TOWARDS A UNIVERSE OF COMMUNITY ACTION

The community action universe for any given place is defined as all acts having some meaning for the people of that place which they do not have for the people of other places. All headlines in the daily paper of a Kentucky town of 8,000 fitting this criterion during a 3 month period & all events or activities listed by 52 interview R's active in the community were combined to identify one list of 1415 actions, each of which was classified according to: (1) its importance to the identity-maintaining & policy-deciding processes of the community; (2) its location within one of 8 instit'al areas (civic, economy, educ, fam, health & welfare, soc recreation, & relig); & (3) its being totally `inside' or at least partially `outside' the community. Actions were distributed among the various instit's in a relatively even fashion. Few action units were found to have major signif for the community system. Marked diff's were found in the instit'al content of actions classed by importance to the community. The greater the communal signif of an action the greater its chances of having outside elements involved. Almost 50% of these locallyrelevant activities had some 'outside' components. AA.