Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-02T06:03:49.669Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Middletown Again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Get access

Extract

Middletown, or Muncie, is one of the most studied communities in the United States. Since the initial research was begun in 1924, the community has learned to endure the probing of many investigators, and the many reports have reflected the tensions and concerns of scholars searching for clues to the American urban experience. One might well trace the course of 20th-century American studies through the Middletown experience. In a limited way, that is what this effort purports to do.

Ironically the community was chosen largely by accident, studied by a person unqualified to do so, and the results were not what the sponsoring organization had wanted. When published, however, the report titled Middletown was an immediate success; it has remained in print since first issued, and has inspired many successors.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1. Harvey, Charles E., “Robert S. Lynd, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Middletown,” Indiana Magazine of History 79 (12 1983): 339.Google Scholar

2. Harvey, , “Lynd, Rockefeller, and Middletown,” 342–47Google Scholar; and Fox, Richard Wightman, “Epitaph for Middletown: Robert S. Lynd and the Analysis of Consumer Culture,” in The Culture of Consumption, ed. Fox, Richard Wightman and Lears, T. J. Jackson (New York: Pantheon, 1983), p. 112.Google Scholar

3. Haddan, J. K., “H. Paul Douglass: His Perspectives and His Work,” Review of Religious Research 22 (09 1980): 73.Google Scholar

4. Fisher, Galen M., “A History of the Small City Study,” 03 20, 1924Google Scholar, Institute of Social and Religious Research Papers, Private Archives of the Messrs. Rockefeller, p. 1; quoted in Harvey, , “Lynd, Rockefeller, and Middletown,” p. 347Google Scholar, and Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 113.Google Scholar

5. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 113.Google Scholar

6. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 113Google Scholar; and Fisher, , “History,” pp. 17.Google Scholar

7. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 106Google Scholar; Helen Merrell Lynd, with the collaboration of Lynd, Staughton, Possibilities (Bronxville, N.Y.: Friends of the Esther Raushenbush Library, 1983), pp. 3032.Google Scholar

8. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 107Google Scholar; and Lynd, Robert S., “But Why Preach?Harpers 143 (06 1921): 8283.Google Scholar

9. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 108Google Scholar; and Smith, Mark C., “Robert Lynd and Consumerism in the 1930's,” Journal of the History of Sociology 2 (19791980): 99100, 112Google Scholar. This entire issue was devoted to a study of Robert Lynd. The papers that compose the body of the journal were read at the East Coast Conference of Socialist Sociologists at a meeting entitled “Robert S. Lynd: Nurturing and Denying American Radical Sociology” held in March, 1979.

10. Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 108–10.Google Scholar

11. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 109.Google Scholar

12. Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 110–12Google Scholar; and Lynd, Staughton, “Robert S. Lynd: The Elk Basin Experience,” Journal of the History of Sociology 2 (19791980): 1519.Google Scholar

13. Harvey, , “Lynd, Rockefeller, and Middletown,” pp. 344–47Google Scholar; and Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 112–13.Google Scholar

14. Lynd, Helen Merrell, Possibilities, pp. 2933Google Scholar. Helen Lynd said that after her encounter with Robert Lynd every Wellesley girl carried a copy of The Theory of the Leisure Class with her on trips. In 1928, when she returned to teach at Sarah Lawrence, she taught social philosophy.

15. Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 118–19Google Scholar; and Fisher, , “History,” pp. 1419.Google Scholar

16. Jensen, Richard, “The Lynds Revisited,” Indiana Magazine of History 75 (12 1979): 306Google Scholar; Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 119Google Scholar; and Goodall, Hurley and Mitchell, J. Paul, A History of Negroes in Muncie (Muncie: Ball State University, 1976), p. 2.Google Scholar

17. Robert, S. and Lynd, Helen Merrell, Middletown: A Study in American Culture (1929; rept. New York: Harvest Books, 1956), p. 7.Google Scholar

18. Lynds, , Middletown, p. 708Google Scholar. Later in life, Lynd claimed in a letter to a sociology professor that he had erred in choosing Muncie because he had underestimated the impact of Ball State on the community. Earlier, in Middletown in Transition, he implicitly admitted that Muncie was a one-industry town, an admission that would have invalidated another of his criteria.

19. Lynd, Helen Merrell, Possibilities, p. 34Google Scholar; Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 119Google Scholar; and Lynds, , Middletown, p. 505.Google Scholar

20. Lynd called himself a Unitarian when he entered Union Theological Seminary and appears to have lost any sense of religious vocation after graduation. See Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 107–8.Google Scholar

21. Lynds, , Middletown, p. 4Google Scholar; and Smith, Mark C., “Middletown, Community Studies, and 1920s American Social Science,”Google Scholar paper read at the joint meeting of the Midcontinent and North Central American Studies Association Meeting, Iowa City, Iowa, April 16, 1983.

22. Lynd, Helen Merrell, Possibilities, p. 37.Google Scholar

23. Lynds, , Middletown, p. 22.Google Scholar

24. Lynds, , Middletown, pp. 505–9Google Scholar; Gordon, Milton M., Social Class in American Society (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1958), p. 64Google Scholar; and Madge, John H., The Origins of Scientific Sociology (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), pp. 135–41Google Scholar. Madge in particular notes that Lynd was meticulous in attribution for his data, but his statistical approach was elementary.

25. Harvey, , “Lynd, Rockefeller, and Middletown,” p. 350.Google Scholar

26. Lynd, Helen Merrell, Possibilities, p. 38.Google Scholar

27. The issue of the institute's role in publication is unclear. Harvey, following Helen Merrell Lynd, claims that the institute did not publish it (Lynd, , “Rockefeller, and Middletown,” p. 352Google Scholar). In Possibilities, she claimed that Lynd got the institute to release the manuscript to him for publication because the board members believed that it was unpublishable (p. 38). On the other hand, Fox states categorically that “on March 7, 1928, Fisher wrote Lynd of the institute's ‘definite and final’ decision to publish Middletown” (“Epitaph,” p. 122).Google Scholar

28. Lynd, Helen Merrell, Possibilities, p. 40Google Scholar; and Harvey, , “Lynd, Rockefeller, and Middletown,” p. 352.Google Scholar

29. Wilson, William H., Coming of Age: Urban America, 1915–1945 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974), p. 117.Google Scholar

30. Stein, Maurice, The Eclipse of Community (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 309.Google Scholar

31. Stein, , Eclipse, p. 3Google Scholar; Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 126Google Scholar; and Richard Lingeman, Second Invited Lecture, Center for Middletown Studies, Muncie, Ind., November, 1981.

32. Coben, Stanley, “The Assault on Victorianism in the Twentieth Century,” American Quarterly 27 (12 1975): 609CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Coben argues that Middletown was but another devastating blow against the last remnants of Victorianism in American society.

33. Stein, , Eclipse, p. 3.Google Scholar

34. Jensen, , “The Lynds Revisited,” p. 307Google Scholar. Jensen claims that the Lynds created a mythic past against which to place 1920s Muncie. I agree with his claim, although I believe it to be too strident. See my “Is Modernization a Useful Concept in Historical Writing? Middletown as a Case Study,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Indiana Association of Historians, Bloomington, Ind., March 12, 1983; and “The Long Ordeal of Modernization Theory,” Prospects 11 (Spring 1987): 407–51.Google Scholar

35. Jensen, , “The Lynds Revisited,” p. 312.Google Scholar

36. Dixon-Goist, Park, From Main Street to State Street: Town, City, and Community in America (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1977), pp. 4849Google Scholar; and Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 123–26.Google Scholar

37. Hall, Linda, “Fashion and Style in the Twenties: The Change,” The Historian 34 (05 1972): 492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 123.Google Scholar

39. Wilson, , Coming of Age, p. 117Google Scholar; and Jensen, , “The Lynds Revisited,” pp. 313–14Google Scholar. Jensen is particularly scathing of the Lynds' failure to interview any workers at all in the study and to exclude all families without school-aged children. This meant only 5 men out of the 140 working-class families whose wives were interviewed had worked more than 25 years for their employers.

40. See my “Were There Any Old People in Middletown?” Paper presented at the Conference on Human Values and Aging, New York City, October, 1976; and Gordon, , Social Class in American Society, p. 84.Google Scholar

41. Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 122, 127, 131Google Scholar; Lynd, Helen Merrell, Possibilities, pp. 3841Google Scholar; and Smith, , “Lynd and Consumerism,” pp. 100104Google Scholar. There are some discrepancies in these accounts. Fox has Helen going to Sarah Lawrence in 1929 and fails to mention Lynd's Commonwealth Fund position.

42. Smith, , “Lynd and Consumerism,” pp. 101–4Google Scholar; and Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 131–32.Google Scholar

43. Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 132–33.Google Scholar

44. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 134.Google Scholar

45. Helen Lynd does not suggest why she failed to come to Muncie. In fact, her only reference to Middletown in Transition in Possibilities is her evaluation of “The Middletown Spirit” as the best thing in the two books (see Possibilities, p. 37Google Scholar; and Harvey, , “Lynd, Rockefeller, and Middletown,” p. 353).Google Scholar

46. Bahr, Howard M., “The Perrigo Paper: A Local Influence upon Middletown in Transition,” Indiana Magazine of History 78 (03 1982): 23Google Scholar; and Madge, , Origins, p. 131.Google Scholar

47. Muncie Evening Press, 06 12, 1935Google Scholar; and Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 129–30.Google Scholar

48. Bahr, , “Perrigo Paper,” pp. 58.Google Scholar

49. Bell, Colin, “Replication and Reality, or the Future of Sociology,” Futures 6 (06 1974): 254CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Madge, , Origins, p. 130.Google Scholar

50. Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 137–38Google Scholar; Etzkowitz, Henry, “The Americanization of Marx: Middletown and Middletown in Transition,” Journal of the History of Sociology 2 (Fall-Winter 19791980): 4154Google Scholar; and Miller, S. M., “Struggle for Relevance: The Lynd Legacy,” Journal of the History of Sociology 2 (Fall-Winter 19791980): 5862Google Scholar. Etzkowitz's attempts to make Lynd a Marxist are weak, I think, while Miller's characterization of Lynd as a radical without a party or home seems more apt.

51. Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 132–33.Google Scholar

52. Smith, , “Lynd and Consumerism,” p. 111.Google Scholar

53. Bahr, , “Perrigo Paper,” p. 3.Google Scholar

54. Bahr, , “Perrigo Paper,” p. 3Google Scholar; and Madge, , Origins, pp. 147–48.Google Scholar

55. Bell, , “Replication and Reality,” pp. 254–55.Google Scholar

56. Gordon, , Social Class in American Society, p. 69Google Scholar; Madge, , Origins, p. 159Google Scholar; Etzkowitz, , “Americanization of Marx,” p. 45Google Scholar; and Jensen, , “The Lynds Revisited,” pp. 310–11.Google Scholar

57. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 136.Google Scholar

58. Stein, , Eclipse, p. 56.Google Scholar

59. Lynds, , Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts, p. 77Google Scholar; and Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 134.Google Scholar

60. Lynds, , Middletown in Transition, p. 77Google Scholar; and Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 134.Google Scholar

61. Lynds, , Middletown in Transition, pp. 402–87.Google Scholar

62. Lynds, , Middletown in Transition, p. 74.Google Scholar

63. Bell, , “Replication and Reality,” p. 254Google Scholar. Stein and Fox also recognize the problem created by the failure to note the power of the Balls in Middletown in the first book. See Stein, , Eclipse, p. 58Google Scholar; and Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 135.Google Scholar

64. Bahr, , “Perrigo Paper,” p. 8Google Scholar. Bahr concludes that Perrigo did not influence Lynd's ideas about community power in general (see p. 21).

65. Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 134–35Google Scholar. Fox bases this claim on an interview with Helen Lynd. In Possibilities, Helen makes no such suggestion and only mentions Middletown in Transition once.

66. Lynd, Helen Merrell, Possibilities, p. 36.Google Scholar

67. Stein, , Eclipse, pp. 312–13.Google Scholar

68. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 130.Google Scholar

69. Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 111.Google Scholar

70. Jensen, , “The Lynds Revisited,” pp. 310–17.Google Scholar

71. Stein, , Eclipse, p. 65.Google Scholar

72. Bahr, , “Perrigo Paper,” p. 11.Google Scholar

73. Goldberg, Vicki, Margaret Bourke-White: A Biography (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), p. 188Google Scholar. Curiously enough, there is no mention of Muncie in Bourke-White's autobiography, Portrait of Myself (1963).Google Scholar

74. Goldberg, , Margaret Bourke-White, pp. 188–89Google Scholar. The fat city father was the mayor of Muncie, Rollin C. “Doc” Bunch, who was serving a third term in office. Bunch was a populist whom Lynd wrongly believed had sold out to the Ball interest. See my “Politics as Usual in Middletown, 1913–1986,” paper read at Great Lakes American Studies Association, Adrian, Michigan, October 4, 1986. The cover of the issue displayed a picture of William C. Ball in a barber's chair with his face covered with lather. Inside it contained a picture of the same family in the living room, but the captions on this image and one showing a poor family on the Southside were reversed. See Moxley, Lucina Ball, Recollections of Lucina: The Best Years (Indianapolis: privately printed, 1986), pp. 1718Google Scholar. See also Parkinson, Leon, “Comment and Opinion: Our Town,” Muncie Evening Press, 06 28, 1978Google Scholar, which makes the same point concerning Muncie's ignorance of the Lynds' work and its anger at Bourke-White.

75. Lindt, Gillian, “Robert S. Lynd: American Scholar-Activist,” Journal of the History of Sociology 2 (19791980): 8Google Scholar; and Fox, , “Epitaph,” pp. 140–41.Google Scholar

76. Allen, Frederick Lewis, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s (New York: Harper and Row, Perennial Library, 1964), p. 298.Google Scholar

77. Allen, Frederick Lewis, Since Yesterday (New York: Harper and Brothers, Bantam, 1961), p. 277.Google Scholar

78. Hall, Linda, “Fashion and Style in the Twenties: The Change,” The Historian 34 (05 1972): 490, 492, 495–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79. Vanek, Joann, “Household Work, Wage Work, and Sexual Equality,” in Women and Household Labor, ed. Berk, Sarah F. (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage, 1980), p. 283.Google Scholar

80. Freedman, Estelle B., “The New Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s,” Journal of American History 61 (09 1974): 380–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

81. Strasser, Susan M., Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 28–9, 78, 97Google Scholar. See also her “An Enlarged Human Existence? Technology and Household Work in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Berk, , Women and Household LaborGoogle Scholar, which uses material from 1890s Muncie.

82. Rapp, Rayna and Ross, Ellen, “It Seems We've Stood and Talked Like This Before: Wisdom from the 1920s,” Ms. (04 1983): 5456.Google Scholar

83. Brownell, Blaine, “A Symbol of Modernity: Attitudes Toward the Automobile in Southern Cities in the 1920s,” American Quarterly 24 (03 1972): 3132CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Flink, James J., “Three Stages of American Automobile Consciousness,” American Quarterly 24 (10 1972): 451–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84. Mandel, Leon, Driven: The American Four-Wheeled Love Affair (New York: Stein and Day, 1977), pp. 3459.Google Scholar

85. Krebs, Michele, “How the Auto Forever Changed Lives: The Story of Middletown, USA,” Automobile News, Centennial Celebration Issue, 10 30, 1985.Google Scholar

86. Kasen, Jill H., “Whither the Self-Made Man? Comic Culture and the Crisis of Legitimation in the United States,” Social Problems 28 (12 1980): 132–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

87. Wertheim, Arthur Frank, “Radio Comedy and the Great Depression,” Journal of Popular Culture 10 (Winter 1976): 511–12.Google Scholar

88. Thernstrom, Stephan, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 216Google Scholar. See also his “Notes on the Historical Study of Social Mobility,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 10 (01 1968): 163, 165–67.Google Scholar

89. Thernstrom, , Poverty and Progress, p. 222.Google Scholar

90. Bodnar, James, “Immigration, Kinship, and the Rise of Working Class Realism in Industrial America,” Journal of Social History 14 (Fall 1980): 46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

91. Polsby, Nelson W., “The Sociology of Community Power,” Social Forces 37 (03 1959): 232–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Polsby, , “Power in Middletown: Fact and Value in Community Research,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 26 (11 1960): 592603CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Polsby, , Community Power and Political Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 1424Google Scholar; Frank, Carrolye M., “Politics in Middletown: A Reconsideration of Municipal Government and Community Power in Muncie, Indiana, 1925–1935,” (Ph.D. diss., Ball State University, 1974), pp. 2629Google Scholar; and Fox, , “Epitaph,” p. 136.Google Scholar

92. Polsby, , “Power in Middletown,” p. 594.Google Scholar

93. A. Constantine Titus, “Local Government Expenditures and Political Attitudes: A Look at Nine Major Cities,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 16 (06 1981): 438.Google Scholar

94. Stein, , Eclipse, p. 95.Google Scholar

95. Jay, Martin, The Dialectial Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), pp. 39, 124–25.Google Scholar

96. Bendix, Richard and Lipset, Seymour Martin, eds., Class, Status and Power: Social Stratification in Comparative Perspective (New York: Free Press, 1966), 2nd ed., pp. 266–67.Google Scholar

97. Binford, Karen D., “An Analysis of the Effect of Intelligence on the Relationship Between Socio-Economic Status and Academic Achievement,” Sociological Focus (Summer 1971): 28Google Scholar; McPherson, J. Miller, “Dynamic Model of Voluntary Affiliation,” Social Forces 59 (03 1981): 709CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kolin, Melvin L., “Social Class and Parental Values: Another Confirmation of the Relationship,” American Sociological Review 41 (06 1976): 538Google Scholar; and “Notes,” Harvard Law Review (05 1971): 1655–56.Google Scholar

98. Handlin, Oscar, Truth in History (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1979), p. 260Google Scholar. See also Colson, Elizabeth, “Culture and Progress,” American Anthropologist 78 (06 1976): 265Google Scholar; Morriesey, Charles T., “Oral History and the Boundaries of Fiction,” Public Historian 7 (Spring 1985): 49Google Scholar; and Borenstein, Audrey, Redeeming The Sin: Social Science and Literature (New York: Columbia Univeristy Press, 1978), p. 58.Google Scholar

99. Goheen, Peter N., “Interpreting the American City: Some Historical Perspectives,” Geographical Review 64 (07 1974): 366–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100. Brown, Richard H., “Social Theory as Metaphor,” Theory and Society 3 (Summer 1976): 190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

101. Gillin, John, “Research Reviews: The Application of Anthropological Knowledge to Modern Mass Society,” Human Organization 15 (Winter 1957): 25.Google Scholar

102. Lazersfeld, Paul, “Remarks Read at a Memorial Service of Robert S. Lynd, Columbia University Press, February 28, 1971,” American Sociologist 6 (08 1971): 266Google Scholar, quoted in Carey, James T., Sociology and Public Affairs: The Chicago School (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage, 1975), p. 38.Google Scholar

103. Madge, , Origins, p. 135Google Scholar. Katz and Lazersfeld had apparently not studied the community very well. By the mid-1950s, Muncie's prosperity was closely connected to the automobile industry, but glass and other industries offered alternative employment. The Ball domination, if it ever existed, had gone.

104. Bell, , “Replication and Reality,” p. 253.Google Scholar

105. Caplow, Theodore and Bahr, Howard M., Chadwick, Bruce A., Hill, Reuben, and Williamson, Margaret Holmes, Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Change and Continuity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), pp. vixGoogle Scholar; and Peterson, Iver, “In a ‘Typical’ U.S. Town, Revolutions Come Slowly,” New York Times, 02 7, 1982.Google Scholar

106. Caplow, et al. , Middletown Families, p. vi.Google Scholar

107. Caplow, et al. , Middletown Families, p. v.Google Scholar

108. Caplow, et al. , Middletown Families, p. vii.Google Scholar

109. Caplow, Theodore and Bahr, Howard M., “Half a Century of Change in Adolescent Attitudes: Replication of a Middletown Survey by the Lynds,” Public Opinion Quarterly 43 (Spring 1979): 117CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Among the more significant articles published prior to the first book were Caplow, Theodore, “The Gradual Process of Equality in Middletown: A Tocquevillean Theme Re-examined,” Tocqueville Review 1 (Fall 1979): 114–26Google Scholar; Bahr, Howard M., “Change in Family Life in Middletown, 1924–77,” Public Opinion Quarterly 44 (Fall 1980): 3552CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Caplow, Theodore and Chadwick, Bruce A., “Inequality and Life Styles in Middletown, 1920–1978,” Social Science Quarterly 50 (12 1979): 367–86Google Scholar; Bahr, Howard M., Caplow, Theodore, and Leigh, Geoffrey K., “The Slowing of Modernization in Middletown,” in Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, ed. Kriesberg, Louis (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1980), vol. 3Google Scholar; Caplow, Theodore, “The Measurement of Social Change in Middletown,” Indiana Magazine of History 75 (12 1979): 344–57Google Scholar; Guterbock, Thomas M., “Social Class and Voting Choices in Middletown,” Social Forces 58 (06 1980): 1044–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Caplow, Theodore et al. , “The Changing Middletown Family,” Journal of the History of Sociology 2 (Fall-Winter 19791980): 6698.Google Scholar

110. Bahr, et al. , “Slowing of Modernization,” p. 223.Google Scholar

111. Bahr, et al. , “Slowing of Modernization,” p. 231.Google Scholar

112. Caplow, et al. , Middletown Families, p. 225.Google Scholar

113. Caplow, et al. , Middletown Families, pp. 223–24.Google Scholar

114. Caplow, et al. , Middletown Families, p. 323Google Scholar. See also Caplow, , “The Changing Middletown Family” and “The Sociological Myth of Family Decline,” Tocqueville Review 3 (Fall 1981): 349–69.Google Scholar

115. Caplow, Theodore, “The Myth of Family Decline and its Benefits,” Christian Science Monitor, 04 19, 1982Google Scholar. This article coincided with the release of Middletown Families.

116. Caplow, et al. , Middletown Families, p. 15Google Scholar; see also pp. 6–8, 18–19, 88–90, 97–98.

117. Caplow, Theodore, Bahr, Howard M., and Chadwick, Bruce, “Piety in Middletown,” Transaction Magazine 18 (01/02 1981): 3437Google Scholar; and Caplow, Theodore, “Religion in Middletown,” The Public Interest 68 (Summer 1982): 7887Google Scholar. See also Caplow's paper, “The Future of Religion in Middletown,” presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Baltimore, Maryland, October 29–31, 1981.

118. Caplow, , “Religion in Middletown,” p. 84.Google Scholar

119. Caplow, and Bahr, , “Half a Century of Change,” p. 6Google Scholar; and Caplow, Theodore, “The Measurement of Social Change in Middletown,”Google Scholar Middletown III Project, paper no. 4A, p. 3.

120. Caplow, , “Future of Religion,” p. 10Google Scholar; and Caplow, , “Measurement of Social Change,” p. 4.Google Scholar

121. Caplow, , “Future of Religion,” pp. 2223Google Scholar; Caplow, Theodore, Bahr, Howard M., and Chadwick, Bruce A., All Faithful People (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), pp. 294–96Google Scholar; and Caplow, Theodore, “Looking for Secularization in Middletown,”Google Scholar talk given to the annual meeting of the Friends of Bracken Library, April 27, 1982, p. 5.

122. Caplow, , “Looking for Secularization,” p. 6Google Scholar; Caplow, , “Future of Religion,” pp. 2324Google Scholar; and Caplow, et al. , All Faithful People, pp. 294–96.Google Scholar

123. Caplow, , “Future of Religion,” p. 24Google Scholar; and Caplow, et al. , All Faithful People, pp. 296–97.Google Scholar

124. Caplow, , “Future of Religion,” p. 21.Google Scholar

125. See her obituary in Time, 02 16, 1982, p. 65.Google Scholar

126. Lingeman, Richard, “The Family is Alive and Well in Muncie,” Chicago Tribune, 05 3, 1981, p. 4.Google Scholar

127. Peterson, , “In a ‘Typical’ U.S. Town,” p. EY 19.Google Scholar

128. Herbers, John, “How They're Doing in Muncie, Ind,” New York Times Book Review, 04 18, 1982, pp. 1130.Google Scholar

129. Howard, Jane, “Listening to the Beat of the Heartland,” Washington Post Book World, 04 4, 1982, pp. 13Google Scholar; and Nordell, Roderick, “In Mid-America: Researchers See Family Values Holding Strong,” Christian Science Monitor, 05 14, 1982, p. B3.Google Scholar

130. Moffett, Al, “The American Family is Alive and Well,” Saturday Evening Post, 03, 1981, pp. 1415.Google Scholar

131. Weales, Gerald, New York Review of Books, 04 26, 1984, pp. 4345.Google Scholar

132. Quoted in Coughlin, Ellen K., “‘Middletown’ Much the Same After 50 Years, Study Finds, but Sociology Greatly Changed,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 03 17, 1982, p. 20.Google Scholar

133. Elder, Glen H., “A Third Look at Middletown,” Science, 05 21, 1982, p. 855.Google Scholar

134. Elder, , “Third Look,” p. 854.Google Scholar

135. Rossi, Peter H., “The Muncie Papers: Some Comments on the ‘Middletown’ Series,”Google Scholar comments presented at the Community Section Meetings of the American Sociological Association, Detroit, Michigan, September 1, 1983.

136. Rossi, , “Muncie Papers.”Google Scholar

137. The original article was Caplow, Theodore, “Christmas Gifts and Kin Networks,” American Sociological Review 47 (06 1982): 383–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The critique was Miller, Judith Droitcour and Asin, Ira H., “Avoiding Bias in ‘Derivative Samples’: A Neglected Issue in Family Studies,” American Sociological Review 48 (12 1983): 874–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The reply was Caplow, Theodore, “Response to the Comment by Miller and Asin–‘Avoiding Bias in ‘Derivative Samples’: A Neglected Issue in Family Studies,’American Sociological Review 48 (12 1983): 876.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

138. Smith, Mark C., “From Middletown to Middletown III: A Critical Review,” Qualitative Sociology 7 (Winter 1984): 228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

139. Smith, Mark C., “Rejoinder to Theodore Caplow,” Qualitative Sociology 8 (Spring 1985): 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Smith, 's “Fifty Years of an American City: Stability and Change in Middletown,” Indiana Journal of American Studies 14 (1984): 5765.Google Scholar

140. Elder, , “Third Look,” p. 855.Google Scholar

141. Peter Berger, Review of All Faithful People, America, 01 20, 1984, p. 37.Google Scholar

142. See my “The Long Ordeal of Modernization Theory,” Prospects 11 (1987): 407–51.Google Scholar

143. Roof, Wade C., Review of All Faithful People, Science, 02 17, 1984, p. 691.Google Scholar

144. Wattenberg, Ben, The Good News is the Bad News is Wrong (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), pp. 275–76Google Scholar. Wattenberg is a neoconservative who is resident at the American Enterprise Institute and who interviewed Caplow on a locally produced television show which was substituted for “Seventeen.”

145. A local book store featured an autograph party for Caplow when the book was published. Only sixteen copies were sold. On the other hand, the news of the film series appeared almost daily in both the morning and evening newspapers.

146. For accounts of the history of the series by participants, see Hill, C. Warren Vander, “The Middletown Film Project: Reflections of an Academic Humanist,” Journal of Popular Film and Culture 10 (Summer 1982): 4865Google Scholar; Hoover, Dwight W., “The Middletown Film Project,” Journal of Film and Video 39 (Spring 1987)Google Scholar; Hoover, Dwight W., “The Strange Case of ‘17,’” in Visual Explorations of the World: Selected Papers from the International Conference on Visual Communications, ed. Ruby, Jay and Taureg, Martin (Aachen, Germany: Edition Herodat, 1987)Google Scholar; Hoover, Dwight W., “Censorship or Bad Judgment? An Example from American Public Television,” Historical Journal of Film and Video 7 (06 1987)Google Scholar; and Hoover, Dwight W., “The ‘Second Time Around’ as compared to Middletown Families,”Google Scholar paper read at the Biennial meeting of the American Studies Association, Philadelphia, Pa., November 2, 1983.

147. Hoover, Dwight W., “‘Middletown,’ A Research and Development Grant Proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities,” unpublished manuscript, 1978, p. 5.Google Scholar

148. See my “Stereotypes in the Middletown Film Series,” paper read at the Symposium on Verbal Literacy, Stockholm, June 11, 1987, for a discussion of Davis's version of cinema direct.

149. Both Davis and Grossman blamed each other. See TV Guide, 03 13, 1982, p. A1Google Scholar; Washington Post, 03 24, 1982, pp. B1, B15Google Scholar; and Davis, Peter, Letter to Demott, Joel and Kreines, Jeff, 10 11, 1984.Google Scholar

150. The station tried unsuccessfully to interest several other commentators in being the host before Wattenberg agreed.

151. Janis, Ralph, “Middletown Revisited: Searching for the Heart of Mid-America,” Indiana Magazine of History 78 (12 1982): 349.Google Scholar

152. Winston, Brian, “Hell of a Good Sail … Sorry, No Whales,” Sight and Sound (Autumn 1983): 240.Google Scholar

153. Janis, , “Middletown Revisited,” p. 347Google Scholar. John J. O'Connor makes a similar point in his “When a Documentarian Tries to Play Sociologist,” New York Times, 04 4, 1982Google Scholar. Only a month earlier, he had been enthusiastic about the series. See his “‘Middletown’ in Video Verité,” New York Times, 03 24, 1982.Google Scholar

154. See my “Stereotypes in the Middletown Film Series.”

155. Winston, , “Hell of a Good Sail,” p. 238.Google Scholar

156. Winston, , “Hell of a Good Sail,” p. 240Google Scholar. The criticism of Winston is echoed by a number of other critics. See Covino, Michael, “Missing: The Strange Case of Seventeen,” Los Angeles Express, 04 13, 1984Google Scholar, for example. These critics, however, rely quite heavily upon the attacks on Davis by DeMott and Kreines who, after being disaffected with the withdrawal of “Seventeen,” found him to blame.

157. Winston, , “Hell of a Good Sail,” p. 238.Google Scholar

158. Gilligan, J. Herman and Harris, C. C., “Community and Community Studies: Studying Local Social Life,” in Investigating Society, ed. Burgess, R. G. (London: Longman, 1987), p. 6.Google Scholar

159. Gilligan, and Harris, , “Community and Community Studies,” p. 7.Google Scholar

160. Gilligan, and Harris, , “Community and Community Studies,” p. 8.Google Scholar

161. Gilligan, and Harris, , “Community and Community Studies,” pp. 910.Google Scholar