3 - Processing Community

Summary

This chapter considers theories of social process in early twentieth-century America, analyzing how process theory set the stage for subsequent developments in political science. Where the early British pluralists argued that modern society was best described in terms of the groups that compose it, process theorists in America argued that modern society can only be adequately described in terms of the processes that flow through it. This notion brought the problem of social order to the fore in a variation on themes pursued by the pluralists.