Feeling and form in groups1

Abstract

We social scientists fumble with the forms of social life—from mating pair to extended family; from friendship clique to community; from work team to corporation. We think of a group—say the Daughters of the American Revolution or the Mothers of Invention—and nothing much comes to mind, only a dull uncomprehending blankness. What IS a group exactly? We find even our most vital areas of social science hobbled for want of clear conceptions to fix understandings of key terms such as group, family, organization, and culture. This article reports my halting progress with the question of how to study human groups. My answer comes in images such as those of Plate 1. Here we have, first, children dancing arm in arm in a graveyard. Their joined circle is a living form—bounded in space and time, full of tension, rhythm, harmony, growth and possibility. Counter‐posed to the dancing children is the graveyard, which is likewise a form bound in space and time and animated by rhythms and growth. It is a remarkable fact that even in death, when there is no reason for it, we remain together with others, united in groups. Such images as these, I argue, are key to a scientific study of groups. In them we find the group.

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