it is dominated.