Community

Scope Note

General statements dealing with several aspects of the community and the officials who govern it. The term "community" connotes the maximal group of persons who normally reside together in face-to-face association. Since a community can rarely embrace many more than 1000 individuals, in societies with larger urban aggregates the term will be confined to subdivisions of towns or cities which approach communities in size and face-to-face character, e.g., wards, precincts, or residential neighborhoods. In societies lacking political integration above the level of the community information on government will ordinarily be indexed in this section rather than under "Territorial Organization" (630), "State" (640), or "Government Activities" (650) categories. In addition to political data on the community, this section includes information on social control, police, and informal justice irrespective of the level of political integration.