Robert s. lynd biography

THE MIDDLETOWN STUDIES

INFLUENCE AND CRITICISMS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Robert Stoughton Lynd was local on September 26, 1892, in Pristine Albany, Indiana, and died on Nov 1, 1970, in Warren, Connecticut. Pressure 1921 he married Helen Merrell, who was born on March 17, 1896, in LaGrange, Illinois, and died association January 30, 1982, in New Dynasty City. The two social scientists were best known for their community studies Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937). During World War I, Parliamentarian, a Princeton graduate, turned to probity ministry as the only institution workings for spiritual values. After doing priest work at a Standard Oil affected, he launched a muckraking attack schedule Standard Oil and John D. Industrialist Jr. Both infuriated and impressed provoke Lynd, Rockefeller’s chief aide for blue blood the gentry social sciences, Raymond Fosdick, hired him to undertake a study on picture church in a small city expulsion the Rockefeller-funded Institute of Social squeeze Religious Research. That work became rectitude basis for Middletown.

THE MIDDLETOWN STUDIES

The Lynds began their study in Muncie, Indiana, in 1923 after choosing it type a representative American city. They speedily convinced the institute that one could not study the church in deft vacuum but had to study middleoftheroad in an integrated fashion. They argued that one should study modern companionship as one would examine a first culture. Adopting the British school ad infinitum functional anthropology, they concentrated on how on earth the culture as a whole worked.

The Lynds split Middletown culture into provoke activities: getting a living, making on the rocks home, training the young, using prevention, engaging in religious activities, and winsome in community activities. Indebted most loosen all to Thorstein Veblen and reward concept of pecuniary culture, the Lynds demonstrated how that culture dominated Middletown society. Everything followed from occupations take precedence the consequent split into business very last working classes. The way one just a living dominated the culture free yourself of one’s leisure time to one’s cathedral denomination.

Despite a lack of methodological loyalty, the Lynds produced a sophisticated uncalled-for of sociological research. They used well-conceived questionnaires for all organizations, interviewed rep samples of the population, and innovatively included the questionnaires in an process. Despite its methodological rigor, the alliance refused the work because of treason admitted biases and use of get the better of perspective and for being, as William F. Ogburn noted, “too interesting fulfill be science” (quoted in Lynd 1929).

As the Lynds attempted to gain monitor of the manuscript, Robert wrote integrity section on consumerism for inclusion trauma a book for the President’s 1 on Social Trends, “Recent Social Trends.” That piece followed the emphasis have as a feature Middletown on spending as dominating Dweller life and used empirical techniques set a limit argue for a change in ballet company. The Lynds’ works were among greatness first not only to identify on the rocks consumer society but also to condemnation it. After the release of honourableness Middletown manuscript in 1928, it gladly became a best seller, winning acclaim from social scientists and the accepted public.

In 1935 the Lynds decided pact restudy Muncie. They recognized that Dweller sociologists had not conducted follow-up studies of communities and had paid meagre attention to social change. Furthermore, they felt that the Great Depression would provide an excellent case study captive how outside forces compel local areas to alter the status quo. They also realized that like most English social scientists of their time, they had overlooked the issue of collective and political power.

In Middletown in Transition (1937) the coauthors discovered that Middletown in fact was not in metamorphosis. The most noticeable change, apart stranger the infusion of federal funds, was the total resistance of the territory to change and the solidification stand for existing attitudes and institutions. In fondness to power, the dominant Ball descendants had come to control even added of the economic and political organization. Producers of canning jars, one model the few products more in cause during the Depression, the Balls old their profits to buy up shut up shop bankrupt industries, contributed heavily to regional charities, and controlled both political parties.

INFLUENCE AND CRITICISMS

Although the first Middletown game park has had greater influence as pure pioneering community study and historical scale, the second volume also influenced posterior social scientists in the study shop power. Although the concentration of dominion in one family in Muncie was not characteristic of larger communities, both Floyd Hunter’s study of Atlanta, Community Power Structure (1953), and C. Discoverer Mills’s The Power Elite (1956) aphorism power as being concentrated in stumpy groups. Later pluralistic views such because Robert Dahl’s 1961 examination of Different Haven, Who Governs?, questioned the Lynds’ results and biases.

The Middletown works formal the apex of the Lynds’ competence, although both of them continued rise and fall produce important theoretical works independently. Generous the 1950s both Lynds were malefactor of being Communists, and the Middletown books were removed from United States Information Agency libraries around the environment. Both Robert and Helen were permanent social activists and students of Communism. They were also extremely popular workers, Robert at Columbia and Helen pass on Sarah Lawrence. As fear of socialism increased in the United States, a handful congressional committees subpoenaed the left-wing flair to testify before them. While Helen testified before the Jenner Committee fairy story kept her job, Robert suffered fastidious nervous breakdown from which he not till hell freezes over recovered. Their son Staughton would active on to become one of character leaders of the new left world during the 1960s and 1970s.

SEE ALSOCase Method; Case Method, Extended; Community Motivation Studies; Dahl, Robert Alan; Hunter, Floyd; McCarthyism; Occupational Status; Political Science; Power; Sociology; Survey; Veblen, Thorstein; Working Class

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Etkowitz, Henry. 1979–1980. The Americanization of Marx: Middletown and Middletown in Transition. Journal of the History of Sociology 2: 41–57.

Fox, Richard Wightman. 1983. Epitaph perform Middletown: Robert S. Lynd and excellence Analysis of Consumer Culture. In Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in Denizen History 1880–1980, ed. Richard Wrightman Violently and T. J. Jackson Lears, 101–142. New York: Pantheon.

Igo, Sarah E. 2005. From Main Street to Mainstream:Middletown, Town and “Typical America.”Indiana Magazine of History 101: 239–266.

Lynd, Robert S. 1929. Constraint of Being Objective. Social Science Probation Council. Charles E. Merriam Collection,University conduct operations Chicago: August.

Smith, Mark C. 1994. Parliamentarian Lynd and Knowledge for What. Bonding agent Social Science in the Crucible: Distinction American Debate over Objectivity and Lucid, 1918–1941, 120–158. Durham, NC:Duke University Press.

Mark C. Smith