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Power Structure and its Communication Behavior in San José, Costa Rica*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Harold T. Edwards
Harold T. Edwards*
Affiliation:
Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Turrialba, Costa Rica
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Extract

The word “community” has been defined as a “structuring of elements and dimensions to solve problems which must be or can be solved within the local area.” This problem-solving process by which the community is directed, segmented, and formed into a structure has been the basis of many community power studies. Floyd Hunter was among the first to study this process, employing what has been termed the reputational method of community study. This method is now considered a standard technique for determining community power structures. It consists of a series of interviews with selected community knowledgeables who are asked to name the most influential individuals in the area. This is followed by a second round of interviews with those influentials who received the highest number of “votes” or mentions from the knowledgeables, asking them for a similar listing in order to rank the group of influentials according to their power in the community.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 1967 , pp. 236 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1967

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Footnotes

*

This article is based on a thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Arts in Communications at Michigan State University, 1963. The author wishes to express his gratitude to the late Dr. Paul J. Deutschmann, Director of Research for the Programa Interamericano de Información Popular, San José, while on leave of absence from Michigan State University, for his guidance and valuable assistance throughout this study.

References

1 Nelson, Lowry, Ramsey, Charles E., and Verner, Coolie, Community Structure and Change, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960), p. 24.Google Scholar For a discussion of various definitions, see HiUery, George A., Jr., “Definitions of Community: Areas of Agreement,” Rural Sociology, 20 (June 1955), 111–123.Google Scholar

2 Hunter, Floyd, Community Power Structure (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954).Google Scholar

3 The reputational method has been described at length in many publications. A rather complete discussion of it appears in Miller, Delbert C., “Decision-Making Cliques in Community Power Structures: A Comparative Study of an American and an English City,” The American Journal of Sociology, 64 (November 1958), 300–301.Google Scholar

4 For a discussion of the criticisms of the reputational method along with an extensive bibliography, see D'Antonio, William V. and Erickson, Eugene C., “The Reputational Technique as a Measure of Community Power: An Evaluation Based on Comparative and Longitudinal Studies,” American Sociological Review, 27 (June 1962), 362–376 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Those who have been the most outspoken critics of this technique are Polsby, Nelson W., “Three Problems in the Analysis of Community Power,” American Sociological Review, 24 (December 1959), 796–803 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolfinger, Raymond E., “Reputation and Reality in the Study of Community Power,” American Sociological Review, 25 (October 1960), 636–644 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dahl, Robert A., “A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model,” American Political Science Review, 52 (June 1958), 463–469 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Polsby, Nelson W., “The Sociology of Community Power: A Reassessment,” Social Forces, 37 (March 1959), 323–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See Ehrlich, Howard J., “The Reputational Approach to the Study of Community Power,” American Sociological Review, 26 (December 1961), 926–927.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Hunter, op. cit., p. 107.

7 Miller, “Decision-Making Cliques … ,” pp. 299-310.

8 Form, William H. and D'Antonio, William V., “Integration and Cleavage Among Community Influentials in Two Border Cities,” American Sociological Review, 24 (December 1959), 804–814 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D'Antonio, William V., Form, William H., Loomis, Charles P., and Erickson, Eugene C., “Institutional and Occupational Representations in Eleven Community Influence Systems,” American Sociological Review, 26 (June 1961), 440–446 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klapp, Orrin E. and Vincent Padgett, L., “Power Structure and Decision-Making in a Mexican Border City,” American Journal of Sociology, 65 (January 1960), 400–406 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Miller, Delbert C., “Industry and Community Power Structure: A Comparative Study of an American and an English City,” American Sociological Review, 23 (February 1958), 9–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 While other studies have employed various numbers of knowledgeables, 12 were selected for the San José study because (1) they formed a representative cross-section of the principal community sectors, and (2) the data received from them produced the closure necessary in order to be able to predict with reasonable accuracy the names that would appear in subsequent interviews.

10 The motivation for this technique was taken from D'Antonio and Erickson, op. cit., p. 365. In San José, however, two projects were suggested instead of one so that both social welfare and business could be included.

11 Even though the degrees much, some, little, and none seem to be purely subjective judgments, it should be mentioned that at the formal level, from a total of 378 paired responses, 62 per cent were paired equally and 31 per cent were only one degree apart. At the informal level, 60 per cent were paired equally and another 34 per cent were only one degree apart. Similar results were produced at the written level. This demonstrates a remarkable similarity of perceptions.

12 For an interesting discussion of perception and decision-making, see Dye, Thomas R., “Popular Images of Decision-Making in Suburban Communities,” Sociology and Social Research, 47 (October 1962), 75–83.Google Scholar

13 A similar coefficient of .47 was produced at the informal level.

14 For a similar study made in a rural community of Costa Rica, see David Holden, E. W., “La estructura del liderazgo y sus características en una comunidad de Costa Rica”, Journal of Inter-American Studies, VIII, No. 1 (January 1966), 129–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar