Orrin E. Klapp

The Fool as a Social Type

The fool is a social type having certain definable roles and a special status and function in group life. Fools represent departures from group norms of propriety which are subject to the sanction of ridicule. Fool-making is a continuous social process and operates to enforce propierty and to adjust status.

The Creation of Popular Heroes

The popular hero is a social type having certain definable roles. The problem of making a hero is that of imputing to a person these roles and of maintaining and building a collective interpretation which has the character of a legend. The destroying of a hero is the casting of him in antiheroic roles. Social types, especially fundamental symbols such as the hero, the villain, and the fool, provide a key to collective psychology because the mass recognizes and readily responds to these symbols.

Mexican Social Types

Mexico, like any country, has a social type system as part of its informal structure. Hero types state positive norms of the ethos. Such themes are found also in public images of admired leaders. Villain and fool types state negative norms. Though some types are universal, the system provides an important key to national character and structural differences among societies.

Power Structure and Decision-Making in a Mexican Border City

A reputational study of the local power structure of Tijuana shows the elite to be composed mainly of businessmen, though no single group runs things; local government is weak, and the major power sources are outside the community. Though leadership is not democratic, neither is it oligarchic, because the elite is poorly integrated. Indeed, rather than over-all government, there is an ecology of games. Characteristic roles of leaders and patterns of decision-making are described.