Growth and Development of Social Groups 
CARLETON S. COON 
definitions. For this reason, and because there is no 
accepted method of measuring social phenomena, the so- 
called exact scientists tend to look down their noses at socio- 
logists and social anthropologists. But the existing confusion 
and vagueness need not be perpetuated. Some solid scientific 
work has been done in the field of human relations, only it is 
not at present fashionable. 
As long ago as 1909 Van Gennep published his little-noted 
work on the Rites of Passage!, rituals which automatically take 
place in any society to allay the disturbances to all persons 
concerned when one individual goes through a critical change 
in his or her position in the social group, from birth through 
puberty to marriage, and eventually to illness and death. The 
“persons concerned”’ include not only the individual under- 
going the change but also those who interact with him the most 
frequently, including his immediate family. 
In 1922 Radcliffe Brown published? his explanation of the 
various rituals which the Andaman Islanders used to perform 
both in the individual life cycle and in the changes of seasons, 
and he was particularly concerned with the way in which 
certain substances were selected as symbols of each kind of 
disturbance. For example, hibiscus leaves, which were used in 
the context of situations associated with a number of dis- 
turbances were automatically selected for ritual use. 
During the 1920s and 1930s Malinowski} studied the ways in 
which the equilibrium of social groups in the Trobriand Islands 
was maintained, and in 1942 Eliot Chapple and I discussed 
the whole subject of social equilibrium in a textbook which 
Te term “social group” is a broad one and has many 
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