(3) "In the members of the community." The members of the Fair Play community, as previously noted, were not strictly resident within the geographic confines of the Fair Play territory. Communities, it has been said, are total ways of life, complexes Of behavior composed of all the institutions necessary to carry on a complete life, formed into a working whole.[2] Self-determination, as it is used here, suggests that the community as a whole participates in the decision-making process.
(4) "Not in any particular class or classes, but in the members of the community as a whole." Bryce's definition here extends the interpretation of "the members of the community." Obviously, if any particular class or classes were vested with the final political authority, then the people as a whole, that is, the Fair Play community, would not exercise self-determination.
The concept of self-determination, carried to an economic context, suggests that the people of the Fair Play community had the right to determine their own economic institutions. This means that they had the right to choose their own portion of land, subject, of course, to the will of the existing community, and to utilize it according to their own needs and interests. This meant that no undemocratic and feudalistic practices, such as primogeniture and entail, could exist. Granted that this is self-determination rather broadly interpreted in an economic context, the question is whether or not these people had the right to choose their own plot of ground and work it as they saw fit, unhampered by any preordained system of discrimination or restriction.
Socially, the idea of self-determination is applied to evaluate the religious institutions, the class structure, and the value system. The application concerns, once again, the authority of the people to determine their own social patterns. It questions whether or not any Fair Play settler could worship according to the dictates of his own conscience. It evaluates the class structure to ascertain whether or not a superimposed caste system ordered the class structure of Fair Play society, rather than a community-determined system in which choice and opportunity provided flexibility and mobility. And finally, it considers whether or not the values of the Fair Play settlers were inculcated by some internal clique or external force, rather than being developed by the members of the community themselves.