TY - JOUR
AU1 - HENRY, JULES
AB -  JULES HENRY Washington Univwsity IMPORTANT function of social structure is to provide everyone with a personal community, a group of people on whom he can rely for support and approval. In this paper I will discuss some of the invariant properties of that personal communtiy. Since every socialized human being must have a group on which he can rely for approval and support, it follows that the more precisely the properties of the personal community are defined, the closer we come to understanding society and the functioning of the human organism within it. Since precise description of a thing requires specification of its statistical properties, I shall attempt to state them for the personal community. I n the first place, a personal community has a certain number, determined by counting those who most frequently contribute to an individual’s welfare and approve his actions. In the second place, a personal community has a certain constancy, measured by the time spent by its members in direct interaction. Thus in our culture a mother has a higher constancy in the personal community of the child than does its father, and both have a higher constancy than a distant uncle. In the 
TI - The Personal Community and Its Invariant Properties
JF - American Anthropologist
DO - 10.1525/aa.1958.60.5.02a00030
DA - 1958-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/wiley/the-personal-community-and-its-invariant-properties-xKzfYzjlQb
SP - 827
EP - 831
VL - 60
IS - 5
DP - DeepDyve
ER -