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Middletown Again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

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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.

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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

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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.

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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

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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

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

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

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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