A STUDY OF STATUS ARRANGEMENTS IN THREE MICHIGAN COMMUNITIES THESIS FOR THE DEGREE 0F PI'L D. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY DAVID LEROY WESTBY 1962 This is to certify that the thesis entitled A STUDY OF STATUS ARRANGEMENTS IN THREE MICHIGAN COMMUNITIES presented by David Leroy Westby has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Mdegree in goSIBIOG-“Y CW” W fl flaw-j professor Date MW 71 Mék r / 0-169 L I B R A R Y Michigan State University ‘ ' ““713“ ‘rrtmrin ' I-“ L“....- ‘ .A . ‘ g n I - “-4 ‘Afi-“L -' . t~ M< “I' ,' V1P.:r- .- -:‘_ A‘. .- LA I E A FTP-31'1” “J4 - a”! .fi 7 gr ‘rb 7....“- ~ .I;§_1*“.H :- ‘A STUDY OF STATUS ARRANGEMENTS IN THREE MHCHIGAN COMMMNITIES BY David L‘.‘ westby A.THESIB submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DpC'l‘OR OI" PHILCBOPHY Department of Sociology andIAnthropology 1962 7.25-4 ' / fax-w j a »- 1-1 / ,1, r’ ‘7 I L: ' and To my parents , Art and Elsie ii ABSTRACT .A STUDY OF STATUS ARRANGEMENTS IN THREE MICHIGAN COMMUNITIES by David L. Westby The theory of community stratification arrangements has remained relatively undeveloped because the findings of the studies have not, for the most part, been cumulative. This study utilizes a variant of the status rating technique introduced by the rural sociologists and by w. Lloyd‘flarner, and modified by a number of others. Current stratification theory is reviewed and adapted to the comparative analysis of three communities. The principal dimensions of social status analyzed are: (1) status criteria; (2) status consensus; and (3) status closure. It is found that two of the conmunities, heavily industrialized,exhibit a set of values of these three variables that clearly differentiate them.from.the third, nonindustrial community. The industrial communities exhibit greater status closure and status consensus and give greater weight to occupational, as distinguished from economic, criteria of status. These data are interpreted as the result of the penetration of economic rationalism, particularly bureaucratization, into the industrialized communities, and its absence in the nonindustrialized one. .ACKNONLEDGEMENTS This study was possible only because of a grant made available jointly by the Federal Bureau of Roads and the Highway Department of the State of Michigan, and administered by the Highway Traffic Safety Center of Michigan State University. I am greatly indebted to Professor Christopher Sower of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of Michigan State University for the great freedom extended to me in designing and carrying out the project, to Professor William.Form for his patient and invaluable counsel in the earlier stages of the study particularly, and to Professor Jay Artis for willingly assuming the burdens of the dissertation advisor upon Professor Form's removal to Italy to do his own research. My debt to my collaborator on the project, Mr. Norb Wiley, goes far beyond this research effort, and indeed, beyond sociology itself. Our past and future association has been and will continue to be, for me, a most desirable and invaluable professional, intellectual, and above all, personal, experience. To my patient wife and neglected children, especially during the periods of field research, I owe a very special debt of gratitude, hoping that the future will recoup the losses of the past. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................. ii CHAPTER I: THE PROBLEM.OF COMMUNITY STATUS ARRANGEMENTS...... 1 IA. Introduction......................................... 1 B. Basic Stratification Theory.......................... 9 C. AA Conceptual Scheme for the Analysis of Community Status Arrangements................................. 18 D. The Theory of the Community.......................... 35 3. Selection of the Communities......................... 40 CHAPTER II: RESEARCH PROCEDURES.............................. 44 A. The Interview Schedule............................... 44 B. The Status Judges: Their Selection and Their Task... 46 C. The Sample........................................... 75 CHAPTER III: STATUS CRITERIA................................. 78 A. Status Criteria.Analyses in Selected Studies......... 80 B. Data and Techniques.................................. 87 C. The Distribution of Status Criteria in Three Commities......................................... 93 CHAPTER IV: STATUS CONSENSUS................................. 105 A. The Problem.of Status Consensus...................... 105 B. mDataOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO00....OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIO 111 1. Consensus on the Number of Status Levels........ 111 2. Consensus on the Placement of Individuals and Families...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 115 3. Consensus on the Placement of Bach Family or Individual by the Reputational JUdges.......... 118 4. Judges Compared With the Composite Distribution. 122 C. .Analysis of Differences in Status Consensus.......... 125 1. The "ceiling EffeCtflOOOO...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 126 20 OCCUPEtional 018.330.00.000ooooooeoeooosesooooooo 130 3. Employment in Public and Private Institutions... 132 4. Familiarity and Status Consensus................ 135 5. Voluntary Association Membership and Status consensuSOOOOOOOOOOCOOCOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0.0.0.0... 139 6. 01d FamilieBOOOOOOOOO.0....OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 141 70 m1ys18 Of the JudgeS.......................... 143 a. Voluntary Association memberships.......... 144 b. Judges. utntuBOOCCOOOOOOCOOCOCOCOOOOCOCOCOO 146 c. Consensus on Judges' status................ 148 D. conCIuSions0.0.0....0..OOOOOOCCCOOOOO.OOCOOCCCCOCCOCO 149 iv Page CWR v: STATUS CLwUREOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0......0000...... ' 151 .A. Introduction: The Problem of Status Closure......... 151 B. The Data: Voluntary Associations.................... 158 C. The Data: Friendship and Visiting Patterns.......... 161 Do sueroossso.seescocoons.soseoooooososoeeseoosoosso. 168 CHAPTER VI: SUMMARY AND CCNCLUSIONS.......................... 169 A. The Findings AsswbledOO...00......OOOOIOOOOOOOCOOCOO 169 B. Discussion of the Findings........................... 172 10 Status Criteria................................. 172 2. Status Criteria and Status Consensus............ 177 3. Status’CIOsureOOOO0.0.00.0.0...0.000.000.0000... 179 c. Pr0b1em and Limj-tationsOCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 183 BIBLImWOOOOOOOOOOOCOOOOCIOOOOOOCOOOOOOO00.000000000000000 187 Table 10 11 12 13 LIST OF TABLES Characteristics of Procedure in Nine Community Status stUdieBOOOOOO0.0.0...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Number of Status Levels Asserted to Exist by Samples and Sample Judges in Three Communities...... Total Samples and Number Obtained in Three Communities"....................................... Frequency of Mention of Criteria of Higher and Lower Standing: Pennsylvania Rural Community, 1949. Distribution of Status Criteria by Sample.Mbmbers Expressing Criteria in Three Communities (Excluding Sample Judges) Who Asserted that Classes Existed in Their Continuity.................................. Distribution of Status Criteria by Sample Judges Expressing Criteria in Three Communities‘flho.Asserted that Classes Existed in Their Community............. Distribution of Status Criteria by Sample Members and Sample Judges Expressing Criteria in Three Communities Who Asserted that Classes Existed in Their Continuity..................................... L-Coefficients for Four Status Criteria in Three cmnitiesooooeooooooooone.00000000000000.000000000 Number of "Classes" Asserted to Exist by Sample Members inThree COMitifissooooooooaeoooooooooeooo The Distribution of Judges' Status Placements of Sample Members in Three Communities................. The Distribution of Judges' Status Placements of Association Members in Three Communities............ The Distribution of Reputational Judges' Consensus Upon Status Positions of Voluntary.Association Members in Three chDICIBSaooosoosooossoooooeooooo Reputational Judges' Ratios, Mean Ratios, and Mean Deviations of Status "Misplacements" in Three Communities“....................................... vi Page 63 72 77 83 96 97 98 100 113 119 119 120 124 Table Page 14 Ratios of Total Number of Status Placements by all Reputational Judges in Disagreement with the Composite Distribution in Three Communities......... 125 15 The Distribution of white- and Blue-Collar Sample Members by Status Level in Lake Town, Factory Town ‘nd Old Town........................................ 127 16 The Distribution of White- and Blue-Collar Voluntary‘Association Members by Status Level in Lake Town, Factory Town and Old Town................ 128 17 Extreme Categories Versus Internal Categories of Occupational Destributions in Three Community SampleS............................................. 129 18 The Distribution of Consensual Placements by Reputational Judges in Factory Town for Employees of Two State Institutions and a Large Factory....... 133 19 The Relation of Occupational Class Differences to Level of Status Consenses for Public and Private Employees in FaCtory Town........................... 134 20 Reputational Judges'[Acquaintance‘With and Level of Status Consensus‘Among Voluntary Association MEmbers in Three Communitie8........................ 137 21 IMean Number of Voluntary.Association Memberships for Sample Members Placed Consensually and Nonconsensually, by Sex, in Three Communities....... 140 22 Characteristics of Reputational Judges in Three cmnities.‘.0.000000000000000000000000.00... 145 23 Voluntary‘Association Memberships of Judges in Three Communitie8................................ 146 24 Comparison of Composite Coefficients of Agreement of Judges in Three Communities With and Without Removal Of TWO MbSt DeViant JUdgGSeeeeeeeeoeeeeeeeoe 148 25 Voluntary Association Membership by Social Status Level in Three Communities.......................... 158 26 Deviations From.Expected Membership Levels in Selected Voluntary Associations by Social Status in Three CommunitieS................................ 159 vii If. .Ibltlb | Table 27 28 29 30 ASO's and Mean DevfiASO" for Three Communities...... Reciprocated Speaking and Visiting Relations as a Per Cent of all Relations, in Three Communities..... Extent of.Acquaintance and Visiting Closure as 'Measured by Coleman Index Scores in Three CWitiGSeoeeeooeeeeeoeeeeeeeoeeeeoseeeeeeeeeeeoee Summary Of Findings in Three Commities............ viii Page 160 165 166 171 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1 The Distribution of Reputational Judges' Consensus Upon Status Positions of Voluntary Association Members in Three Communities............ 121 LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix Page A The Survey Schedule.................................. 193 B Judges' Analysis..................................... 197 C Selected Occupational, Industrial and Population Characteristics for Three CommunitieS...o............ 207 D The Distribution of Failure to Express Class Criteria (Contentless Classes) Among Sample Members and Judges in Three Communities................................. 210 E Status Distributions of Association Members in Three Communities.......................................... 211 CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM OF COMMUNITY STATUS ARRANGEMENTS A. Introduction Ever since the work of W. Lloyd Warner and his associates beginning in the 1930's, the study of the status arrangements of American communities has been a recurring preoccupation of American sociology. The works of Hollingshead, West, Kaufmann, the Useems and Tangent, Duncan and Artis, Lenski, Schuler, Wheeler, and Kahl and Davis are merely representative of what has become a powerful tradition in American sociology.1 It is the intent of the present study to build 1. See W. Lloyd‘Warner, The Social Life of a Modern Community (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1941); The Status System of a Modern Community (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1942); both co-authored by Paul S. Lunt; The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1945), co-authored by Leo Srole; Thg_ Social System of the Modern Factory (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1947), co-authored by J. 0. Low; Social Class in America: A.Manu§1 of Procedure for the Measurement of Social Status (New York: Harper Torchbodks, 1960), co-authored by Marchia‘Meeker and Kenneth Eells; Democracy_in Jonesville (New York: Harper, 1949), co-authored by many others; and American Life: Drain; and Reality (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953). Some of Warner's students and associates have independently carried forward his program. See Allison Davis, Burleigh Gardner and Mary Gardner, Deep South: A Social-Anthropol- ogical Study of Caste and Class (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1941); St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1945); and Elmtown's Youth, listed below. See A. Hollingshead's Elmtown's Youth (New York: Wiley, 1949); Jemes‘West, Plainville, USA (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1945); Harold Kaufman, Prestige Classes in a New York Rural Community (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station Memoir 260, Mbrch 1944; thn Useem, Pierre Tangent and Ruth Hill Useem, "Stratification in a Prairie Town" (American J. of Soc., Vol. 33, June 1942); Otis D. Duncan and Jay Artis, Social Stratification in a Pennsylvania Rural Community (Penn. State Univ. Agr. Exp. Sta. Bull. upon this tradition of research through the development of a conceptual scheme which will be utilized in the analysis of three communities. The sociology of the community is a sub-discipline within sociology which, while perhaps rather amorphously defined, is certainly a field of considerable scope. Only a segment of the community field will be the object of attention in this study. A glance at the history of American sociology suggests that analysis of the community not only dominated, but constituted the very roots, of the discipline. The work of the Chicago school, steaming principally from Robert Park, was an attempt at detailing the processes of internal development in the urban community. Out of this school emerged the "social processes" so familiar to the reader of practically any introductory textbook. The-enormous influence of the school upon the development of American sociology has never been questioned. Even so, the Chicago school constitutes only part of the sociology of the community in American sociology. Two other developments were: (1) the work of the Lynds in MHddletown, with their emphasis on the basis and use of power in an industrializing community; and, (2) the extensive work of the rural sociologists in documenting the 1 (continued). 543, October 1951); G. E. Lenski, "American Social Classes: Statistical Strata or Social Groups?", Amer. J. of Soc. Vol. 58 (1952-3), 139-44; E. Schuler, "Social and Economic Status in a Louisiana Hills Community", Rur. Soc., Vol. V (March 1940), 69-83; wayne Wheeler, Strggification in g Plains Community (Minn- eapolis, printed privately, 1949); Joseph Kahl and James P. Davis, "A Comparison of Indexes of Socio-Economic Status", Amer. Soc. Rev., Vol. XX (June 1955), 317-25. - nature and decline of the American rural community.2 A fourth, somewhat independent tradition of community study in American sociology stems from W. Lloyd Warner, his associates and students. It is principally, though not exclusively, within this development that the present research is conceived. This categorization is admittedly rough, and displays some overlapping. There are community studies by rural sociologists such as Kaufman and Schuler that are concerned wholly with social status; likewise, to argue that the Middletown volumes do not consider social status as a central element in their analysis would be absurd. Nor is it meant to be implied that warner's influence is restricted to community status studies - he has an important place in industrial sociology. Despite this overlapping, there is one element present in the warmer tradition which sets it apart from the others - the use of the status rating technique. The status rating technique attempts to "place" all, or a sample of community residents at a specific level, by means of eliciting fromtsome kind of panel of judges a series of judgements about the position of each. In the Harner studies, of course, this procedure (evaluated participation and allied procedures) is quite elaborate, and others, particularly Hollingshead, have increased this complexity through 2. No attempt will be made to review the literature of the ecological school, since this has been done extensively elsewhere. Neither will any lists of works in rural sociology be presented. Texts in rural sociology provide ample listings. There are two general works which organize a great deal of the community material: ‘Maurice Stein's Eclipse of Community (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1960, and Milton Gordon's Social Class in American Sociolm (Durham, N.C.: Univ. of Duke, 1958). various refinements. The details of procedure, such as who does the judging and how such judges are selected, whether judges are free to determine the number and character of levels with which they operate in making their assignations, or whether criteria families are used, differ considerably; but the basic element of the "status" judgement as the tool for "stratifying" the papulation of the community (or a sample of it) remains as the common denominator of them all. It is especially within the tradition of those studies that utilize the status rating technique that the present research is to be located. Study of the trends in and present status of this area of community analysis reveals three peculiar characteristics: (1) while the studies have yielded a considerable amount of empirical detail about status judgements and their relation to club memberships, church-going, discrimination in the schools, political identification and the like, they have seldom built upon one another;3 (2) these phenomena have been subjected to an increasingly sophisticated array of techniques - indeed, the field_has achieved somewhat of a reputation due to its highly technical orientation; and (3) the almost complete failure to utilize any stratification theory, or to attempt to develOp one.4 Despite the increasing technical proficiency in the methodology of these studies, 3. The Warner series is, to some extent, an exception. 4. Stein's recent work, cited earlier, is an interpretation of all community studies he considers to be of importance done in the United States since the 1920's, and, as such, goes beyond the study and interpretation of community status arrangements exclusively. This is not to say, of course, that Stein does not have many useful observations specifically on stratification. and despite the growing bulk of empirical information, it seems to this writer that the desirable cumulative character of scientific research has for the most part been absent.5 Seldom have authors built their research designs out of problems perceived in previous studies. Typically, little discussion is given to comparison of one's study with the work of others, or to systematically exploring the rationale of one's research through reflection upon the findings and procedures of others.6 Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for the relative lack of scientific accumulation in this area has been the relative absence of a strong theoretical orientation. A very important role of theory is to enable one to relate different researches to one another, and had the Warner tradition of community stratification analysis been more theoretically inclined it is probable that there would today exist a greater body of accumulated knowledge in this area. It is proposed in this study to make a beginning beyond this point. But in order to do so something new must be added to the old ingredients. It is proposed that the most promising line of attack is to proceed by the method of comparison. While the comparison of local community status arrangements is not entirely absent from the litera- ture, it has certainly been a minor, very minor, concern of the researchers in this field. The principal exception to this is Werner and his 5. This statement will not be defended here. To some extent this absence of accumulation will be evident in later discussions of the specific works in question. 6. This criticism has been leveled against Warner in particular, but applies with greater or lesser force to many of the others mentioned. immediate followers. Exrngafi,£ag;g,discussions of stratification 7 and Gordon8 tend to founder on the studies, such as those of Kahl diverse methods, the selectivity of reporting, the different problem foci, and the great differences between the communities themselves. In short, on many crucial issues, the studies are noncomparable. Only a research design which deliberately sets out to analyze several communities on certain stated dimensions appears to be adequate to the situation. It is this that is pr0posed in the present study. There are probably several very good reasons why it is that comparison has not been prominent among the tools in the kit of the community stratification analysts. In the first place, community studies have usually been done in "depth"; that is, the researcher (or, more typically, researchers) has often lived in the community for a long period of time and taken part in many aspects of communal life. This applies with special force to such investigators as the Lynda, Wheeler, Hicks, Hollingshead, Davis and the Cardners, Dollard, and Vidich and Bensman, all of whom spent upwards of a full year in residence. The "depth" studies obviously absorb an enormous amount of time on the part of the researchers. Secondly, many of the techniques of community research, especially survey techniques, are quite expensive. Many of the community studies in the group we are bringing under consideration appear to have 7. Joseph Kahl, The American Class Structure(New York: Rinehart, 1953). See Chapter II. 8. Q2. Cite been done on a shoestring. The extension of research plans to other communities must often have appeared impossible, within existing budgets e A third probable reason9 for the absence of comparative designs in community status analyses lies in a fact already mentioned - the relative absence of theory in guiding the studies. A theory, be it well-researched empirically or relatively speculative, must always involve statements of relationships between variable characteristics of different sets or orders of phenomena. In the present case, a theory of comnity status arrangements10 would minimally specify certain "states" or values of the status arrangements under certain specified conditions. A.rather simple example from the literature will serve to exemplify the point. The number of "classes" or status levels in the different communities studied has been shown to differ considerable. In Yankee City‘Warner discovered six such levels, while only five were present in Jonesville. According to the Useems and Tangent Prarieton exhibited but two; Kaufman, however, found eleven in a small upstate New York community.11 Ignoring certain related issues (e.g., whether 9. It is a matter of sheer speculation the extent to which the bad repute into which the "comparative method" had fallen in antho- pology has been a factor in its eschewal by sociologists. Needless to say, the "comparative method" to be employed here has nothing in common with the nineteenth century evolutionists. 10. The locution, "status arrangements", is taken from.Gregory Stone and William Form, "Instabilities in Status", Amer. Soc. Rev., Vol. XVII (April. 1953), 149-62. They used the temm‘because it contains no implications concerning the verticality of the system, and I am following them. 1].. hum, OE. Cite the classes "really" exist or are the "heuristic constructs“ of the investigators;12 or whether there are even any classes at all, but only a "status continuum”, as Lenski maintains;13 or whether, as Form and Stone suggest, the status groups are even ranked14), we may think of the sheer number of classes as a dependent variable, presumably dependent upon some other variable property (or properties) of some other community dimension (or dimensions). We are informed in the Jonesville volume, for instance, that the absence of an "upper-upper" class there is a function of the age of the community. Since the distinction between "upper-upper" and "lower-upper" is based on an invidious valuation of "new" money versus old wealth, it is presumed that only in well-aged communities like Yankee City (well-aged by American standards) does an "upper-upper" class promoting itself on the basis of myths of descent appear. The proposition, "upper-upper classes appear only in communities in which a number of families are capable (rightly or wrongly) of tracing their descent several generations into the Past as residents of the community in question", would logically constitute one empirical generalization in a theory of community status arrangements (assuming it to be adequately substantiated empirically, and thus true). Any theory of community status arrangements would 12. These two meanings of "class" have been termed the "substantive" and "classificatory" by Gross. See Llewellyn Cross, "The Use of Class Concepts in Social Research", Amer. J. of Soc., Vol. LIV, (March 1949), 409-21. ; l3. Lenski, op. cit. 14. Stone and Fonm, op. cit. obviously include other status phenomena than the sheer number of classes - perhaps such things as agreement on ranking, extent of rigigity of class boundaries (if indeed there are any classes), the presence of status contests, the different bases or criteria upon which status honor is claimed and granted, and the relation of status distributions to other facets of community life. Clearly no theory of community status arrangements in the sense suggested above exists, although such a theory may be the ultimate result of future community research. But this is not to say that there are no theoretical statements relevant for our purposes. Several interesting and important statements concerning status arrangements are in fact in print. In sections B and C an attempt will be made to pull together certain aspects of these as the theoretical basis for our research design. The remarks in section B are of a most general nature. They are presented in order to lay the groundwork for the more detailed and limited constructions of section C. B. Basic Stratification Theory It is generally recognized that stratification theory made a considerable advance in the work of max Weber.15 Yet the trichotemy 15. See "Class, Status and Party" in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Hans Gerth and C. W. Mills eds. and translators (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1946), 180-95. See also The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. and trans. by T. Parsons and W. Henderson (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1947), 424-9, and the illuminating last paragraphs of his "The Social Psychology of the World Religions" in the Gerth and Mills translation, pp. 300-1. The secondary literature has become too vuluminous to bear listing. ‘Major discussions appear in Talcott Parsons' The Structure of Social Action (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937) and Reinhard Bendix, E Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (London: Heinemann, 1960). A comprehensive bibliography may be found in H. H. Gerth and H. I. Gerth, "Bibliography on Max Weber", Social Res., Vol. XVI (March 1949), 70-89. - 10 of class, status and party does not constitute a theory of stratifi- cation in the sense of a set of inter-related generalizations arrived at empirically and presumably true. What Weber has done in these essays is to performuwhat‘Merton mdght call a conceptual analysis.16 He has treated at length the three ideas, their empirical referents and inter-relationships, but has not created a verified set of empirical generalizations concerning class, status and party stratification dimensions. Since this even now is not possible, it would be pre- posterous to suggest that Weber should have done so. In developing these ideas Weber appeared to be interested in two things: (1) developing a scheme to correct what be perceived to be an extreme one-sidedness in the class theory of Marx; and (2) characterizing a major dimension of the trend from.the social conditions of fuedalism to those of industrialization. Weber was impressed by the great complexity of empirical systems of stratification and believed that the Marxian "unidimensional" class analysis failed to characterize them adequately. Accordingly, he suggested that in- equalities be analyzed in terms of two other principles of behavior as well as the principle of class (as adumbrated by Marx). These he termed "status" and "party". As Gerth and Mills, in their trans- lation from Wirtschaftfl Gesellscha_’_f£_ put it, "'Classes', 'status groups', and 'parties' are phenomena of the distribution of power within a community".17 16. See Robert Merton, Social Theorygand Social Structure, (Chicago: Free Press, 1949), Chap. II. 17. Gerth and M1113, 10c. Cite, Pa 18].. 11 The concept of "status group", defined by Weber as, "the probability of certain social groups receiving positive or negative social honor",18 was particularly applicable to feudal society. As he puts it: "In the past the significance of stratification by status was far more decisive, above all, for the economic structure of the societies. For, on the one hand, status stratification influences the economic structure by barriers or regulations of consumption, and by status monopolies which from.the point of view of economic rationality are irrational, and on the other hand, status stratification influences the economic very strongly through the bearing of the status conventions of the respective ruling strata who set the example. These conventions may be in the nature of ritualist stereotyped forms, which to a large extent has beep the case with the status stratification of.Asia." In contrast, "Present day society is predominantly stratified in classes, Sad to an especially high degree in income classes." Nevertheless, it would be a mistake if, like Marx, we took this to be the whole story, for, " . . . in the special status prestige of the 'educated' strata, our society contains a very tangible element of stratification by status. Externally, this status factor is most obviously represented by economic mono- polies and the preferential social opportunities of the holders of degrees."21 l8. 19. 20. 21. Ibid., p. 300. Ibide , pa 3090 Ibid., p. 301. Ibid., p. 301. 12 While classes and status groups (the latter conceived as vestiges of feudal times) were important for understanding society in Weber's time, they failed to account for phenomena associated with the rise of the nation State. It is definitive of the State that it represents what Weber called a "societalization" of the nation. This means that the principles of order that maintain the national community become "rationalized"; that is, they become written down, subjected to logical analysis and criticism, drawn out in their particulars and implications, and so on. Such a body of principles, insofar as some staff of men exist to promulgate and enfore it, Weber refers to as a "legal order".22 "Parties" are bodies of men strictly concerned with the acquisition of such apparatuses. As Weber puts ' it: " . . . 'parties' live in a house of 'power' . . . . Their action is oriented toward the acquisition of social 'power', that is to say, toward influencing a communal action no matter what its content may be. . . . Party actions are always directed toward a goal which is striven for in a planned manner. . . . Parties are . . . only possible within communities that are societalized, that is, which have some rational order and a staff of persons available who are ready to enforce it." The utility of the three spheres of stratification lies in the fact that complex social arrangements which in the scheme of 22. See Max Weber on Law in Bconoy and Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), edited with introduction and annotations by‘Max Rheinstein. For a lengthy statement on the place of Weber's sociology of law within his sociology see the introduction by Rheinstein. 23. From Max Weber, p. 194. 13 Marx were invariable fitted with a strictly economic, or "class" interpretation, now become subjected to more subtle analysis, particularly with respect to the possible 'discrepancies' that may 24 exist between spheres, or in the manner in which position or situation in one sphere may be used to secure a place in another. In the following passage Weber suggests a few of the possibilities of analysis that the trichotemization permits: " . . . the emergence of economic power may be the consequence of power existing on other grounds. Man does not strive for power only in order to enrich himself economically. Power, including economic power, may be valued 'for its own sake'. Very fre- quently the striving for power is also conditioned by the social 'honor' it entails. Not all power, however, entails social honor. Quite generally, 'mere economic' power, and especially 'naked' money power, is by no means a recognized basis of social honor. Indeed, social honor, or prestige, may even be the basis of political or economic power, and very frequently has been. Power, as well as honor, may be guaranteed by the legal order, but, at least normally, it is not their primary source. The legal order is rather an addi- tional factor that enhances the chance to hold power or honor; but it cannot always secure them."25 Weber thought of stratification analysis as involving empiri- cal investigation through the use of the three concepts. He thought that any empirical set of stratification arrangements exhibited complex interplays between the three, with a probability that one or another, at any given time, would be dominant. Many of his extensive empirical analyses examine the particular relationships between the three 24. Thus foreshadowing the status "crystallization" analyses of Mills, Goffman, Lenski, Kenkel and Broom. 25. From Max Weber, 180-1. 14 dimensions.26 In a recent article Brotz has sharpened one aspect of Weber's analysis, the relationship between the system of legiti- mate power and specifically social stratification. We shall briefly consider his views. Discussing the relation between the political order and the social stratification arrangements, Brotz argues that the modern liberal state, unlike other political political systems, through its explicit separation of the public and the private, makes possible a uniquely private and "officially" irrelevant sphere for the elaboration of status honor.27 Contrast, for instance, the liberal state with feudalism. The power of the lord, resting upon: (a) an actual monopoly of arms, and (b) a complex of conventionally and legally guaranteed deference arrangements, left no roam for ”private" spheres of status honor. .All honor was "public“, in the sense that one's status rested completely upon one's position in the organization of the manor. Presumably, ambiguities in status would be impossible in such a situation. The distribution of status honor is a publicly instituted phenomenon. No social structures other than the organized manor exist, 26. See particularly the religious studies, where the role of such status groups as the Brahmans and mandar ins is examined. See The Religion of China (Chicago: Free Press, 1951), trans. by Hans Gerth, and The Religion of Indig_(Chicago: Free Press, 1958), translated by Hans Gerth and Don Martindale. See also the essays, "Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany", and "National Character and the Junkers", in Essays, Chapters XIV and.XV. 27. Howard Brotz, "Stratification and the Political Order", American J. of Sociology, Vol. LXIV (March 1959). For a related analysis see T. H.‘Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press). 15 upon which rival pyramids of honor could be erected.28 In liberal states important spheres of private action exist. Especially important are business and educational contexts. Such structures may confer prestige independently of "the public distribution of respect". A.man may achieve high honor in economic, education, or other fields, independent of the government. The "public distribu- tion of respect" results from.power contests in the political arena, and defines what is to be "officially" honored. Outside of this, "any- thing goes". Thus, for Brotz, private spheres of status honor are‘ always in this sense dependent upon or subordinate to political distri- butions of respect. ‘While this may be somewhat of an overstatement, it nevertheless suggests a way of approaching the problem - by classify- ing types of status arrangements in terms of the social sources or assurances of their stability. Such assurances take the form of institutional bases for their maintenance. 4As in the case of the manor, status honor may be assured first, by conventional norms, but also by law and the threat of force. Or, as Weber shows in his analysis of Hinduism, caste status may be assured first, by intense wishes to implement religious interests, and secondly, by the institutionalization of mutual revul- sion (the principle of untouchability). The tying of religious inter- ests in reincarnation to caste duties was a structural guarantee of the latter. 28. For an excellent concise description of medieval feudalism see CarlStaphanson, Medieval Feudalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1959), 3rd printing. 16 The distribution of status honor in liberal states29 is typically tied neither to legal definitions, nor to stereotyped forms of deference based on religious norms. (This statement is clearly a highly idealized one: local laws in the.American South enforce status distinctions with respect to negroes.) Indeed, it has often been observed that rules governing ineraction between nonequals prohibit overt demonstrations of status differences. This applies with special force to the United States. Visitors ever since de Tocqueville have remarked upon our "equalitarianism.of manners". Yet, the work of sociologists indicates that differentials in status honor are ubiquitous. Students not only of American communities, but of American life as a whole, have everywhere revealed the existence of hierarchies of prestige. There seems to be little doubt but that status differences and status concerns are important facets of community life and personal orientation.30 In study upon study informants and sample members have been ready, willing, and capable of ranking their neighbors, or even abstractions such as occupations. This willingness and capability is too persistent and widespread to be merely gratuitous. Clearly, there are status arrangements in American communities. 29. I retain this term rather than using its more sociological counterpart, "pluralistic society" because Brotz uses it through- out his discussion. . 30. One dissenting voice among community students is that of Granville Hicks. See his Small Town (New York: ‘MacMillan, 1946). 17 This co-existence of social equality (or "equality", depending on how one chooses to look upon it) and a high level of status aware- ness has been remarked upon by many, most of whom have perceived the association as the most glaring of anachronisms. But a high level of concern with one's status, and a heightened awareness of status differences in one's social environment, should occasion no surprise when viewed against a background of an absence of secure sources of social honor anchored in segments of the institutional order, coupled with an achievement ethic of great intensity. It is in this context, that some have viewed “status striving" as a kind of collective neurosis characteristic of Americans. From.our perspective, prestige is assured principally through what we may call conventional guarantees, as dis- tinct from legal or ritualized ones. The values underlying these guarantees are to be found in various relatively autonomous institu- tional contexts, or perhaps as characteristic of the society as a whole (Linton's universals). In Chapter III our interest will center on the way in which such values compete with each other as criteria in ranking community residents. In a very general way, the conceptions of Weber and Brotz31 help to place in perspective the status arrangements of American communities. These, and other excellent theoretical discussions at 31. No attempt will be made to review the massive literature dealing with essentially the same problems as those handled by Weber and Brotz. ‘A very good recent bibliography appears in Ralf Dahrendorf's Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society Stanford, Cal.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 319-28. The ideas in their (Weber's and Brotz's) statements are adequate for our conceptual purposes. 18 a high level of generality, exist along side the plethora of empirical studies examining in detail the gradations of status in certain American communities. It appears to this writer that what is lacking are, as Merton has baptised them, "theories of the middle range".32 Such theories, if I understand Merton correctly, would perform.a mediating function - that of linking very general theoretical constructions (such as Weber's) with studies dealing in the meticulous detail of empirical research. Such theories are not operational definitions, but are presupposed by them. They are best thought of, it seems to me, as analyses and refinements of pggtg_of more general theories. In any case that is the view taken here. In section C an attempt will be made to develop some ideas concerning "status" that we hope will find this "middle level". I C. A Conceptual Scheme for the Analysis of Community Status .Arrangements It will be fruitful to begin our discussion by recalling Weber's distinction between status and power.33 The consideration of the concept "status" in this section begins by contrasting it with the concept “power", in purely formal manner. Consider two principles in terms of which social behavior may be carried on, those of sanction and honor. They are conceptually 32. See Robert Merton, Social Theory_and Socigl_Structure (Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1957), revised edition, p. 9. 33. PP. 10 ff. 19 exclusive: ‘A may perform an act solely because failure to do so will incur a deprivation instituted by B. If there is an understanding on the part of‘A that this is so we may say, following Lasswell,34 that the relationship between A and B is one of power. Now such a situation is in principle quite different from.one in which A per- forms a given act because of real or imagined possession by B of something valued by botth.and B. In some respect superiority is accorded B. The principle of this type of social relationship is one of social honor. Of course social relationships often, perhaps usually, exhibit behavior resting upon a combination of the two principles, as in the case of the actions of the feudal lord. Indeed, the case of legal guarantees of a status situation is perhaps the major such type, but by no means the only one.35 The extent to which the two principles apply concomitantly to any specific situation is an important empirical issue. The ability to sanction someone for failure to perform acts of deference, or for performing inappropriate acts may or may not be present in any particular situation. The situation is complicated by the fact that the value associated with the potential deprivation resulting from the acts of sanctioning may‘vary. Thus, an individual may be 34. See Lasswell and Kaplan,‘gower and Society (Glencoe, 111.: Free PreBB, 1950), p0 1350 35. ‘We might think of the situation in which a claim for honor is not accompanied by the ability to apply a sanction as another variety of "status instability". (See Stone, 6., and Formu‘W., "Instabil- ities in Status", American J. of Soc., Vol. XVII (April 1953), pp. 149-62.) Situations in which sanctions can be applied for failure to recognize and reciprocate a claim.on honor would seem to be in principle more stable than those in which it is absent. 20 willing to endure the sanction if this maximizes some other value, such as, say, "self-respect" or dignity. Locating the central defining principle of power relationships in the ability to sanction means that legitimate power becomes merely one type of the genus. This is in line with customary usage, which distinguishes between sheer force, authority (legitimate power) and ‘manipulation (power wielded over others without their knowledge). The notion of honor, however, unlike that of power, implies the necessary presence of an element of legitimacy. .As Mills puts it: "Prestige involves at least two persons: one to claim it and another to honor the claim. . . . In the status system of a society these claims are organized as rules and expectations which regulate who successfully claims prestige, from whom, in what ways, and on what basis."36 Riessman, in his discussion of weber, notes: "Judgements of prestige and social honor, after all, depend . . . on a common social standard of evalua- tion that (is) accepted by the group. Status judge- ments require . . . consensus. In the final analysis, these social evaluations can only be made meaningfully by a 'community', which (means) that continuous and integrated relationships exist . . . between persons governed by acceptable norms." If B did not believe that A.had a right to the honor of B, he would not confer it. Practically, of course, since honor is often accompanied by the possibility of sanction, it may be quite difficult to determine whether legitimacy is or is not present. If an act meaningful to.A as one of social honor is elicited by B sheerly 36. C. W. Mills, White Collar (Oxford Univ. Press, 1951), p. 239. 37. Leonard Reissman, Class in American Society (Glencoe: Free Press, 1959), pp. 63-4. 21 through coercion, then, social honor, as we have conceived it, is no part of that relationship. We have thus far distinguished situations in which: (1) a c1aim.for honor is advanced by one party; (2) and is recognized as legitimate by another. This is the essence of a status situation. The students of social status have called attention to a number of other, related dimensions of status situations, making them the focal points of research problems. In an attempt to conceptualize these further elements let us add to the two points made above the following notions: (3) identical or similar claims are made by more than one person; (4) these are recognized and granted as legitimate by those at whom.they are directed; (5) that claimants and granters experience recurring interactions primarily within their own group or grouping; (6) the parties concerned attempt and to some extent are successful in limiting the number of those who legitimately can raise a claim to an elicit such behavior; (7) in accordance with some principle of selection or designation, such as wealth, lineage or education; (8) and they have in common a certain level of living, or "life style", which is meaningful to them in the sense of setting them off from other social levels of groupings, and often providing the base for what we may team a "status ethic". Let us term such a complex event a "status s ituat ion". ‘In its particulars, this expanded conception of a "status situation" is nothing new. .All the ideas contained in it are quite standard conceptions in contemporary sociology. AAs such, they have to some extent proved their usefulness in the past, and it is hoped 22 that they will do so again in the future, in providing a point of departure for this study of community status arrangements. In the following pages each of these elements of the status situation will be subjected to review and discussion. Each will be conceived of as a "problem”, or subproblem, within the larger problem of status arrangements. ‘As such, they will define the theoretical points of interest at which our research strategy will be directed. They will thus be the major organizing ideas of this study. The dimensions of status situations may be rephrased in somewhat more concise form as: (l) the problem of status consensus (nos. 3 and 4); (2) the status group-status aggregate problem (no. 5); (3) the problem.of status closure (no. 6 and partly no. 7); (4) the problem.of status criteria (partly no. 7 and partly no. 8); and (5) the problem of life style and status ethic (no. 8). The following remarks will illuminate the manner in which each is perceived to present a "problem”. Perhaps Mills has put best the problem of status consensus. . "Imagine a society in which everybody's prestige is absolutely set and unambivalent: every man's claims for prestige are balanced by the prestige he receives, and both his expression of claims and the ways these claims are honored by others are set forth in understood stere- otypes. . . . Now imagine the opposite society, in which the individual's claims are not usually honored by others. Prestige is highly unstable and ambivalent: the way claims are expressed are not understood or acknowledged by those from whom deference is expected, and when others do bestow prestige, they do so unclearly. . . . So the prestige system is no system, but a maze of misunder- standings, of sudden frustration and sudden indulgence, and the individual, as his sglf-esteem fluctuates, is under strain and full of anxiety." 8 38. Mills, 22; cit:, pp. 239-40. 23 The problem.of status consenses involves more than conjuring up impossible societies in the eye of the imagination. It is concerned with the degree to which there is agreement upon the ranking of indi- viduals within a specified social unit. One might expect that the problem.of consensus, put with such clarity by Mills, would occupy a central theoretical position in studies using the status rating technique. But this is only partly true. All of these studies present discussions of the extent of agreement among status judges on the positions of individuals and/or families. These discussions, however, are almost exclusively methodological in character: that is, the problem of consensus is typically raised only as one of procedure, ng£_one of theoretical relevance. ‘Artis and Duncan, for instance, in discussing the contingency coefficients relating the status judgements of their five judges against the average of the five, raise the ques- tion of whether more than five should have been employed. Their answer to this question is that an increase in the number of judges would result in greater (statistical) reliability. The question and answer are exclusively methodological.39 Other instances of the same preoccupation can be found in Warner's work. The core of the method of Evaluated Participation Warner calls "rating by matched agreements". This procedure entails the making of status judgements by informants as to the social class 39. This is not, of course, to say that status rating agreement should not be subjected to methodological analysis. Indeed, this is both important and, for some purposes, unavoidable. We assert only that consensus is also of great theoretical interest. 24 position of certain families that have initially been suggested as representative of the different community status levels. ‘All the names suggested by the informants are arranged on a master list,40 along with the placements of the informants. The extent of agreement upon family placements is computed by the ratio: No. of pairs of agreements Tot. No. of paired placements In Jonesville this ratio was4%%%, or 95 per cent agreement.41 Warner's comments about this high agreement are instructive. Among other things. it is held that, "The amount of agreement and disagreement among several judges on the names common to two or more lists and their class placement is a good measure of . . . how accurately the judges czn socially class their fellow citizens and themselves." 2 In other words, it is assumed that there is some actual and rigid system of ranking, and the task of the judges is to approximate it as best 40. Warner and his associates fail utterly to discuss what is perhaps the knottiest methodological problem in this type of research, the determination of the number and descriptive type of categories within which families and individuals are placed. They present extensive descriptions of informants but fail to explain how divergencies in the number of classes (and thus, for judging purposes, categories for classifying persons) as designated by informants is resolved. The authors say only that, "the analyst aligns the class levels among the several schemata of his infor- ‘mants and (achieves) validation of his own conceptualization of class" (p. 63, Social Class in.Americg). The resulting "aligned" data are then subjected to the pairing process described above. This is probably one source of the high level of agreement. 41. Ibid., p. 65. 42. Ibid., p. 63. 25 they can. Warner goes on to discuss the placements of the several judges. Two of them new to the commmity are, " . . . not too sure of their judgements because they have yet to learn all that they need to know about particular families 52 M them correctly."43 Another informant, an old resident, is "highly accurate".44 .According to Warner, a ”good judge" is "someone who has been in the community all his life, who thinks about people in his town in status terms, and who has a vocation that relates him to all social levels."45 Thus, the placements of the judges are regarded as exhibiting greater or less amounts of 2532;, error with respect to what can only be some absolutely correct (but of course, necessarily unknown prior to the application of the technique) system of ranking. The selection of status judges is completely consistent with this position: obvi- ously, those who, "think about people . . . in status terms", are better fitted to explain the status system‘which is assumed to exist. Warner (and others) treats the status placements of status judges as representative of some underlying reality. It must be recognized that, in principle, there is nothing objectionable in this (assuming the procedure were fully explained). But if we were to 43. Ibid., p. 65. Underlining mine. 44. Ibid., Pa 650 45. Ibid., p. 68. Examples of this could be multipled. For example, in discussing the total class configurations of respondents the authors indicate that, "the equation of the levels of several configurations demands internal consistency in each of them to indicate that the judgements are reporting on‘g real social system (underlining mine), thereby insuring the researcher that his results are reliable." (p. 112) 26 ask Warner what the fundamental reality of the status system consis- ted of apart from the status conceptions individuals have concerning one another, one wonders what the answer would be. If status honor consists of the granting of honor by some to others (either positive or negative) then, in such status placements as those of warner's study we have precisely what we are after. It is not necessary, or indeed permissible, to postulate some other order of phenomena of which the placements are indicators. And if social status consists of the range of interpersonal judgements individuals have of one another, then all talk of errors (of this kind)is precluded.46 46. This should not be taken to mean that errors are then impossible to make, but only that their procedural status is changed. The procedure consists (among other things) of asking the informant a question, listening to his answer, writing the answer down, etc. In this process, errors may, of course, occur. But they are errors in the procedure of the investigator. Warner's con- ception of error seems to make a sociologist out of the respon- dent, a curious form.of passing the buck. Apart from such de- w parture from objectivity, informants may lie, in which the investigator is unknowingly recording something of which he is unaware. This is another form.of nonobjectivity. The source of this implicit conception of Warner's may lie in his beliefs about the necessity of stratification itself. ‘While his discussion of the reasons for the necessity of their existence is inconsistent (see Social Class in.Americg, Chap. 1) it reveals his often-noted conservative position. Since strati- fication is inevitable, even in a Democracy, then people should be taught how to "live adaptively as mature people in our society." This means that they must be "trained by the informal controls of our society to fit into their places" (Social Class in . America, p. 24). Warner conceives of his book as an instrument to this end. "It is the hope of the authors that this book will provide a corrective instrument which will permit men and women better to evaluate their social situations and thereby better adapt themselves to social reality and fit their dreams and aspirations to what is possible (p. 5)." For Warner, since stratification is an imperative in any complex society, and can thus be assumed to be present, the prob- 1em.is never its identification, but only it measurement. Mea- surements may always be assumed to represent reality, whether correctly or not. In this context incongruities are convenient- ly thought as as "errors". 27 In previous research into community status arrangements the problem of consensus has been attacked at the methodological level. In the case of Warner, it is probable that greater theoretical clair- ity would have enabled him to avoid the serious errors of which he has so often be criticized.47 While it is probable that a major source of the dominant technical orientation present in Warner's work is his "functionalism" (see footnote 46), it may also be true that the focus of research upon single communities in the work of others has something to do with its recurrence. For if only one community is studied, what is the point of discussing the extent of consensus as a theoretical issue? The only available standard against which one can set the facts of status judgements lies in statistical estimates of randomness and "significance". In other words, findings may be compared with standards that arise out of no knowledge of empirical study, but from strictly methodological sources. On the other hand, if one begins with the intention of comparing communi- ties with each other the theoretical relevance of consensus upon status position suggests itself immediately, for their various internal arrangements will probably be observed to vary by community type. 47. See especially C. W. Mills' review of The Social Life of a Modern Communit , in Am. Soc. Rev., Vol. VII (April 1942), pp. 263-71; S. M. Lipset and R. Bendix, "Social Status and Social Structure:. .A Re-examination of Data and Interpretations: I”, Brit. J, of Soc,, Vol. II (June 1951), pp. 150-68; and "II" (September 1951), pp. 230-54; H. Pfautz and O. D. Duncan, “A Critical Evaluation of Warner's Work in Community Stratification", Am. Soc. Rev,, Vol. XV (April 1950), pp. 305-15; and M. Gordon, 22. 9333., Chap. IV. 28 The status-group - status-aggregate problem, like the problem of consensus, is implicit in the writings of the status anal- ysts. The very conception of "social class", so prominent in the works of Warner and others, means above all, participation in mutual activities, or interaction among class members. Kahl, in an attempt to encompass the field of stratification parsimoniously, included "interaction" as one of the six essential variables.48 Stone and Forml‘9 suggest that in large communities status aggregates are more likely to occur; in small ones, status groups are more probable. Since the communities to be chosen as research sites in this research will be of approximately equal size to help assure adequate grounds for comparison, we shall be unable to explore the group aggregate dimension as fully as we would wish, and shall accordingly turn out energies elsewhere. This, of course, is not to deny the importance of this phenomenon. The third problem is that of status closure, by which is ‘meant the exclusiveness of the social unit in question. Social closure is related to, but not identical with social mobility. Members of status groups (or status aggregates) may to greater or lesser degrees interact with each other and yet maintain the stability of their status level. This is said to be very characteristic of the relationships between English upper classes and their servants. 48. Jeseph Kahl, The American Class Structurg (New York: Robert and Rinehart, 1953), see page 8, ff., and Chap. V of the 1957 edition. 49. Stone and Form,.gp. cit. 29 Whether or not a status group is relatively permeable is quite another question, although we might provisionally expect to find an empirical relationship between the two phenomena. We might think of the exist- ing social closure arrangements at any particular time as the product of the tensions of upward and downward social mobility that have been working in the past. In our meaning, social closure will refer to the extent to which status groups (or aggregates) are socially segregated in cer- tain institutional contexts of community life. This, of course, is a most familiar line of analysis in community stratification studies. Most of them try to determine the differences in club membership, church membership, friendship and visiting patterns, etc., as they vary with social class membership. This type of analysis reached technical heights never achieved again in Warner and Lunt's :22 £1;ng of 9: Modern Community, in which association memberships and clique formations were dissected with an anatomical fervor far surpassing any comparable analysis in community stratification analysis. Those studies of community stratification that have investi- gated social closure (and this is just about all of them) reveal two general facts: (1) the higher up the status scale the more extensive is the social life; and (2) there is everywhere some degree of associa- tional, church and clique closure, but it is also clear that consid- erable variation exists, from community to community. With respect to the latter point, it seems clear that the churches of Yankee City, 30 for instance, were far more representative of specific status levels than those of Springdale.5o But, on the basis of the data presented, it would be very difficult to assess the exclusiveness of the organi- zations of the two communities, although it is probable that the great difference in size alone tends to create differences in the status exclusiveness of associations. In any case, it is virtually impossible to make anything like precise comparisons from coumunity to community on the basis of existing data. The significance of our investigation into social closure arrangements lies in the fact that comparisons will be made possible through standardization of proce- dures. The problem of status criteria is closely related to the first problem discussed, that of status consensus. This is so because consensus upon placements undoubtedly (to varying degrees) arises through the application of the same judgement base, or, if you will, value. In fact, Duncan and.Artis have argued that the true study of consensus is concerned not with agreements in status ratings, but with agreements upon the base values underlying them.51 They argue that a spurious consensus could be manifest upon divergent 50. .Arthur Vidich and Joseph Bensman, Small Town in‘Mass Society (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.Anchor, 1960), Chap. 9. 51. Duncan and‘Artis, 22,.gi§., p. 21. The term "base value" is taken not from Duncan and Artis, but from Lasswell and Kaplan, 229‘g$§,, who erect their theory of stratification on the postulate that all power is wielded, and all status conferred, eat an expression of basic values. Thus, the different forms of power - bureaucracy, aristocracy, ethocracy, democracy, etc., are founded upon the base values of power, respect, rectitude, affection, etc. See p. 209 ff. 31 base values. Possibly. But consideration of base values rests upon another reason, one we have already elucidated. This has to do with the basic concept of status honor as it was explained earlier. ’ It was argued that the phenomenon of status honor implied, necessarily, an element of legitimacy. This is so, because as Mills points out, both a claimant and someone to honor the claim must be present. A claim for status honor implies some base value, and it is precisely this value that is honored. A denial of the value is, 1.5133 _f_ac_tg_, a denial of that particular claim, since it is the particular value in question upon which the claim is raised. This does not mean that men do not make "mistakes", and grant claims for honor for the "wrong" reasons. Many a big business- man is surely held in awe because he is thought to be powerful, when in fact he wishes to be respected because of his activity in the commity, or because he came up the hard way, or is a public benefactor. We shall, in fact, examine both the status judgements and criteria upon which they rest as dimensions of consensus. But the study of criteria is not exclusively one of consensus. Therefore, we mst keep it (the study of status criteria) separate from the conceptualization of consensus. It is widely held that the base values underlying status claims are closely associated with ‘the manner in which claimants at the same level live. The style of life of a status group (or a status aggregate) was held by Weber to be its most salient character- istic. Perhaps this relationship is especially close when the base value in question is wealth, or income. Then the style is imediately 32 dependent upon the level of these factors. The life style is usually a consumption phenomenon, but its application is quite broad, encompassing, among others, religiously legitimated status groups as in India, and the intelligensis of the West legitimated by the base value of their learning. In modern society it is very often certain elements in the ‘material and attitudinal style of life that are most useful in distinguishing between classes. Thus, a number of scales purport to determine social class by measuring facets of the life style.52 But the most interesting aspects of a life style often cannot be identified and understood by such level of living scales. This is because styles of life normally contain a set of meanings quite impossible to determine by sheer observation or recording of objects of consumption. We might suggest that styles of life be analyzed in two dimensions, a quantitative one and a meaningful one. The former refers to the sheer level of living as measured by the level of living scales. .Analysis of the meaning of consumption cuts much deeper than this. ‘A "proper Bostonian" does not walk five miles to work each day because he cannot afford to purchase an automobile or hire a taxi: he could 52. See P. Stuart Chapin, The Megsurement of Socigl;Status by the Use of the Social Status Scale (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minn. Press, 1933); William.Sewell, The Construction and Standardization of a Scale for the Measurement of the Socio-economic Status of Oklahoma Farm.Families (Oklahoma‘Agricultural and Mechanical College, Agricultural Exp. Sta. Tech. Bull. No. 9), 1940; W} L. Warner, Social Class in America, parts three and four; and Robert A, Danley and Charles E. Ramsey, Standardisation and Application of a Level of Living Scale for Farm and Nonfggm Families, Cornell Univ. Agr. Exp. Sta. Memoir 362 (July 1959). 33 probably buy the taxi company if he wished. The walk to work is a very status-relevant act - it confirms and re-affirms the image such a man has of himself as a bearer of certain values of which the status group is the collective vehicle.53 Likewise, the poverty of some bohemian groups has a completely different meaning than that of the usual lower-class status group.54 Level of living scales fail to identify such differences in the meaning of life in its status- relevant aspects. Stratification studies of.American communities have on occasion relied upon level of living scales, but this has not been the typical procedure. ‘Most such studies have relied upon extensive description of the several status levels, usually documented by presentation of extensive material from interviews. This is true in ‘West's Plainville, Vidich and Bensman's Small Town in Mgss Society (but without the documentation), The Useemfs study of Prarieton, Williams' study of Gosforth: .An English Village, the Lynds' 53. See C. Amory, The Properégostonians (New‘York: Dutton paperback, 1947), for the definitive description of Boston upper class life. 54. For an analysis of contemporary bohemianism see Lawrence Lipton's The Holy Barbarians, especially Chap. 7, "Down With the Rat Race: The New Poverty". The "New Poverty" is "disaffiliation", a ‘Voluntary self-alienation from the family cult, from Moneytheism and all its works and ways. . . . It is not to be confused with the poverty of indigence, intemperence, improvidence for failure. . . . It is an independent, voluntary, poverty. It is an art, and like all arts it has to be learned. It has its techniques, its tricks and short cuts, its know-how. . . . You don't need anything in this world; only poverty is holy." (pp. 149-52) 34 Middletown books, and a number of others. Even when such scales have been utilized, they have been developed on the basis of materials previously gathered in the community under study, as in the case of the Warner volumes and'Wheeler's study of "Valley View".55 The Index of Status Characteristics, developed by Warner as a short-cut method for estimating one's status level assumes a common set of 'meanings attach to wealth and the things it buys, but the Index has had only modest success.56 Even in a society such as ours, where the money economy and mass merchandising have achieved a consider- able penetration into practically all communities, important dif- ferences still remain. Our comparative analysis shall focus upon three of the five dimensions discussed above: (1) status criteria; (2) status consensus; and (3) status closure. Consideration of the others will be only tangential and subordinate. It was decided to concentrate upon these three because it was felt that they, more than the others, would likely repay the expenditure of time and effort, since it seems that they will be more likely to vary within the range of communities ‘with which we shall work. It is felt desirable to begin by selecting 55. See Stratification In a Plains Community, (Minneapolis: privately printed, 1949). 56. The original high correlation of 0.97 between rank on Evaluated Participation and Index of Status Characteristics is a spurious one, since the two were not computed independently. See Socigl Class in.America, pp. 146, 168. 35 communities of the same size, and since group-aggregate differences are already known to vary principally with size, it was deemed wise to eschew this topic in the present study. Investigation of life styles of all status levels in our several communities would require the introduction of additional and time-consuming techniques.57 It is felt that the expenditure of time and money upon survey and reputa- tional techniques will be best repaid in such a preliminary effort as this. D. The Theory of the Community In his discussion of problems in community research, Albert Reiss argues that a theory of the community is desperately needed, and that it can be developed only through comparative research.58 While the status of community theory has been improved since Reiss wrote,59 it will doubtless require a ggat deal more 57. A.number of items in the form of a check-list were presented to each respondent in the survey (Appendix A, question 25). These items were drawn from, Danley and Ramsey, op. cit. 58. Albert Reiss, "Some Logical and Methodological Problems in Community Research", Social Forces, Vol. 33 (October 1954), pp. 51-7. See page 52 for "what is needed". 59. Some of these advances have occurred in the following volumes: in American Social Structure (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1960) and firican Society (New York: Van Nostrand, 1960), Don Martindale applies Weber's concept of "community" to the American experience, interpreting American developments as a complex of greatly varying and over-lapping community forms. Types are distinguished by the institutional focus about which the com- munity is organized; Maurice Stein, in The Eclipse of Community, analyzes and pulls together a number of major American comunity studies, arguing that they illustrate the processes of urbaniza- tion, (Park and his school in Chicago), industrialization (the Lynds' Middletown studies), and bureaucratization (the Warner and Low study of Yankee City). He then goes on to analyze peripheral developments: the slum, bohemias, suburbia and military COW!!- ities. These are excellent works, but not extremely helpful for our purposes, for they move at a higher level of generality. 36 research before a truly sophisticated theory of communities is developed. Sociology still awaits an adequate framework for the study of the community in the IImiddle range'. Probably the single most important theoretical approach to the community in the United States has been the view that the small town and small city have been subjected to a progressive loss of autonomy in manifold spheres. Indeed, it is Martindale's thesis that Aneaieen life can best be understood as a succession of different community forms. The agricultural community, organized around farming technology and economics has largely been smashed by the rise of the city, which has to a considerable extent usurped its political and economic autonomy. This process is seen in the many rural studies done by the rural sociologists. But the city itself, once the vehicle of everything noble in Western civilization, has itself been replaced by the rise of national centers of political and economic life. A number of American studies have demonstrated the effects of penetration by industries of external origin. Best known of these is that of Warner and Low,60 in which the effects of rationalization in the shoe industry are studied. In Yankee City acquisition of the local shoe factory by absentee managers meant that strictly market factors determdned economic policy, replacing the older arrangements in which the local managers kept the welfare of the workers in mind. Rational- ization of the manufacturing process meant that the venerable skill 60. 92. £35. 37 hierarchy through which workers could expect and achieve occupational and social mobility was leveled. The ensuing loss of status, accord- ing to Warner and Low, caused a bitter strike. A.somewhat similar process occurred in a New England textile mill.61 There, the control of the weaver over all operations connected with his loom was gradually eroded with the introduction of the stretch-out. Soon weavers were spending considerable time doing work demanding no skill. Unskilled labor was hired to perform these operations, thus allowing the weavers to attend more looms. Since fewer weavers were needed, many were forced into unskilled jobs. Further, increased technological complexity created a greater demand for specialists, so that bureaucratization developed from the top as well as from the bottom. One result was a hardening of class lines in the community. Studies such as these suggest that industrialization, especi- ally when it is accompanied by bureaucratization, has a definite role in shaping community status arrangements. Community status distinc- tions appear to become set essentially along lines created in the plant. Presumably, we would expect status consensus, status closure and status criteria here to differ from.the nonindustrial town. Thus, our research design should profit by the inclusion of a highly industrialized town, balanced by a nonindustrialized one. Within industrialized communities we locate two types of communities, single-industry towns and diversly industrialized ones. 61. E. D. Smith, Technology and Labor (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1939). 38 Jenesville, studied by Warner and his associates, and‘Middletown, studied by the Lynda, are fair examples of one-industry towns about which we have sociological knowledge. In Jonesville, where 25 per cent of the community labor force worked in the large appliance firm, the power of the industrial barons dominated all other stratification fac- tors. In Middletown, the famous "X" family, through its ownership of a glass jar factory (and practically everything else in town) dominated community life in a similar fashion as in Jonesville. .A number of authors have commented upon the stratification arrangements in single-industry towns. Form.and Miller assert that ”Small, well-integrated single-industry communities are easier to study because their internal patterns tend to be more traditionally fiégd, and their power structures tend to be more stable." .According to Warner, Meeker and Eells, "Class varies from.community to community. The new city is less likely than an old one to have a well- organized class order; this is true for cities whose growth has been rapid as compared with those which have not been disturbed by huge increases in popula- tion.£rom.other regions or countries or by the rapid displacement of old industries by new ones. The mill town's status hierarchy is more likely to follow the occupational hierarchy of the mill than the levels of evaluated participation found6§n market towns or those with diversified industries." While we really know little about the status arrangements of single-industry towns we would suspect that they would differ. We hope to profit by including one of each in our design. 62. William Form and Delbert Miller, IndustryL Lafbor and Comungy (New York: Harper, 1960), p. 14. 63a fie 2.4.2" ppe 23-40 39 There are many other important community types: dormitory suburbs, trade centers, company towns, government towns, recreation centers, etc. The problem is to maximize the number of communities included in the research design while at the same time retaining an adequate level of research effort in each. The required data is come by only through extensive interviewing. Therefore, the limitation of the number of communities to three is seen as a practical decision. Would that dozens could be included, and several of each type, to gain assurance against the operation of unknown idiosyncratic factors.64 But this is clearly impossible. One final remark. The best tradition of community study includes analysis in depth - extensive interviewing, participant observation and participation in community life, informal chats, use of records, etc. Typically the research plan calls for extended resi- dence in the community. The result of this is the richness for which so many of these studies have become so well-known. In the present research this depth of analysis and understanding must be sacrificed because the duration of stay in each town must necessarily be short. Therefore, no claims for thorough understanding of the “inner life" or tone of the communities will be made. Our stay in the communities was concerned only with the collection of certain specified types of data. 64. It is Reiss's opinion that such a massive attack is virtually essential to cope with the magnitude of the problems It may well be that he is right, in which case, a great many people have been wasting their time. See the article cited in footnote number 58. 40 E. Selection of the Commities We wished to select three Michigan communities” of approxi- mately the same size, but with radically different industrial composi- tion: a single-industry town, a diverse-industry town, and a nonindustrial town. It was felt that it would be desirable to select the comnities from the ends of the distribution of industrialization. Accordingly, it was decided to use employment statistics and select those communities in which the most, and the fewest, were employed in manufacturing enterprises. It was further decided to select in the population region of about 6,000, since Michigan has a great many commnities of this size. 65. There is little to be gained in reviewing the hundreds of defini- tions of "community" that have been advanced. That of Martindale incorporates in uncomplicated fashion the core ideas of many earlier students: "Communities are total ways of life, complexes of behavior compared of all the institutions necessary to carry on a complete life. . . ." American Society, p. 105. This definition, it should be noted, omits any reference to spatially defined units. Martindale's discussion of community types includes the "s tatus community" and the ”ethnic community" neither of which are spatially bounded entities. Thus, . Martindale, and other scholars such as Nisbet and Stein, free the community concept from the rigidities of the earlier spatial conception, and extend its theoretical usefulness in the analysis of shifts to industrialism, the rise of mass society, and the transformations of political and common institutions. All communities, of course, whether directly or indirectly, somehow wrench a living from their natural environments. But the direct effect of strictly ecological factors varies greatly from community to community. For methodological purposes, all our communities were defined by their political boundaries. Students in the field have yet to create a rationale for the superiority of any other procedure when town, villages, cities, boroughs and hamlets are the types of communities to be studied. 41 The Michigan State Employment Commission was good enough to allow us to make use of their monthly data on state employment. The Commission requires by statute that all firms employing four or more individuals on a full-time basis submit a monthly report. These reports are the basis of all of the Commission's employment statistics. There is no doubt that these statistics are more accurate than any other source in the matter of employment. We can thus be quite certain that the data on which the selection was made were as good as any in existence. ,About 20 communities fell near the figure of 6,000 population. The three chosen were: 1. Lake Town, with about 15 per cent of the labor force employed in manufacturing - our nonindustrialized community. 2. Factornyown, with over 100 per cent of the labor force employed in manufacturing, and the great bulk of it in one plant (the figure is over 100 per cent because the Commissions statistics are based on place of employment, not of residence, and many commute from elsewhere to work in the large plant). 3. Old Town, with over 70 per cent of the labor force employed in manufacturing, but with no one plant emp playing over 10 per cent of the community labor force - our diverse-industry community.6 Lake Town, a community in northern Michigan, is an old lumbering town. It is the home port of a Coast Guard Cutter and has a few small industries, the principal one being a mmall paper mill employing about fifty. The main source of income in Lake Town is the tourist industry. Because of the absence of a stable economic base it experiences rather chronic unemployment. While it is over 65. See Appendix C for comparative data on the three communities. 42 150 miles from the nearest Standard Metropolitan Area, and thus out of the orbit of immediate urban dominance, it cannot be classed as a rural or agricultural community, since farming is a negligible enter- prise in the region. Factory Town, located within 50 miles of one of Michigan's major urban centers, is dominated by a factory producing auto accessories and employing variously 1,500 to 2,000 workers. Located just outside the community are two large state institutions which employ about 400 people. Old Town, one of the oldest communities in.Muchigan, was briefly in the 19th century considered as the permanent site for the state capitol. Before the Civil War it was said to be active in the underground traffic of runaway slaves. Today, state offices of one of the largest insurance companies in the country are located in Old Town, thus giving it an important white-collar labor force segment. Old Town is‘onlyabout 10 miles from one of Michigan's Standard MetrOpolitan Areas. It must be noted at the outset that in each community there exists at least one important factor having potentially great bearing on community status arrangements. In Lake Town the relatively high chronic unemployment; in Factory Town the presence of the two large state institutions; and in Old Town the presence of the offices of the insurance company. Apart from the analysis of other communities it will not be possible with great confidence to assess the role of these factors in the determination of local status arrangements. It should also be noted that Lake Town, in contrast to Factory Town and 43 Old Town, is far from.any Urban Area, so that in the case of the latter two towns urbanization is at work as well as industrialization. These are the limitations within which we must work. In order to legitimately institute comparisons of data taken from the three communities it is, of course, necessary to standardize the procedures used in each. The main reason for the noncomparability of earlier studies resides in their different methods. In Chapter Two we shall describe our research procedures. CHAPTER II RESEARCH PROCEDURES The procedures to be discussed in this chapter are those that are basic to the design of the study. Discussions of subsidi- ary techniques involved in manipulating limited ranges of data will be found in the chapters dealing with substantive issues. In this chapter we shall consider: (1) the interview schedule; (2) the judges; and (3) the sample. A. The Interview Schedule The reason for carrying out a community survey was the usual one - to determine a number of community population characteristics that can be obtained only through interviewing. Primarily, this meant those aspects of status-relevant behavior discussed in Chapter I: community status criteria, status consensus, and status closure. The surest way of determining these things is to ask people about them, or, if possible, to observe their behavior in status relevant situa- tions. 4A survey approach was felt to be essential. In addition to the determination of specifically status phenomena, certain other information was elicited from each 1 This included occupation, income, length of residence respondent. in the community, political attitudes and behavioral information, friends, associational memberships, religiosity, etc. Considerable l. The final revision of the interview schedule appears in Appendix A. 44 45 time was spent in the construction of the questionnaire and in paring it down to essentials. Since the task was a large one for two men, it was felt to be desirable to cut the interview time to a minimum; therefore, all the "fat" was eventually removed from the schedule. ‘As it turned out, one-half hour was the minimum.amount of time required to elicit a good interview, with all the items conscientiously completed. In order to determine the extent of status-determined inter- action it was decided to use a sociometric procedure. Accordingly, all respondents were presented, at the termination of the schedule, with a sheet listing the names and addresses of all sample members. The respondent was then asked to place one check after the name of each family or individual with whom he had a speaking acquaintance, and an additional check after the names of each of those with whom he had experienced a mutual social occasion in the home. It was explained that this latter meant reciprocated visits of a nonaccidental nature; that is, the visits had to be to some extent arranged specifically as social calls.2 Because of the fact that these sheets were printed up prior to the interviewing, and thus contained some errors in spelling, first names, addresses, etc., some of the choices were doubtless invalidated. 2. In Lake Town and Factory Town all interviews were done by ME. Wiley and the writer. In Old Town about 40 per cent were taken by assistants trained by Wiley. 46 B. The Status Judges: Their Selection and Their Task Selection of status judges and directions given them have received little systematic discussion in the literature. Many variations have been reported, and no one has ever developed a satisfactory rationale favoring one as against others. Before examining the procedures used in this study it will be of value to review in some detail those used by others. This discussion will also serve as a review of this literature. The studies to be reviewed are nine in number: those of Warner, Schuler, the Useems and Tangent, Kaufmann, Wheeler, Hollingshead, Oyler, Duncan and Artis, and Lenski.3 . Warner's Yankee Cit; volumes give only sketchy accounts of the process of ranking community residents. Evidently no systematic 3. A methodological analysis of all of these but those of the Useems and Tangent and Wheeler may be found in Milton Gordon, 22. git}... Chap. IV and pp. 135 ff. A number of other studies are omitted here for a variety of reasons. Lundberg ("The Measurement of Socio-economic Status", American Soc. Rev., Vol. V, February 1940, pp. 29-39) was primarily concerned with the relation of status determinations made by judges to those resulting from application of the Chapin scale. He used the ratings of only two judges, a banker and a janitor, and made no attempt to determine the exist- ence of status levels or classes in the community. Gee ("A Qualitative Study of Rural .Depopulation in a Single Township: 1900-1930", American J. of Soc., Vol. MIII, 1933, pp. 21-31) emloyed the assistance of an individual who had lived in the community for over 40 years to help him sort out families into three levels; Reuss ("A Qualitative Study of Depopulation in a Remote Rural District: 1900-1930", Rur. Soc., Vol. II, 1937, pp. 66-75) is completely inarticulate concerning the method of status assignment. According to Reuss, “one senses the difference". Each person's station is "somehow known".(p. 69). In the opinion of the writer, these studies, in the context of the problem at hand, add little to the nine under study. 47 method'had at that time been developed. It is in the Jonesville research that systematization evidently occurred. The techniques developed there have been treated in a separate volume, Social Class in America.4 The determination of status position consists of a series . of techniques termed by Warner "evaluated participation". Easily the most important of these is the rating by matched agreements,5 in which informants are interviewed to elicit their "social-class configuration", which is a rank order of status levels, or an "over- all status schema".6 It is unfortunate that Warner nowhere informs his readers how they are to select their informants, other than to assert that 4. ‘22. cit., Chapter 2, Parts II, III and IV. 5. The others are: (l) symbolic placement, in which "an individual is rated by the analyst as being in a particular social class because he is identified with certain superior or inferior symbols by informants"; (2) status reputation, in which the individual or family is assigned to a social class because informants say "he has a reputation for engaging in activities and possessing certain traits which are considered to be superior or inferior"; (3) comparison, in which the subject is assigned to a class because "informants assert he is equal, superior, or inferior to others whose social class position has been previously determined; (4) simple assignment to a class, in which the subject is assigned to a class because only one class is mentioned by they informant and the individual in question is assigned to it; and (5) institutional membership, in which the subject belongs to organizations which are known to be inferior or superior (see Social Class in America, pp. 37-8). 6. hide, p. 470 48 one should select "a number of good informants with diversified backgrounds".7 Gordon has rightly asked what "a number" and "good" can mean.8 Otherwise, we are informed that "Research experience has shown that many observant and intelligent people in a town possess (knowledge of the social-class configuration) as part of their adaptive equipment and can communicate it readily enough. (Rating by matched agreements) is a most satisfactory and rewarding technique to the status analyst."9 In fact, ten raters were used in Jonesville, and the profiles of six of these were presented for illustrative purposes in Social Class in_America. Lipset and Bendix have observed that these ten are distributed heavily in the upper-middle class portion of the status hierarchy.10 Thus, Warner leaves unsettled the very important question of how to select the status judges. What does the analyst do if the judges report the existence of different configurations; that is, of systems in which the number (and perhaps, the character) of the status levels differ? Gordon, who analyzed the illustrative data in.Socia1 Class in‘America, concluded that, of the six informants, two identified five classes, two identified four, one identified three and one identified six.11 7. Ibid., p. 111. as Gordon, 22a £1.53, Pa 1050 9. Social Class in.Americg, p. 47. 10. Seymour Lipset and Reinhard Bendix, 22, cit., p. 160 ff. 11. Gordon, 22, cit., p. 105. 49 Nowhere does Warner informnus how these differences are adjusted. Presumably, they are an example of the "errors" mentioned earlier. But whose is correct? Evidently that of the investigator himself, for, "Each informant, when using rating by social-class configuration, always gives a list of names as examples of the several social status levels. . . . These names are then compared for agreement and disagreement on class placement. This helps the analyst align the class levels among the several schemata of his inform- ants, and gives him.th§ validation of his own concept- ualization of class." Is the analyst's conceptualization always validated? How is such a conceptualization arrived at in the first place, and precisely what is it? If the conceptualization is a clear picture of the status system of the specific town being studied, the elaborate procedure instituted in order to validate it could perhaps be dispensed with. However, Warner has not explained the precise nature of the "concept- ualization of class". Assuming the process of aligning the class levels has successfully validated the analyst's preconceptions, he then goes on to institute the procedure described earlier in Chapter I.13 Of course, this procedure presupposes complete agreement on the number of status levels (and perhaps on their characteristics), and Warner has not demonstrated how this is achieved. Gordon concludes his analysis l2. Socigl Class in Amerigg, p. 63. 13a Fe 22 ffe 50 of the method of evaluated participation by observing that, 7” . . . one must conclude that Warner has not provided in evaluated participation a clear-cut, reliable, and communi- cable set of techniques for discovering the status struc- ture of a small community and the place of residents in it. . . . the logical problems in each research operation must be faced, and the tools sharpened so that they be- come clearly discernabke and assessable by standard scientific criteria."1 The work of Schuler illustrates a rather arbitrary use of the status rating method.15 Working in a Louisiana farm.community, he initially selected nine judges who were asked to rate 101 families as either "high class", "middle class”, or "low class". Numerical values of "l", "3" and "5" were assigned to the three classes for the purpose of computing averages based on the judges' judgements. Schuler eliminated four of his nine judges on the grounds of income petence; one because he differed radically from the combined judgements of all the others, and three because, being relative newcomers to the community, they rated differently than the old-timers. ‘With the judgements of all nine judges included in the analysis, 34 per cent of the 92 families judged (nine received less than three ratings) were rated as both upper and lower class at least once. With the removal of the four errant judges this figure was pared to two per cent. ‘We perceive again, as in the work of Warner, the implicit assumption that some basic status order exists independent of the 14a Gordon, 9.2. 92.5." pp. 97'8s 15. Edgar Schuler, 92. 5.1.5. 51 evaluations people make of one another, along with the attendent strictly methodological orientation to the judges and their judge- ments. Schuler was not concerned about removal of four of his nine judges because he was concerned only with the technical problem of how to "stratify" the community. The possible other-than-methodolo- gical import of the divergent ratings does not occur to him. The work of the Useems and Tangent in a small South Dakota cos-unity was an attempt to show that even in the rural areas status barriers were hardening. The researchers discovered two status groups, the "bottoms" and the "tops", between which there existed little mutual understanding, but considerable hostility. Stratifica- tion procedures included the use of ten status judges, apparently selected by their occupations (although this is not stated in so many words). "A list of household heads was presented to ten persons in various strata of the population: a minister, a teacher, a banker, a businessman, a farmer, a reliefer, a common laborer, a social worker, and two housewives of different social rank. These judges independently ranked the family heads in terms of their social position in the community. This procedure for delineating social classes is similar to that used by Edgar A. Schuler in his study, and George Lundberg. . . ."16 Since the authors do not report the details of ranking by each of their judges, or the instructions which were given them, it is not possible to evaluate the utility of their procedures. The basic l6. Useem, Tangent and Useem, 93. 51.5., p. 332 (note 7). 52 question is whether the judges were directed to work within a two- category scheme, or whether they were free to create their own. If, as in the case of the Schuler study, three categories were forced upon the judges, then one wonders precisely how it was that the authors emerged with their two-class description. A small rural community in New York State studied by Kaufmann is comparable to those studied by Schuler and the Useems and Tangent.17 Kaufmenn, however, used 14 judges, and disgarded the judgements of only two. The 14 were selected in such a way as to be representative of all social groupings in the comnity, but the upper prestige groupings were deliberately over-represented, for, ” . . . upper prestige-class persons have proportionately greater influence in determining the class system than have individuals of lower prestige.“8 The 14 (or 12) judges judged each adult member of the 455 families residing in the comnity. Kaufmann himself judged the 64 individuals who were relatively unknown to the judges and the 30 who had prestige rating different from those of the family heads. He was able to do this because he and his wife resided in the community for 14 months, making it possible, "without difficulty to place the community population in 11 classes".19 Apparently Kaufmann had little confidence in the reliability of any of his 12 remaining judges, for, while the final configuration of the community included 11 classes, not one of the 12 had used that 17. pg. 215. 18. Ibid., Pa 8e 19. Ride, Pa 39a 53 many in their characterizations of the community status arrangements. While Kaufmann does not report the configurations of the judges in his Experiment Station Memoir, he does do so in his later publication.20 There it is reported that two judges used four classes, two used five, six used six, two used seven, one used nine and one used ten.21 Kaufmann does not explain the principle upon which he over-ruled all of his judges, nor is it explained how the ratings of individuals and families in six different configurations were translated into the configuration of Kaufmann. This, of course, is the same problem with which we were confronted in the work of Warner. A study by Oyler, while similar to that of Kaufmann, faced directly the problem of translating the ratings of judges using different configurations into a standard scale.22 Oyler assumed that the distribution of status in the community could be adequately described by a loo-point scale. It was then assumed that the config- urations of each judge also covered the loo-point scale. Given the assumptions it was an easy technical task to translate their ratings onto the loo-point scale of Oyler. This was done by scoring each placement of a family ”by the value of the mid-position of its group on a loo-point scale".23 Thus, the mid-points of the three groupings 20. H. Kaufmenn, "Defining Prestige Rank in a Rural Community", Sociometry, Vol. VIII (May 1945), pp. 199-207, and ”Members of a Rural Community as Judges of Prestige Rank", Sociometry 11 (February 1946), pp. 71-85. 21. Kaufmann, "Members of a Rural Community as Judges of Prestige Rank". 22. M. Oyler, Neighborhood Standing;and Population Changes in Johnson and Robertson Countiesy Kentucky, (Univ. of Kentucky Agr. EXP. Stae 3011a 523)e 23. Ibid., p. 70 54 in a three class system would be 17, 50 and 83; in a four class system, 13, 38, 63 and 88; in a five class system, 10, 30, 50, 70 and 90. Twelve judges were used in one county and six in another. They were obtained from."different parts of the community and from its major social groupings".24 ‘Arithmetic means were then computed to determine the final position of each family. Finally, the distri- bution was cut into ten segments or "status levels". Oyler then went on to compute a variety of statistics intended to measure the agree- ‘ment between the judges. Oyler's study is of special interest to us because, of the many studies that permit judges to decide upon their own status classification, his is the only one to specify precisely how these diverse configurations are translated into a.msster scheme. In this aspect, his study is scientifically superior to others of the same type. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of the procedure used is open to question. The problem: turns on the use of the arithmetic mean. The mean, of course, may be legitimately used only in situations where metricity of the scale in question is established. Unfortun- ately, there is no reason to assume that Oyler's loo-point scale has other than ordinal properties.25 Consider a hypothetical example. Assume family'x was scored 83 in the three group configuration of judge A and 63 in the four group system of judge B. Assignment of these scores means precisely that B assigns x.a place exactly 20 24. Ibid., p. 90 25. This kind of difficulty, of course, is not special to Oyler's study, but is a problem in much Likert-type scaling. 55 points higher than does A. But this assumption is unwarranted, for in fact, it may well be the case that B's 63 is, in terms of the total distribution, or simply in his mind, higher thanlA's 17. The probability of this is particularly great if B's top two categories are empirically larger than the one top category of A, as is often undoubtedly the case in this type of procedure. Therefore, while Oyler has solved the problem of translating diverse configurations into a single scale, he has not done so in a.mmnner that is completely commendable from,a technical point of view. Had Oyler been able to demonstrate the reliability of his final distribution in some fashion greater confidence in it would be warranted. A.study by Wheeler took as its research site a plains community of about 3,000, evidently rather similar to those studied by Schuler, the Useems and Tangent, and Kaufmann.26 {A life-long resident of "Valley View”, Wheeler selected 25 persons who, "appeared to be settled in their work, . . . were acquainted with a portion of the other 191 families, . . . were willing to cooperate with the study, . . . were long-time residents, . . . and with whom.rapport had been previously established".27 The 25 judges distinguished six differ- ent status levels, as follows: three distinguished three levels, three distinguished four, three distinguished five, one distinguished six, fourteen distinguished seven, and one distinguished eight. Wheeler went along with the majority and proceeded to characterize the 26. ‘Wheeler, 22, 235, 27s Ibide, Pe 34s 56 community as exhibiting seven status levels. ‘A.familiar problem returns, however, for nowhere does Wheeler specify how the three-, four-, five-, six-, and eight-class configurations of eleven judges were calibrated with the seven-class system of the other fourteen, or even if they were used in the final determination of the status level of each of the 191 families. The difficulties in the research procedures of the investi- gators discussed above were surmounted to considerable extent in 28 The basic innovation was the introduction Hollingshead's study. of the "control list", against which the status judges could compare each of the families and individuals to be judged. The Hollingshead technique involved five distinct steps. First, the research teamz9 spent three menths taking 50 interviews with various people in the commity. These we might term "sensitizing interviews". Out of these interviews the names of 30 often-mentioned families were drawn. An attempt was made to take 30 from different class levels. Second, these 30 names were taken to 25 of the previously interviewed 50, who were requested to place each in his proper place or station in the comnity status system. Nineteen of the 25 agreed upon the placement of each specified family, but this figure was raised to 91 per cent upon the extraction of 10 of the 30 families. 28. Hollingshead, op. cit., Blmtown and Jonesville are the same community. 29. The research team consisted of Hollingshead and his wife. A total of 19 months was spent solely on field work, after extensive planning and consultation prior to entry to the field. 57 These ten exhibited "instability" in their status for several reasons - notably differences between husband and wife's status, and the family being mobile. Third, the 20-family list was taken to 12 families that had not previously been interviewed. Of these 12, ten grouped the 20 families into five classes, one grouped them into four, and one into three. The 12 exhibited agreement at the level of r - 0.88. The Hollingsheads found this to be a satisfactory level. Fourth, a ten per cent sample of the 535 town families was taken, along with the control list, back to eight of the original 25 judges. These eight were asked to equate each of the 53 with a name on the control list. A split-half reliability check indicated a reliability in the neighborhood of r II 0.82, when only the 29 families who had been judged by all eight judges were used. The Hollingsheads felt that this indicated high reliability for their instrument. Finally, the judges to be used in the rating of the 535 families were chosen. The criteria of selection were four: (1) per- sons who has a child or a close relative in the study were eliminated; (2) those who had been used in the preliminary tests were excluded; (3) only adults who had resided in the comnity for 20 years or more were considered; and (4) raters had to appear to be "stable in their station". In addition, "care was taken to select persons from every ethnic and religious group and from every stratum, so that the raters would be representative of all sections of the population“)0 30. Hollingshead, gg. cit., p. 33. 58 Thirty-one raters were selected, and-each was asked to equate each of the 535 families with one on the control list, which, though they were not aware of this, represented all five status levels. In the 39 cases in which the judges exhibited considerable disagreement Hollingshead exercised ”clinical judgement" and perfonmed the act of rating himself. ' Very little criticism.can be raised against this procedure, except that the selection of the final judges appears to be just as arbitrary as in any of the previous studies considered.31 It must be noted, though, that the control list technique eliminates the problem.of "aligning" unequally calibrated configurations developed by the judges. It has the disadvantage of presenting the judges with a preconceived scheme, but when such a scheme is worked out with the diligence and care bestowed upon it by the Hollingsheads one can do little but applaud. Duncan andArtis32 represent a considerable departure from the tradition, in that no attempt was made to delineate community status levels. These authors were concerned with developing a‘multiple 31. Duncan and Artis point out that, " . . . this kind of bias is inherent in the scheme of using the judges' ratings, and is not an adventitious problem that can be handled merely by being alert to it". They inveigh against the selection of judges at random since the personal characteristics of judges are not randomly distributed. " ... . it is almost certain that the (ratings by randomly selected judges would be) technically less adequate". See Duncan and Artis, 93. _(_:_i_t_. 32. 93. gig. 59 approach to commmity stratification, and implemented this concern by using eight dimensions of rank. Two of these are of interest to us: (1) a "coumunity prestige score"; and (2) status judges utilizing a control list in a manner similar to the procedure described in the Hollingshead study. The commity prestige score was arrived at by asking all respondents in a small (about 2,000) Pennsylvania rural conmunity to rate a self-selected array of families as to whether they possessed "higher", "about the same", or "lower" standing than the respondent. The score of the household of the respondent was computed by the simple expedient of adding points accumlated through the judgements of the entire commity. (he point was given for a mention as "higher", one-half for a mention as "about the same", minus one for a mention as "lower", and nothing at all for failure to be mentioned. As the authors point out, the trouble with this procedure proved to be lack of adequate response; for example, only 29 per cent of the respondents listed any families at all as being "lower", and only 51 per cent listed any as being "higher". Only 13 per cent of those nmed were considered "lower". The status judge procedure employed by Duncan and Artis involved the use of only five judges, selected on the basis of knowledgeability. Bach judge was presented with a list of 15 control families, whose names had been drawn from the total status range of the community, as determined by the comnity prestige score, and asked to, "rank them in order of their general standing in this 60 community".33 They then ranked another 115 households selected at random, and the two lists were combined for analysis. Duncan and Artis observe that, “the judges used quite similar though by no means identical, prestige scales",34 for rank order correlation coefficients ranged from .59 to .85 between pairs of judges. Further, they observe that, "the distributions of cases 69 rank for the several judges were quite dissimilar. For Judge 11 the frequencies pile up at the upper end of the scale, whereas for Judge III the greater frequencies occurred at the lower end of the scale".35 The authors emphasize the "marked diversity of these forms of distribution of the ratings".36 The Duncan and‘Artis study is notable for its technical sophistication and for its attempt to move beyond existing methods of community status analysis. Unfortunately, by their own admission, the authors' community prestige score is evidently inadequate in its present form for thorough description of community status arrangements. Parthermore, the technique as it is used by Duncan and Artis, fails to face the problem of the existence or absence of social classes or status groups in the usual sense. This is partly because of the 33s Ibide, Po 22s 34s Ibide, Pa 230 35s Ibide. p. 23s 36. Ibid., p. 25. 6l nature of the technique itself, yielding as it does a continuous distribution of scores.37 The issue of whether coumunity status arrangements are continuous distributions or involve discrete strata, latent in the work of Duncan and Artis, has been brought to the manifest level of analysis of Lenski. Lenski carried out his research in a New England mill town of about 6,000.38 His problem was to determine whether the local status arrangments were social groups or merely involved statistical distributions. He asked 24 "well-informed" residents to rate an eight per cent sample of conmmnity families. Seventeen of the 24 were life-long residents and all but two had lived in town for at least 10 years. All were between the ages of 20 and 70. Each judge was asked to select those families known to him and "rank according to relative standing". No instructions concerning the number of classes, or level, were given the judges. Lenski. discovered profound disagreement among his judges: one discerned three classes, four discerned four, seven discerned five, eight discerned six and four discerned seven. Even among the eight who asserted the existence of six strata there was little agreement on who belonged in them. Furthermore, the judges constantly changed the number of strata as they sorted through the cards, as if this was of no importance, and several volunteered the information that subdivisions could be made 37. This fact alone does not preclude the determination of the existence of status groups, as witness Warner's Index of Status Characteristics, which purports to determine precisely thiSs 38. Lenski, 22. .c_i_t_. 62 indefinitely. In addition, some asked the investigator how many categories they were to use. Despite the lack of agreement on status levels as discrete, Lenski found a high order of agreement on the placement of individ- uals and families. "The rank ordering of families tends to be similar."39 .A familiar question returns to haunt us, however. How are the positions of the famdlies compared when there is no method of inter-calibrating? If Lenski has such a method he neglects to men- tion it. In addition, how "similar" are the positions of the families? No evidence of any kind is presented. ‘And how does this statement square with that made earlier concerning the lack of agreement of the eight raters that asserted the existence of six strata, but who, according to Lenski, failed to exhibit agreement on the placement of families within them? Unless this absence of agreement was a special property of the eight raters in question and did not extend to the others, this statement is a direct contradiction of the one made earlier. The material discussed above involves memory of considerable detail, and since it should be kept in mind in the future, it has been organised in tabular form.CTable l). Perusal of the table illustrates the great diversity of procedures within the general status rating technique. With this material as a background we attempt to employ the most efficient and practical of procedures available. 39. Ibid., p. 143. 63 .sees .unoo enumum 038mm mac: reuse—sacs 5 98%: message 02 eoepowousoEoweg mason Bones... Na ram—535-30 : menopause eN exuded manage «an 0336 o>oos «usages.» mo .o: segues Bonn :3qu 3953 82:8.“an Agushuacgoo anon—s m 3:30: omen—mouse on use.— Howueooav $3.383. no as: o~osowpo~32§=3vflsowu tempo: some «0 saved nee—suns ozmmaou cu sowusaou 53v wouooaoeumaoecv nonsense ouoaeaoo 3v unease 2.5 .5095 umwxo ou venom manpower segumun Son» 5 none 303a unusue m season: one Queens-sou uo>o magmas» .3383 Ame—Hugo... 3056 a.“ «use.» ON cavemen moo: newsman m ON «0 us: Houuaoo .eozuasm mnm «amides he somoso oncogene Hm newsflzom nuances summonses new: fireman—m: he ..moaw:s: :aomssu us one.— :ofiuuusaooo: nous." has—saneoua no shoe: monomerxuos 323 3 @333: message m .sowuowouso .333. 33.383 H3 sausages.” awsuuwsofl. sameness“. nN season: «saunas nurses mo mason #3 no .es sense.ooH sees Hesse. senea_sua 05532. on vsusuogso House was head‘s-nos emu mo umfisuus oz «eoeuomouso .oomvsh oozes—om CON n25 suede museum; Baum: sumo—sues.“ NH 3.76 coausswuouomusmo 2.39.: .3: 318335 :33... names mugs has no: names“. unease Laos 5 swede—sou» mundane Lemmas: a.“ vengeance 5363 some use new-E Has: aouw N no swans..." message 3 noeuowouso .332. .3333 nmq “.9323 .3 vouosaom .3833.“ 3 means; sunrises—so: N Aden—.33 .oou .uonooma .usmoea sou .noausu amassed.“ some .uoxssn Jameson snowmen. some: 3333:. "seems use ooeesao N emofifieoe H3009. 3.33m .34 gene as 000 0.3.3on assuage cu asses “ovum mango seemed mouodov nausea: .3 mafia uo 2N assume he mouooaos e no unease... «sundae m unease eoeesao n 33.383 .2: use 6333: uoz .eusoguou m magnum ES .358 commode o ashamed :36 Aoasfreosohv he endowed? you: native.“ was no.3 as us commode m meeanowouso .eowesh neasm mo 398m meauqoses uoz menopause 3 Joanna uasnom uses—smog. mo «Baum momma. p.25 momma. mo mowuooaom common. one hmsum .uoevsum unusum ensues—goo 232 a.“ ouseoooum mo souueewsuosuuso .H manna. 64 A glance at Table 1 indicates that the status rating tech- nique can be broken down into four steps: (1) determining the number of judges; (2) selecting them; (3) determining the unit to be ‘ judged; and (4) determining the framework within which the judgements are to be made (we might have called this, "determining instructions to be given the judges"). We will here discuss the solution to three of these problems, leaving treatment of how the unit to be judged was decided upon until we discuss the sample (in section 0). The problem.of the number of judges has received a consid- erable range of solutions, from the five of Duncan and Artis (and also the gg,§§g£g_five of Schuler) to the thirty-one used by Hollingshead. Clearly, practical considerations must play an important part in this decision. Gordon concludes that the use of judges is superior to the use of a community prestige score such as that developed by Duncan and Artis, and that perhaps ten judges should be considered a "desirable minimum".40 Since there was no way to compare the effectiveness of the varying number of judges used in previous researches, and since parsimony of research effort in a triple community study was essential, it was decided to use ten judges (in each community). I The selection of judges presented a more difficult problem than did the determination of their number. We have already noted Duncan and Artis' recognition of the bias inherent in their choice. All researchers have attempted to select judges who were knowledge- able concerning the community, and yet knowledgeability is itself an 40. Gordon, .22. Cite, p. 147. 65 attribute that, in its distribution over the whole community, must vary considerably. Selection of the most knowledgeable persons in each community, then, would tend to cover differences in general community knowledgeability that might well be related to status arrangements. .A kind of sociological "indeterminacy principle" is involved: knowledgeability is required of judges as a condition of their performance of the task of judging, yet everyone agrees that this entails bias in the judgements themselves. Presumably one solu- tion would be to select, at each status level (this, of course, presupposes that status levels are in some way determined prior to the judging, in which case on might ask why the judges were then employed at all) a number of judges known to be knowledgeable, in proportion to the relative size of the stratum. Only Kaufman and Hollingshead, and perhaps the Useems and Tangent, have approached this ideal. All this presupposes that the purpose of the judging is the determination of asswmed-to-exist community status arrangements. But if, as in the case of the present study, the purpose is the determination of differences in status criteria, status consensus and status closure, another possibility is opened up - the use of more than one set of judges. This method has the advantage of broadening the procedural base upon which findings are founded. .Accordingly, it was decided to use a second set of judges. The first set of ten "reputationally selected" judges were picked on the basis of responses to the reputational status question 66 in the survey interview (Appendix A, question 5). In this question all interviewees were asked to "list the most respected and well- thought of families in town". They were left free to list as many as they wished, but if they proffered less than five, they were encouraged by the interviewer to name a few more, if they possibly could. The results were then tabulated. The frequency with which each name was mentioned was determdned, and a list of all those mentioned two or more times was compiled. In Lake Town there were 48 such names, in Factory Town there were 42, and in Old Town there were 37. Researchers who have used the method of status judges in the past have not usually taken them.from.the very pinnacle of the status hierarchy, but from.tanges beneath this, yet above the middle. .Accordingly, it was decided to use all those who had received between two and five mentions on the status question as the universe for the selection of the judges. These numbered 34 in Lake Town, 29 in Factory Town, and 25 in Old Town. Ten targets and ten alternates were then selected from.cach list. The second set of judges was taken from the household sample (to be described in section 0) by randomization. Then a 13 to 14 per cent sample was drawn, yielding 15 names in Lake Town, 19 in Factory Town and 21 in Old Town. Not all of these were reached; three of the twelve in Lake Town, three of the nineteen in Factory Town, and five of the twenty-one in Old Town were either not reached for interviewing, or refused to act as status judges. Thus, our status judges selected "democratically" number 12 in Lake Town, 16 in Factory Town and 16 in Old Town. 67 We thus have two sets of judges, one set selected on the basis of their status reputation, and the second selected randomly from the entire range of the cormunity's status hierarchy. Inspection of the "Frame of Judgement" column in Table 1 reveals that four types of instructions have been given judges: (1) instructions to rank units within a set of classes determined by the judge; (2) instructions to rank units within a set of classes determined by the interviewer; (3) instructions to rank units with the help of a control list of units provided by the interviewer; and (4) instructions to rank units in relation to one's self. As we have seen, the last of these proved to be relatively unsuccessful in Duncan snd.Artis' study. .Also, preparation of a useful control list was thought, on the basis of Hollingshead's experience, to be too lengthy a procedure to be carried out in three communities within our time allotment. .Accordingly, these two procedures were eliminated from further consideration. The basic problem in instructing judges is whether they should be allowed to use their own "configuration" in assigning of ranked positions to units. Allowing them.to do so has the virtues of open-ended questions generally - and also the debilities. It is virtuous to allow any informant to structure the situation as he sees it; it is debilitating to be forced either to somehow combine the differently perceived structures into one ("aligning"), or to throw out the data of all judges not agreeing with the plurality (if there is one plurality). One way to solve this problem is - very pragmatic one - do both. This is the possibility that invites itself 68 immediately, since we have already decided to use two sets of judges. The judges selected randomly from the entire sample were instructed to rank units within a set of status levels determined by themselves. .After the normal interview with them had been completed, the judges selected randomly from.the entire sample were presented with a deck of 3 x 5 cards upon each of which appeared the name and address of a sample member. The judges were then asked to go through the deck, and first remove all those with whomLthey were not familiar. They were then asked to sort the remaining cards into as they piles as necessary, the object being to group those together, "who belonged together", or were "at the same level". In informal conversation the interviewer41 then discussed the task at any length the judge seemed to require. There was thus a certain lack of formal standardization from.judge to judge, but the writer is confident that his intentions were adequately conveyed in almost all cases. After the judge had completed the sorting process he was asked to describe the important characteristics of each group he had segregated, and this material was recorded by the interviewer. Finally, he was asked if the groups sorted represented all the status levels present in the community. If complete coverage had not been achieved, any additional levels were elicited, along with their descriptive characteristics. 41. Forty-three of these were taken by the writer and one by Wiley. 69 . The judges selected on the basis of status reputation42 received different instructions. Their task involved the ranking of several hundreds of voluntary association members as well as the sample members. The purpose of this will be described in a later chapter. It will suffice now to say merely that measures of both consensus and closure were determined by this technique, as was the case in the work of the sample judges. Since the scope of the task was enormous (each judge had to rate from 500 to 900 names), it was endeavored to arrange appointments beforehand. It was hoped that this would cause the judges to set aside blocks of time sufficient for performing the task without duress. Also, it was felt that such previous commitments would make it more difficult for the judges to refuse. Perhaps these measures were effective, since all judges in each town completed the task, and there were no refusals, although in several cases the alternate was preferred over the target after the target had been contacted, either because it would have been difficult to arrange the interview with the target in the period of interviewer residence, or the target had not lived in the community the requisite period of time (five years). The reputational judges were presented with fixed status categories within which they were constrained to work in making their placements. .As was indicated earlier, and as Gordon.has emphasized,43 presenting status judges with predetermined categories 92. Hereafter, these judges will be referred to as the "reputational judges", and those selected from the sample as the "sample judges" 43. Gordon, 92. 533., p. 150. 70 within which to work presupposes that such categories have been accurately delineated by previous investigation. This determination was thoroughly performed by Hollingshead in the manner described above. In the case of research into one community it presents no insuperable obstacle. However, in the case of a multi-community study a special difficulty arises. For purposes of inter-community comparison we wish the ratings of the three sets of judges to be performed within identically calibrated scales. But what if one or another of the communities has no determinable status scale? Obviously, the communities could not then be compared in this respect. Even worse perhaps, what if the determined status arrangements (especially, the number of status levels) in the communities differ radically? How then is a comparison possible? Our by no means entirely adequate answer is that while it may not be possible to justify comparisons if the categories presented to the judges are defined substantively and empirically characterized, a case can be made for the procedure if a strictly classificatory usage of "status level" is employed. .Accordingly, each judge was instructed to rate all those known to him.in one of four status levels, but nothing about any of these status levels was communicated - they were left contentless. It appears that the choice of four levels is a completely arbitrary one. Why not five, or three, or eleven? The choice of four levels was made after analyses of: (1) responses to the social status question contained in the interview schedule (question 9); and (2) the class configuration of the sample judges. Unfortunately, 71 no good case can be made for the use of four levels on the basis of any of this material. Sample members generally, in all three towns, tended to assert that their community had three status levels. Pluralities of sample judges in each town, however, chose different numbers of levels, three in Lake Town, four in Factory Town, and five in Old Town. These data appear in Table 2. They indicate considerable lack of consensus, a subject that will be discussed in Chapter IV. Clearly, no really good case can be made for the selection of ggz.number of status levels as a framework for the judges. There are two other approaches, however, The first pro- ceeds along the lines of an analysis of the descriptions given by sample members and judges of their designated status levels. This was done by the writer. Although these data cannot readily be cast in quantitative form, it appeared that four rough status levels could be distinguished: (1) an upper level, with considerable money, active in the community, including mostly managers, some businessmen and professionals; (2) a lower group, well-to-do, mostly businessmen, professionals and managers, but including some lower white-collar workers; (3) a "working class of factory workers, office clerks, and some small business owners; and (4) a morally defined group with little money, often unemployed, and with no commwnity participation. Old families appeared to play a negligible role in all three communi- ties. Perhaps the blue-collar - white-collar distinction is drawn a bit sharper in Old Town, with its big insurance company, than in the other two towns. These, of course, are matters for more precise analysis later on. 72 Table 2. Number of Status Levels Asserted to Exist by Samples and Sample Judges in Three Communities. Number of Community, ngsses Lake Town Factory Town Old Town Total 2 l3 7 17 37 3 31 43 42 116 Samples minus 4 3 12 12 27 judges 5 0 l 2 3 6 or more 0 2 1 3 2 3 l O 4 3 4 4 5 13 Sample judges 4 3 7 4 14 5 2 4 6 12 6 or more 0 0 O 0 2 16 8 17 41 3 35 47 47 129 Combined 4 6 19 18 41 5 2 5 8 15 6 or more 0 2 l 3 Total 59 81 89 229 73 The fact that a majority of sample members in each community asserted the existence of three status levels is not here taken to be decisive. [As has been observed before, those at the extremes of the distribution tended to lump together groupings at the other end from.themselves, groupings generally recognized by those socially closer.44 Furthermore, the fact that the sample judges, in contrast to the other sample members, emitted a plurality of assertions that in fact £233 status levels exist (see Table 1), suggests that, when presented with a list of names upon which judgements are required, as distinct from.making a statement in abstract, people will tend to draw the finer distinctions. And this is precisely what the reputational judges were to be asked to do. The second approach moves at a purely theoretical level. We have identified consenses and closure as major facets of community status arrangements. They have been investigated in many ways in community stratification studies. Since they are two distinct phenomena they may be investigated by distinct procedures, and the only justification that such procedures really require is that they adequately identify and measure consensus and closure. It is held that our procedures need not be consistent in relation to each other, but that they must be so in relation to the concept being operation- alized. The contradiction in procedure at the empirical level of investigation is resolved at the theoretical level. 44. See for example, C. W. Mills, “The Middle Classes in Middle-Sized Cities", American Soc. Rev., Vol. II (Dec. 1946), pp. 52-129; reprinted in Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Lipset, Class Status and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification (Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1953), p. 20313. 74 The problem (deciding upon the number of status levels within which the reputational judges would be constrained to work), it should be noted, has its origin in our conceptual definition of the research problem, specifically raising the problem of status consensus to the level of theory. Clearly, the greater is the lack of consensus, the more difficult will be the different empirical problem of delineating status levels for judges. But if we conceive each procedure principally as an operationalization of two distinct concepts, the procedural dilemma need not detain us. The data resulting from the judgements of the judges was to be used in the analysis of consensus and closure. One major dimension of consensus is the judges' agreement on the status levels of the community. Therefore, this must be left free to vary with the judge. The open-ended procedure is especially appropriate for the study of consensus. It was also possible, in fact, to use this material in the analysis of closure. The study of closure requires that social units be ranked unambiguously on identically calibrated scales. Therefore, the closed-choice technique of status rating is particularly amenable to the study of this dimension of status arrangements. This is the primary intention of the procedure followed with the reputational judges. (But it was also possible to use these data in the analysis of consensus.) Each procedure is strong in its attack on one problem.and somewhat weaker in its attack on the other. Using themiboth permits a balanced analysis of considerable power. 75 Co The Sample Two considerations were domdnant in deciding on the size of the sample; on the one hand parsimony of research effort was important, on the other it was essential that our "N" be large enough for certain desired breakdowns of the data. It was decided that at least 100 interviews in each town would have to be obtained. There- fore it was decided to sample every 15th household in each community. we thus obtained a six and two-thirds per cent household sample in each town. Existing sources purporting to approximate a complete enumeration of the community were found to be highly inaccurate. The city directories were used as the basis of the samples, but it was necessary to supplement them and correct them extensively by adding households drawn from.aources such as the bill and meter list of public utilities and removing listings for empty houses, vacant lots, etc. All cases in which there was some doubt as to whether one household or more was present in a building or at an address were resolved through a personal check by one of the investigators. merely drawing the sample required between one and two weeks in each community. Once the sample had been drawn, it was necessary to specify a "target" individual in each. {Analysis of the first sample drawn, in Lake Town, revealed five types of households: (1) couples, usually a man and a woman, but in a few cases two men or women; (2) one adult living alone or with children; (3) a single head, but other adults, 76 usually parents, living in the house; (4) couples, with other adults, usually parents, living in the household; and (5) communal-type households, such as convents, nurses dormitories, etc. The vast majority were of the first type, while single adults, with or with- out children, were the second most numerous type. The other types, especially the last, were rare. The fact that our sample was one of households meant that a certain bias in the selection of individuals was present from the outset. Obviously, the individual members of single-person (with or without children) households had twice as great a chance of being chosen as had the members of those composed of a couple. But the household is the social unit about which information is most readily available, and which is used by the agencies from whom it was necessary to obtain our universe information. Targets within households were selected by randomization, man and woman alternatively in the case of couples. If the target individual was unavailable, or refused, the interviewer attempted to interview the other person, if this was possible. But this was not done until a call-back had determined the impossibility of obtaining an interview from the target. In a few cases, if the prospects of getting either the target or the alternate in the future appeared dim, the interviewers made spur-of-the-moment decisions and took the interview with the alternate; that is, without prior contact with the target. These cases were few. There were no sub- stitutes; refusals were called back a number of times, usually by the other member of the team, who in a few cases was able to recoup the apparently lost interview. 77 Total sample N's and the percentages of these achieved appear in Table 3. Interviews were taken between the hours of 9:30 A.M. and about 8:30 2.x; 4An average of about four per day were obtained. In some cases appointments were made but this was not the rule. Usually the interviewer would call at the home during the day, in the case of a woman, or in the evening in the case of a man as target. Men were not, as a rule, interviewed at their place of work. In previous interviewing it had been found that this often led to poor or incomplete interviews. Cooperation was generally good, although, as one would expect, in some cases there were difficulties. Table 3. Total Samples and Number Obtained in Three Communities Community Sample N No. obtained* Per cent Lake Town 112 104 93 Factory Town 137 123 90 Old Town 150 136 91 * Includes four incomplete interviews. During the period of interviewing and sampling the research team lived in motels in the three towns, and thus had limited opportunities to enter into town life. This activity was held to a nunimum, however, for most of the time was spent arranging for, and obtaining interviews. No special insight into the life of the three towns is claimed. CHAPTER III STATUS CRITERIA Students of community stratification usually point out that status judgements made by status judges rest upon beliefs con- cerning what is valued in the society or section of society within which the ranking occurs. Several sociologists have attempted to classify these values. Barber states that, "every role and activity of an individ- ual is potentially a criterion of evaluation",1 but that, "not all potential criteria of evaluation actually become such, nor do all the actual criteria have the same significance".2 He goes on to suggest that we may fruitfully distinguish between primary and secondary criteria. Political and economic roles3 qualify as primary, while birth, wealth and personal qualities are defined as secondary.4 The primary criteria are said to be those that are "functionally essential for society and that require the relgtivelypfull-tigg pggticiggtigg_of those who perform the roles".5 A somewhat different classification is presented by Parsons. 1. Bernard Barber, Social Stratification: ‘A Comparative Analysis of Structure and Process, (Harcourt Brace, New York, 1956), p. 19. 2. Ibid., p. 20. 3. Barber has some theoretical difficulty in shifting between values and roles as the fundamental unit. See Chapter 2. 4. Barber, 22. Cite, Pa 200 5. Q. Cite, p. 200 78 79 For him, criteria may be classified into qualities, performances and possessions.6 Qualities are characteristics of individuals such as "I.Q.", or intelligence; performances are anything one does, such as writing a good book or joining a lodge; possessions are objectsover which an individual has control and which may be transferred from one social unit to another. The prestige granted any position in the social system results from the complex integration of values within these three spheres of judgement. In the ideal case there is perfect accord among all - the values within the three categories that define what is good and to be striven for are agreed upon by everyone. Actually, this state never occurs - there is always some discrepancy in valuation, "between the normatively defined 'ideal' ranking order and the actual state of affairs".7 Parsons terms this "power". ‘while these formulations are valuable and suggestive for certain research, they do not appear to be especially germane for our purposes. Barber's discussion is essentially a taxonomy of types of criteria and, while Parsons goes further in applying his pattern variable scheme to the qualities, performances and possessions, he deals at the level of the whole society. ‘We are concerned with variation ‘gighig_a large society. Since, to the knowledge of the writer, no systematic work has been done in erecting a theory of the differ- ences among such community criteria of evaluation, we shall have to 6. Talcott Parsons, “A Revised Analytical Approach to the Theory of Stratification", in Bendix, R., and Lipset, 3., ClassI Status gpd Power: 4A Regger in Social Stratification (Free Press, Glencoe, 1953), pp. 94-5. 7. Ibid., p. 95. 80 operate in highly empirical fashion. Let us look first at some of the findings of those who have actually studied status criteria in communities. ‘A. Status Criteria Analyses in Selected Studies Some of the studies discussed earlier, along with a few others, have incorporated analyses of status criteria in their research reports, although often only the most cursory attention has been given to the problem. Gee, for instance, tells us only that, "ranking involves both social and econmmic considerations with the family tradition and community worth as essential elements".8 Kaufman, in a somewhat more extended discussion, emphasizes the importance of "commity participation", for one's prestige ranking.9 Warner presents extensive materials dealing with the basis of rank- ing in the communities studied by him.and his associates and students,10 but he does not analyze the relative weights of differ- ent criteria, other than to indicate his belief that economic criteria are more significant in the United.8tates than elsewhere. Hollingshead comes a bit closer to systematization in his observation that while, "thousands of different values are shared and used daily by Elmmowners to assign to one another positions in the prestige 8. Gas, 22. Cite. Pa 2120 9. Kaufmann, Prestige Classes in a New York Rural Community, p. l9,ff. 10. For Yankee City see The Social Life of a Mbdern Community, in particular. See also American Life: Dream.and Reality, especi- ally Chapter 3. For Jonesville, see Democracy in Jonesville. For the differences where "color caste" is present see Deep South. 81 structure", it is necessary to distinguish between economic functions and all others; economic functions he terms "primary", others, secondary. Secondary functions include the familial, property, ethnic, religious, political, educational, recreational, and welfare systems. It thus appears that Bollingshead approaches the problem«of status criteria from.an institutional perspective. Indeed, this is the C88.- " . . . a person is assigned low prestige if he functions in an institution that is discredited in the moral as- pect of the value systems . . . high prestige if he functions in (one) that is evaluated highly in the culture."11 But morality is not the sole indicator of prestige. Power and money are also important: "Evaluation of functions has three principal facets: pecuniary, power and moral. . . . These three facets are integral with each other and they result in the assign- ment of prestige to the function. .Although values assigned to function are not equated in the pecuniary, power and moral areas, they commonly form.a more or less coherent pattern." In other words, a functionary in a morally disapproved but powerful institution, such as the madam of a house of prostitution, would have more prestige than the prostitutes that work for her, since they have much less power. Presumably, if the madam were rich her prestige would be yet higher. Hollingshead has presented an interesting beginning toward a theory of status criteria. -It is unfortunate that he has failed to ll. Hollingshead, 22, cit., pp. 79-80. 12. Ibid., p. 78. 1“ 82 develop it over more than a few short passages in his excellent work. Part of the problem is the failure to specify clearly the relations between the primary and secondary functions on the one hand, and the three facets of evaluation on the other. He does not systematically explore the possibilities of his scheme in the research sections of his book. A More systematic in form is the presentation of Wheeler, who documents extensively the use of ten criteria used by his judges.13 These are: (l) wealth and its use; (2) education and its use; (3) community leadership; (4) association membership and activity; (5) religious affiliation and religious activity; (6) occupation; (7) behavior and personal appearance; (8) ethnicity; (9) kinship affiliation and family reputation; and (10) place of residence. Wheeler was content to simply list these with illustrative examples, and eschew analysis of their incidence or importance. The research of Duncan and Artis appears to be the one case in which the investigator or investigators have gone beyond either formal theorizing about, or simple listing of, status criteria. Their analysis contains two segments: (1) a determination of the relative incidence of different status criteria and (2) an analysis of their mutual occurrences. It will be recalled that Duncan andlArtis’ procedure for determining the rank of community residents was based on the evaluations of others as being either lower or higher than one's self. That is, 13. Wheeler, 22. gig. 83 all those interviewed were asked to rate everyone else in relation to themselves. They were then asked to state the criteria upon which these placements were made. Thus, for every informant there were two sets of criteria, one for those placed higher, and one for those placed lower (this excludes the criteria used in placing those at one's own level). Duncan and Artis then proceeded to analyze the incidence and interrelations of criteria used as the basis of "higher" and "lower" judgements.14 Table 4. Frequency of Mention of Criteria of Higher and Lower Standing: Pennsylvania Rural Community, 1949.* liespondents stating Respondents stating‘__ criteria of higher criteria of lower Criteria standing (in per cents), Criteria standing (in per cents) Mbney 54.4 Poverty 23.6 br‘l ity 20.6 Imral 1ty 42s 8 Education 19.7 Lack of education 9.7 Activity 19.4 Not active 3.5 Occupation 5.6 Way of life 2.9 Personality 3.9 Dull mentality 2.9 Usurpation 3.1 Dirty 6.5 Old famil ies l .4 Misfortune 3. 2 Miscellaneous 3. 9 Miscellaneous 2. 9 Number of respondents 355 Number of respondents 339 *Based on Tables 7 and 8 in Duncan and Artis' Social Strgtification iny§_gennsylygnia Rural Community, pp. 13-14. The incidence of higher and lower standing appear in Table 4. Several things about this table are striking. First, the apparent lack of importance attached to "old families" seems strange to anyone indoctrinated on Warner. Also, in view of the enormous emphasis placed on occupation as the principal criteria of prestige 14. Duncan and Artis, 92. 21.3., pp. 13-22. 84 its relegation here to virtual insignificance is really surprising. Conversely, while certainly not unexpected, the finding that wealth occupies the pinnacle of importance in assessing prestige is a partial confirmation of a phenomenon often taken to be self-evident. Compari- son of the relative weight given to the various criteria in assessing high versus low prestige raises the question of why it is that the sheerly economic dimension is only third in importance as a criterion of low prestige, when it outdistances all others as one of high prestige.15 Perhaps certain moral norms act as fundamental "qualifiers" for receiving judgements based on other criteria. This is the position taken by‘West.16 That is, perhaps it is only within the boundary established by norms defining minimally acceptable behavior that other criteria of prestige operate. This seems to be the case in Warner's delineation of "the level below the common man", or the "lower-lower" class, a distinction recurring in one form or another throughout the stratification literature. The economdc 15. .A caution must be observed in speaking of greater or lesser importance. What is meant here is that the criteria was presum- ably of importance to the respondents or_judggg; that is, it was an element in their meaningful orientation to other segments of the community. It would be something quite different to assess the historical causes of the present status arrangements. For example, such causes might have been predominantly political, or almost completely economic. This is "importance" in a completely different sense. It is certainly conceivable that status arrangements that have a predominantly economic etiology occasion few or no specifically economic assessments by community status judges. 16. West, 22. cit., pp. 118 ff. For instance, "morals count for more in judging lower class people"; "within the upper class, morals are a critical criterion only for approval and 'respect'". 85 differences between the ”upper-uppers” and the "lower-lowers" seems to be overwhelmdngly moral in character; economically, the difference is small, and in some cases may in fact be reversed. For example, the head of the family most universally condemned on moral grounds in Laketown, had an income of about $5,700. In addition, he was classified occupationally as upper blue-collar. This would account for the differential frequency of "immorality". .Also, many of the responses coded by Duncan and Artis as "irresponsibility" appear to deal in the realm of morals; "don't provide for their families", "wasteful, shiftless", "don't feed kinds", "out till morning", “won't work".17 Duncan and Artis went on to compute Q-coefficients between the criteria of higher and lower standing, showing that something approximating a series of scales appeared to be present. Positive Q-coefficients occurred between what appear, pgiggufggig, to be logically opposite locutions: money-poverty, activity-not active, religious-irreligious, morality-immorality, and education-lack of education. .All Q's were above .30; the highest, between "religious" and "irreligious" being .75. All other Q's, except that between "active" and "lack of education?, were either negative or positive but very low.18 On the basis of the results of these studies, what hypotheses should guide our analysis of status criteria in Lake Town, Factory 17. mean and Artis, 22. Cite, pe 180 18. Ibid., p. 20. 86 Town and Old Town? The relatively small impact of industrialization upon Lake Town leads us to hypothesize a relative lack of importance of occupation as a status criterion. This is based on the findings of Smith (see the discussion in Chapter I, part D), who reported hardening of status lines with rationalization of the productive process in a textile mill, and to a lesser extent upon those of Warner and Low.19 Mbre important, we note that the Pennsylvania rural community studied by Duncan and Artis exhibited little determination of status honor by occupation. This community is more like Lake Town, although Lake Town is most certainly not a rural community. The similarity lies more in the absence of industry and bureaucratization of work. Further, since the presence of a single industry is presumed to harden or rigidify status lines, we should expect occupational criteria of status to be particularly dominant in Factory Town. Lesser hypotheses concern the role of lineage and long residence, education, and the other criteria. Since Old Town is the oldest of the three communities we would expect criteria of lineage and residence to be of greater import there. Education, because of its functional connection with the bureaucratization (and professionalization) of modern industry, would be expected to be most significant in Factory Town, and next most important in Old Town. 19. See Smith, 22. cit., and Warner and Low, 91. cit. 87 Where should we expect economic criteria to be most important? Probably where economic differences are objectively greatest. But, apart from census information on central tendencies of income (see Table 0-11 in Appendix C) such information is not easily come by. In any case, our basic model of inquiry suggests a more compelling idea: since industrialization and bureaucratization involve the recruitment of a new occupationally-based elite that may challenge the status conferring hegemony of local wealth, we might expect the latter's decline relative to occupational criteria in Factory Town and probably in Old Town. It is readily admitted that all of this is rather tenuous. But hypotheses are no more than guides for inquiry, and in this study we regard them.as the most tentative of formulations. We turn now to the data. B. Data and Techniques Our analysis of status criteria will be based on data collected in the survey schedule (Appendix.A). iMore specifically, this data is of two types: (1) responses to question 9(b), which asks respondents who have asserted that classes exist in the community to tell the interviewer "what they are"; and (2) responses to a question asked of all sample judges, "Describe the characteristic of each class or level that made you separate it from the others". This latter was asked of the sample judges after they had concluded the sorting process described in part B of Chapter II. 88 The responses to these questions ranged from.auch contentless locutions as, "high, middle, low", to lengthy dissertations ranging over much of the social life of the community. The configurations ranged from.two-class conceptions to complex six- and (in one case) seven-level constructions. Generally, the formulations are quite similar to those reported elsewhere when considered simply as a listing. Below are listed six samples, ranging from.the extremely terse and contentless to the relatively verbose and behaviourally rich. The reports are largely verbatim.but some editing has been done to firm.up their coherence. Case A: (1) high (2) low Case B: (1) high - (2) middle (3) low Case C: (1) an upper class with a lot of money (2) average families (3) 'have nothings” Case D: (1) Their positions, meaning either church positions, their jobs, or in the community, figure. Like lawyers, government workers. Community promin- ence is the principle. (2) This is the average person in community affairs. Average people. This is not a moral distinction. (3) Below average - you go by the way they live. Like Harmon, he's always dirty. They don't join in - they just live their own . . . they just don't live right. Case E: (l) Hansen, Harris, Blackstone. Mbney is it. Sanders. They are up there. (2) We're supposed to be in but we're not (laughs). Members of the Chamber of Commerce are here; doctors, lawyers, professional men. We're not in because our home is going down-grade all the time. ‘And I can't afford to run with class 89 three because I would be black-balled at work - they expect the upper bracket to go high, otherwise they "lose ambition". (3) The average, like store employees, factory workers. Except for store managers. This bunch has an upper and a lower sector. (4)'Mexicans. This line definitely exists. Some of these are nice. Those that stay (in Old Town) are socially taboo. Our son will be nice to them, but the other boys won't. They slip into the wrong moral class. In about five years or so they'll work in . . . . Some of the better class'Mexicans have been coming in too. They're treated like the lower colored element. Case F: (l) The rich - they have a lot to do with running the town. (2) Businessmen, merchants and "X" company (the big insurance company) employees. The Chamber of Commerce level. The businessmen are like a club, but they are separate. (3) Those who put on a big show, living out, above their means - buying cars, motors, homes, boats. There're some in our church, trying to aspire to class (2). (4) Average people. They wouldn't exercise a lot of political influence. They're not actively engaged. Our church has mostly these. ‘A lot of factory workers. (5) The poor. They are mostly southerners. They live from pay check to pay check and the city has many. They haven't been here long enough to have seniority. They haven't been here long. They always get 'bumped' - always get that 'layoff'. One of these days they‘ll make it. The purposes of presenting these cases are two: (1) to convey the flavor of the different types of response; and (2) to illustrate the 'method of coding types of criteria. Of these the second is the more important. The coding of the status criteria material was accomplished in highly empirical fashion. First, a sample of interviews were examined and the categories formed. Then all the interviews were coded. 90 In this second phase of the operation it was discovered that two additional categories were required. It turned out that these, along with a few others, were negligible in their frequency of mention. The 12 criteria groups into which all the material was coded were: Economic Occupational Social life (private) Behavioral and attitudinal characteristics Old famdly, old residence Ethnic Civic participation Mbrals ' Church affiliation Power Education Ecological We will now apply these criteria classes to the six examples to briefly illustrate the coding procedure. ggggglg: No criteria used Qgggyg: No criteria used 9335i: Economic ("a lot of money"; Y'have nothings") Case D: Occupational ("lawyers", "government workers", "their jobs") . Civic participation ("community prominence is the principle", "their positions . . . in the.community"; "the average person in community affairs"; "they don't join in") Behavioral and attitudinal characteristics ("the way they live"; he's always dirty") Morals ("they just don't live right") Case E: Economic ("money is it") Occupational ("doctors, lawyers, professional men"; store employees, factory employees") Ethnic (”Mexicans") 91 Case F: Economic ("the rich"; "the poor") Occupational ("businessmen, merchants"; . . . "factory workers") Power ("have a lot to do with running the town"; they wouldn't exercise a lot of political influence") Behgyioral and attitudinal characteristics ("put on a big show"; "living out”, "above their means", buying cars . . .") . Etlmic ("Southerners have moved up") These illustrations bring to light some of the difficulties in coding this material. A few of the more prominent of these should be mentioned. First, the criteria categories must be broad enough to include a "significant" number of cases, but at the same time they met not mix essentially different criteria. One partial solution to this problem would have been to develop separate categories for high and low, or, since the form of our data differs from that of Duncan and Artis, for each status level. But Duncan andertis' demonstration that, for the major criteria at least, implicit scales are present in the judgements, led to the rejection of the approach. But even apart from this evidence, it could be argued on sheerly logical grounds that any criteria statement necessarily involves either: (a) a judgement about the presence, and thus about the absence, of something; or (b) a judgement about the amount of some quality. In either case, the quantitative, or sheerly qualitative, it is implied that the presence (or absence) of the amount makes a difference, and presumably the judgement would have been different had the empirical state of affairs been different. Thus, while "responsibility" is never mentioned as a criterion of high status in the Duncan and Artis study, it is implicit in the judgements made simply because its 92 absence relegates one to lower standing. A.second problem.is that of the overlapping of criteria categories. This is especially evident where the distinction between "morals" and "behavioral and attitudinal characteristics" is involved.20 The statement by Case D, "he's always dirty" is a case in point. This was interpreted as a neutral statement, yet it is quite possible that an essentially moral meaning was intended. This problem‘was resolved by setting quite rigid standards for the admission of criteria classes as “morals". That is, the moral element had to be made quite explicit by the informant, as in, "they just don't live right". Designation of "Southerners" as ethnics is certainly open to question. But it is clear that they have the attributes of those groups more traditionally thought of as ethnic: special cultural patterns of dress, speech and tastes, and guest status21 in the community. It must be remembered that these Southerners are not just any Southerners, but are representative of groups often desig- nated as "hillbillies" or "crackers". The guest status of this group (principally in Old Town) is important, for they functioned economically much as did the immigrants from.aouthern and eastern 20. In restrospect, the category "behavioral and attitudinal char- acteristics seems virtually worthless, principally because it actually ended up as a catch-all for all sorts of diverse designations. 21. In Weber's sense of a people having a special status in the community and performing a special economic function, usually felt to be "below" the station or dignity of full-fledged members. See the discussions in The Religion of Indig_and Ancient Judiaism. 93 Europe up until recent times - they do the dirty work and receive the smallest cut of the economic pie. Now let us compare the distribution of criteria in the three communities. C. The Distribution of Status Criteria in Three Communities Recall our hypotheses: (l) occupational criteria of least importance in Lake Town and of greatest importance in Factory Town; (2) old family residence of greatest importance in Old Town; (3) education of greatest importance in Factory Town and of least importance in Lake Town; and (4) economic criteria of greatest importance in Lake Town and of least importance in Factory Town. In each case, excepting the "old family" hypothesis, the major differ- ence is expected between the two industrialized communities on the one hand, and the nonindustrialized one on the other. The data available for testing these hypotheses-appear in Tables 5, 6 and 7. Table 5 and 6 organize the distribution of criteria for the sample and the sample judges separately, and Table 7 merely combines both sets. While inspecting the tables to determine the correctness of our hypotheses we shall also note the differences between sample members and sample judges. The evidence concerning the distribution of occupational criteria is slightly ambiguous. The lowest incidence for the sample members exclusive of the sample judges, is in Lake Town, where only 16.9 per cent of all criteria mentioned were occupational, 94 while the respective percentages in Factory Town and Old Town were 22.2 per cent and 25.3 per cent. The difference is even more appar- ent when our measure is the percentage of sample members mentioning occupational criteria: only 28.2 per cent did so in Lake Town, while 41.4 per cent did so in Factory Town and 40.7 per cent did in Old Town. Thus, our hypotheses is born out when tested on sample members exclusive of judges. In the case of the sample judges, however (Table 6), the evidence is reversed. Here, 29.0 per cent of Lake Town judgements, as against only 21.8 per cent and 23.4 per cent of Factory Town and Old Town judgements respectively, were occupational. But the evidence of the number of judges' expressions of occupational criteria is much less meaningful because of the small number of judges (11, 16 and 15) involved. Why it is that they should differ from the rest of the sample is inexplicable. If we combine sample members and judges the difference perceived in Table 6 is lessened a bit, but still clearly present. Because of the diverging judges evidence we hesitate to assert our hypothesis unequivocably confirmed. If our argument that the relatively small number of judges precludes serious reliance on the distribution of their judgements, we permit ourselves the attractive alternative of asserting our hypothesis confirmed. Perhaps a somewhat more fruitful approach would be for the moment to hold our judgement in abeyance, and broaden the scope of the analysis. A glance at hypothesis number four on page 95 will remind the reader that the frequency of occurrence of economic criteria was hypothesized to bear an inverse relation to the frequency of mention of occupational criteria. If this relationship could be demonstrated we would have more reason to place confidence in the distribution of occupational data for sample members only or for the combined sample members and judges. The connection between the two will be more fully discussed in Chapter VI when everything is pulled together. It will suffice now to say that the reason is that industrial organizations, in a sense, "substitute" occupational for strictly economic sources of prestige. Inspection of Table 5 indicates that this is born out. Thirty-eight per cent of Lake Town sample members mentioned economic criteria, while only 25.0 per cent and 27.6 per cent of Factory Town and Old Town sample members, respectively, did so. This, in fact, is the predicted order, although the difference between Factory Town and Old Town is negligible. In the case of the judges the differ- ences are infinitesimal; and the direction of the differences is maintained in the combined data. This suggests that the hypothesized differences are indeed present, although we cannot make this statement with certainty.22 22. No tests of significance are used here or in most of the other analyses in this study. There are two reasons for this: (1) we are interested in the direction of variation between the communi- ties, and (2) no such tests exist that can legitimately be applied to our data. We could test the significance of relation- ships in contingency tables for each community separately, but we are not interested in this. Old Town yaw-54) Factory Town (NI-5 8) Distribution of Status Criteria by Sample Members Expressing Criteria in Three Communities Lake Town (NI-39) (Excluding Samle Judges) Who Asserted that Classes Existed in Their Community. Table 5 s 96 passaidxa 81131113 snares sets-n go Jaqmnu 13301, 76 57 43 31 9113:1119 Supssaadxa . . . szaqurana-[dnrasgtoz ... unawaw ‘°."2°£°:°:"2“{°2": suopsssadxa 119302. "m°“°‘°"'""°"' passaadxe «Nassau: «no.4 missus some go Oon «a S arenas Bupsseadxa Qfififiqqqq saeqmamatmsgoz ggggosoom vumnow assesses snapssaldxsusgoz agggenmuu passsadxs ,‘gfinnqqn 3113:1113 sauna go 001.; “““H fines Bussaadxa sasq .1610:an «as: .mamatdmssnsgoz $328“'“°" unnn;o sense as suorssszdxe 119302 gagga 0.4—4 pessszdxa azgufi , ,_,_, spaanzo sauna go sou "" "' .8 ,- pg 0 o . Bu 3 3 ‘H a: a u '5 3:40 v! 3 U '40- H u A '3 333.. 73 E on: OHIH>5H «4 a: as..§::a' °3 83:;uaosfi uh snug Evian as 8"°03u3§.=’ a5 m3¥nouo-5 1.7 1.1 1.9 87 99.9 260 10 .4 0.9 5.6 99.9 108 100.0 65 Education Ecological Power Totals Old Town (N-15) Factory Town (N-l6) Distribution of Status Criteria by Sample Judges Expressing Criteria in Three Communities Lake Town (N-ll) Who Asserted that Classes Existed in Their Community. Table 6a passagdxa 91133113 snares sang: go gaqmnu Iago; agaangzo Sugssaadxa saeqmem.atdmss go 2 egasagzo go suogssagdxa 119 go 1 passazdxa spleens sang: go 00;; egaaggao Bugsssgdxa sgaqmam stemss go 2 31133113 go suogssaadxs 11s go 1 passszdxs arranges sang: go sou 81133110 Bugssegdxs sgaqmem.stdmss go 2 91133119 go suogsseadxs 11s go 2 pessaadxs 91133113 sang: go °on Type of criteria expressed 24 33 14 17 2 133 53.3 73.3 26.7 40.0 6.7 17.0 23.4 3.5 12.8 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.1 99.8 11 4 6 l 47 62.5 81.3 43.8 43.8 18.8 12.5 43.8 31.3 18.2 23.6 12.7 12.7 5.5 3.6 12.7 10.0 99.9 10 13 5 55 54.5 81.8 9.1 19.4 29.0 3.2 100.0 31 Civic participation Old family residence "Morals" BEb‘Ve, att'l char. Ethnicity Church affiliation Power Economic Occupational "Social life" Education Ecological Totals 98 passeidxa 81133110 snares ssmgg go Jaqmnu 18301 91193119 Sugssagdxa a saeqmsm eIdes go 1 I 5 g 81183113 go [3 suopsseidxa us go 2, 'o H O passazdxa 911331.13 99ml: 30 'ON ’3 r~ 91133110 Bugssegdxa é? sgsqmam.etdmss go z 5, p. egaaagzo go ,4 suogssazdxa us go 2, S U 0 g passsgdxa agaaagzo sang: go sou 91133119 Sugsseadxe 01'50) Lake Town Distribution of Status Criteria by Sample Members and Sample Judges Expressing Criteria in Three Communities Who Asserted that Classes Existed in Their Community. d H H 0 U w-l H O s l‘ ‘H O 0 H 0 .0 a 9: E! $4 100 89 57 48 16 22 17 17.4 46.4 47.8 17.4 10.1 21.7 10.1 15.9 23.9 24.6 9.0 9.0 5.2 11.2 5.2 32 33 12 12 15 11 50.0 50.0 37.8 27.0 6.8 9.5 8.1 13.5 22.7 22.7 17.3 12.3 3.1 4.3 3.7 6.1 37 37 28 20 10 34.0 32.0 40.0 62.0 saaqmam etdmss go 1 31131110 go suogssaadxe 118 go Z 32.3 20.8 17.7 16.7 passegdxs egaengao sang: go °ou 31 20 17 16 2 Old family residence BEh‘Ve, ‘tt'l char. Ethnicity Civic participation "Morals" Church affiliation Power expressed Economic Occupational "Social life" NQ’NN I-i Nv-lv-Il 2.7 14.9 1.2 6.7 100.1 2.0 1.0 Education Ecological 391 99.8 134 163 100.0 96 Totals 99 In addition, we must recognize a possible intruding factor. It was observed earlier that important characteristics of the communities chosen might well cloud possible relationships in which we are interested. This is particularly the case for Lake Town, with its chronic high level of unemployed (see Table C-IILAppendix C). Certainly such a situation is likely to heighten the perception of and personal significance of sheerly economic differences. Unfortunately, our three-community design does not permit of a reasonable test of this possibility. A further test can be made. On the basis of our hypothesis we might expect economic and occupational criteria to be mentioned more often independently of each other in Lake Town. The data presented in Table 8 permit a test of this. Table 8 presents L-coefficients, a statistic devised to measure the ratio of co-occurring mentions of criteria to the total number of mentions of the pair. The computational formula: L - ___2§e_. where, Nx-Ny a - the number of co-occurrences of x and y Nx - the total number of occurrences of X ' Ny - the total number of occurrences of Y L is a very simple statistic, being merely a ratio of the number of co-occurrences to the combined N. It has the virtue of varying between zero and unity. However, like many other statistics, it becomes quite unstable when computed on small frequencies. 100 Table 8. L-Coefficients for Four Status Criteria in Three Communities. Criterion Economic Occupational Social life Criterion Economic Occupational Social life Criterigg Economic Occupational Social life Lake Town Criterion Occupational Social Life .33 .70 .08 Factoryylown Criterion Occupational Socigl_Li§g_ .39 .23 .40 Old Town Criterion Occupational SociglgLigg .35 .06 .20 Behavioral and Attitudinal Char. .32 .26 .15 Behavioral and ‘Attitudinal Char. .20 .54 .24 Behavioral and Attitudinal Chat. .13 .07 .00 101 The hypothesized lesser incidence of co-occurences of economic and occupational criteria in Lake Town may be tested by comparing the L-coefficients for the three towns. While the differences are very small, they are nevertheless in the prediced direction, Lake Town's being the lowest, .33, and Factory Town's the highest, .39. The several sets of evidence presented in testing our hypothesis concerning occupational and economic criteria of status by no means yield unambiguous findings. However, it seems to the writer that the weight of the evidence as a whole favors at least a tentative acceptance of the fact of differences in the direction predicted. .At the same time, confirmation of the hypothesis can be claimed in only a provisional sense. Considerably more research will be required before scientifically acceptable understanding is achieved. Our hypotheses concerning the role of old families and education meet with difficulties of another sort. Very surprisingly, education was mentioned by only two of the sample judges, and by only two in the entire sample (the judges)! This is especially surprising in view of the fact that educational differences can easily be demonstrated between higher and lower strata.23 Old families in residence were mentioned by only sixteen of the 183 cases; by two in Lake Town, and by seven in Factory Town and Old Town. The proportion in Old Town, however, is higher, thus 23. These differences parallel each other in the communities. I have not included the tables, although they are available. 102 formally confirming our hypothesis. But the most striking thing concerning this criterion is that it is mentioned so infrequently. The third most frequently mentioned criteria group, "social life” (referring exclusively to private social activities, as against public involvements), exhibits a curious distribution. It appears to have (Table 7) much greater importance in Lake Town and Factory Town than in Old Town. (Note again the considerable differences between sample members and judges. Our discussion will be based on the combined totals.) Much of the high figure in Lake Town can be accounted for by the fact that a small group of newcomers (called by a few the 398's) led a very active and visible social life, that also had its notorious elements. ‘Why Factory Town should be so high and Old Town so low is more problematic. Perhaps the difference is related to certain findings presented in Chapters IV and V, where it is shown that Old Town has the ‘most socially closed and agreed upon status system» In any case I find it difficult to try and relate the difference to the structural variation in our communities. Generally, we must emphasize the relative importance of three characteristics: economic, occupational and social life (I am removing "behavioral and attitudinal characteristics" from any consideration because, as mentioned earlier, its amorphous constitution). The apparent relative unimportance of the other criteria mentioned in the judgements of sample members and judges 'must be underscored. Yet one more criteria distribution should be 103 noted, ethnicity. We observe its relative high frequency of mention in Old Town and its total absence in Lake Town. This is of some interest, since certain "objective" ethnic differences are more prominent in Lake Town than in either of the other towns. In.Lake Town there exist readily identifiable ethnic differences of long standing, especially French, Irish and Polish. The fact that each group still maintains its own Catholic church (now with considerable intermixing) assures that the distinctiveness of the groups is not entirely effaced. Despite this, not once was ethnicity given as a criteria of status. In Old Town, on the other hand, and to a lesser extent in Factory Town, small numbers of Mexicans and "hillbillies" constitute a readily identifiable community segment, but totally apart from all facets of community life. In complete contrast to Lake Town, we have a proto-urbanism - the beginnings on a small scale of what Wirth, Park and others of the Chicago school identified as the definitive characteristic of urbanism; subcommunities relatively isolated from one another socially and distinguished by different cultural patterns. In full-fledged cities such groupings assume the contours of "natural areas".‘ In fact, such ecological segregation of ethnic groups is recognized in Factory Town where r 13.5 per cent of all sample members (Table:7) spokeref, "the people down by the tracks", or who lived in "the:muck".24 It is probably no accident that the relative importance of . i ethnicity as a status criterion in Old Town and Factory Town varies ,a-- . 24. Not all who were so isolated were ethnics, and“I think this was well-understood by the informants. 104 directly with the importance of “morals".25 Ethnic groups having different life styles and cultural patterns are surely most apt to be perceived as “beyond the pale", perhaps unentitled even to the basic respect normally granted to all community members. This concludes our discussion of status criteria. There are a number of further things to be said but they will make more sense in the context of a discussion of all three of the stratification variables under study in this report. ‘Accordingly, we shall leave further comment for Chapter VI. The same procedure will be followed in our analysis of status consensus and status closure. We turn now to an analysis of status consensus. 25. The small numbers giving this as a criterion makes the percentages highly unstable, and thus unreliable. CHAPTER IV STATUS CONSENSUS 4A. The Problem.of Status Consensus In Chapter III we were able to identify some differences in the criteria of status present in our three communities, and these differences, in general, were in the predicted directions. In this chapter we intend to determine the differences, if any, in the degree of agreement upon the distribution of status honor in our communities. It was noted earlier that the concern with the problem of status consensus in community studies has been principally a methodological one. In particular, the problem.of differences of consensus between communities has been raised only infrequently, and then usually tangentially. What differences in status consensus are to be expected in our three communities? AAgain, the dimensions of analysis are circumr scribed by our industrial, nonindustrial, and single- and diverse- industry communities. A.few have suggested that one-industry communities exhibit status arrangements of a more rigid character than diverse-industry towns, but good comparative evidence in support of this contention has been lacking (see the discussion of this in Chapter II). ‘Hhat characteristic of single-industry towns is it that presumably accounts 105 106 for their rigid stratification? Presumably the absence of other occupational organizations, and the corollary of this, the employ- ment of the great majority of the community labor force in a single organization, makes it easier to assess the rank of anyone with reference to anyone else. The assumption is that a plurality of occupational organizations will result in a less consensual set of community status judgements precisely because status comparisons across organizational lines are more difficult to make than compari- sons within a single organization. On these grounds we would there- fore expect Factory Town, a single-industry community, to display a more consensual set of status arrangements than Old Town, with its plurality of industrial organizations. It is evident that such an argument assumes the existence of a certain kind of internal organizational structure, one in which rank differences are well-elaborated, public, and consistent. If this were not the case there would seem to be no grounds for hypothesizing more consensual status arrangements in single-industry communities. In short, there must be a well-understood system of status present as an integral part of the occupational organization. Such arrangements constitute part of that larger phenomenon known as bureaucratic organization.1 Today industrialization, especially when a large 1. For the classic statement, see Max Weber, "Bureaucracy", in From Hax'Weber, pp. 196-239. The best general modern statement appears in Peter Blau, Bureaucracy in Mbdern Society (New York: Random House paperback, 1956). 107 _ enterprise is involved,2 is invariably accompanied by extensive bureaucratization. It is usually held that the processes referred to by that term include the institutionalization of status differences, along with strictly defined authority spheres, "objective" standards of evaluation, tenure rights, specialized knowledge as the legiti- mation of authority, and the strict separation of the office and its duties from.private concerns.3 It is usually thought that these processes result from.the functional requirement of coordinating a large number of specialized and interrelated operations in a relatively efficient manner. It is obvious that industrial organizations are not the only ones in economic life that become bureaucratized. Since it is not the fact of industrialization peruse, but industrialization accom- panied by bureaucratic organization, we should expect communities having nonindustrial but bureaucratically organized work organizations to exhibit a high level of status concensus. This is not to say, of course, that there are not important differences between industrial organizations employing primarily blue-collar workers and other types employing mainly white-collar types. 2. Other factors than size, of course, facilitate or inhibit bureau- cratic development. In Yankee City the local ownership of the factory was extremely paternalistic, in a context of extensive industrialization. Only with the shift from local to absentee ownership did bureaucratization occur. The large plant in Factory Town is absentee owned. 3. For the first of these, the institutionalization of status differ- ences, see Chester Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1938); and "Functions and Pathology of Status Systems in Formal Organizations", in Industry and Society,‘Wm. F. Whyte ed. (New York: HbGraw-Hill, 1946), pp. 207-43; the essays on pages 255-280 in Reader in Bureaucracy (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1952) edited by R. Merton, A. P. Gray, B. Hockey and H. Selvin. 108 It follows that we should expect Old Town, with a prolifera- tion of fair-sized work organizations (including the state offices of the national insurance company) to exhibit a higher level of status consensus than Lake Town, which has no industrial or other organiza- tions of any size, the largest employing (during our stay) about 50. This hypothesis ignores sheerly rural-urban differences. This is important, for rural-urban theory would seem to imply precisely the reverse of what is suggested above. The city in American sociology has been portrayed as a heterogeneous, disorganized and densely settled form of community. One consequence of this, according to Wirth, is that, ". . . the social interaction among such a variety of plurality types in the urban milieu tends to break down the rigidity of caste lines and to complicate the class structure. . . . The heightened mobility of the individual . . . subjects him to fluctuating status in the differentiated social groups that compose the social structure of the city . . . .” Thus, low status consensus is held to be a consequence of: (l) hetero- geneity; and (2) mobility. But none of our communities have ethnic populations of any numerical significance, so heterogeneity is controlled (see Table C-III, Appendix C). The problem of mobility will be considered shortly. Despite the fact that none of our three communities could reasonably construed as a city, two of them, Factory Town and Old Town, are proximate to urban areas. Lake Town is closer to the ideal type 4. Louis Wirth, "Urbanism.as a Way of Life", in Readings in Sociology, E. Schuler, T. Boult, D. Gibson and W. Brookover eds., (Crowell 1952). 109 of the isolated, stable rural community, being outside heavily populated and urbanized southern Michigan, where both Factory Town and Old Town are located. If there were differences in status consensus due to the diffusion of urban characteristics, rural-urban theory suggests that Lake Town would exhibit the highest level of consensus. What evidence in support of rural-urban theory may be found in the community studies? In‘Elmtown, a relatively industrialized community, Hollingshead found considerable agreement among judges. Nineteen of 25 judges in step 2 agreed.on the placement of each of 30 families, and in step 3, ten of 12 judges grouped the 20-family control list in five status levels.5 The studies of nonindustrial communities all fail to exhibit a level of consensus of this order. Those of Kaufmann, Wheeler and Lenski elicited a wide range of declared status levels from the judges. Mbre important, the analyses of Schuler, Artis and Duncan, and Lenski demonstrated a low level of consensus on the placement of families and individuals in their status levels.6 Vidich and Bensman suggest the same thing.7 Only Prairieton, studied by the Useems and Tangent, seems to exhibit a hardened status structure, but precise comparisons cannot be made in this case since the judges' ratings were not published. The weight of the evidence does not seem.to bear out the im- plications of this aspect of rural-urban theory. The rural community 5. Supra, Chapter II, p. 13 ff. 6. Su ra, Chapter II. 7. Vidich and Bensman, 22, cit., p. 96. 110 studies seem to exhibit low levels of consensus. This evidence consti- tutes further ground for hypothesizing higher levels of status con- sensus in industrialized Factory Town and Old Town. Other lines of reasoning relative to our hypothesis could be broached, but will instead be ignored.8 We turn instead to the data. 8. With one exception, the problem of social mobility. The effect of social mobility on consensus has often been the subject of concern. In addition to theorists of the city like‘Wirth, Hollingshead, Warner, and some of the other community students attribute some nonconsensual composite placements to the presumed social mobility of the family or individual in question. Certainly it is probable that mobility is conducive to both ambiguity of perception by single judges and to nonconsensual composite judgements. It follows from this that status consensus should be high where mobility is low. The problem.remains, then, to establish which communities exhibit high and low mobility. Unfortunately, this is very difficult. While we have data on inter- generational occupational mobility, we do not have any on career mobility, and it is the letter that must provoke ambiguity. Lipset and Bendix, in their study of mobility in Oakland, California (Social Mobility in Industrial Society, Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1959, Part Two) demonstrate high rates of occupational mobility. They have also demonstrated that high rates of occupational mobility characterize industrial. societies generally (Social nobility in Industrial Society, Part One). The same authors, however, have shown that there exists proportionately little permanent career mobility across hand work - head work barriers (see Lipset and Bendix, Social Mbbility and Occupational Carper Patterns, in Class Status and Power (£35,), pp. 454-64). Since most occupational mobility is of the intergenerational type, and since neither intergenerational nor career mobility can be fruitfully treated as phenomena occurring within the boundaries of the small community, it will be ignored in our analysis of status consensus. There is one fact worthy of note, however. Table C-III in .Appendix C reveals that Old Town has experienced by far the great- est immigration during the past decade. While this in itself does not establish Old Town as having a higher mobility rate, it does establish a propitious condition for a high rate. This is because vertical mobility is the impetus behind migration in many cases. It seems to me, then, that we can fairly assume that if Old Town proves to have a high level of consensus, that such a rate will exist in spite of conditions propitious for the reverse. 111 On the basis of this discussion, then,we expect (1) high levels of consensus in Factory Town and Old Town as compared with Lake Town, and (2) a higher level in Factory Town than in Old Town. Our measures of consensus will be four: (1) consensus on the number of status levels in the communities; (2) consensus upon the placement of individuals and families within the community status structure; (3) the extent of consensus on the placement of each family or individual by the status judges; and (4) a measure for each of the towns of the extent to which each judge was in agreement with the composite distribution of all the judges. These four measures are operational definitions of consensus. Each approaches the data in a different way.9 Discovery of a con- sistent pattern of differences using such a set of consensus indica- tors will constitute a plausible body of evidence in support of our hypothesis. B. The Data 1. Consensus on the Number of;§tatus Levels Host community stratification studies using some variant of the reputational procedure have taken as a major concern the detemmination of the number of status levels in the community.10 Community studies utilizing a procedure other than the reputational 9. It must be noted that (2) and (3) are not independent of each other. The data is merely manipulated differently, as the reader will readily perceive when the procedures are discussed in detail. 10. See Table 1, Chapter II. 112 have done likewise. Thus Williams presents a convincing demonstration of the existence of seven status levels in Gosforth, an English village.11 In Plainville, West found what appears to essentially be a four-level arrangement.12 In works such as these, as well as those based on the reputational procedure, it is either explicitly stated, or is clear from the discussion, that the differing perspectives of the respondents present difficulties in the delineation of the community status structure. 4A3 we have seen, this problem.has typically been resolved methodologically with greater or lesser degrees of ingenuity. Our approach makes no assumptions concerning the existence of any clearly perceived status structure. This is considered to be problematic, and thus variable. All sample members in Lake Town, Factory Town and Old Town, with a few exceptions, were asked to tell the interviewer "what classes of people were found here (in the community)".13 Their responses were recorded in open-ended form. Later, they were coded in several ways, including the sheer number of "classes“ mentioned. These data are presented in Table 9. The reader will note that they are in part a re-presentation of those found in Table 1, in Chapter II. In this table, however, responses other than those stating a specific number of classes were included. Table 9 indicates the tendency in 11. W. Ms‘Williams, The Sociology of an English Villag : Gosforth (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956). See especially Chapter Five. 12. James West, Plainville, U.S.A., cit. See especially Chapter Five. 13. Appendix A, question 9(a). 113 each town for the distribution of status level perceptions to cluster around the mode of three. It is of interest that 99 per cent of all positive (that is, specifying a specific number other than 'none') assertions fell in the range 2-5. This contrasts with other studies (see Chapter II). Generally, inspection of the table reveals little difference in the distribution of statements from comunity to community. Since we wish to assess the relative amount of consensus upon the number of status levels in each community we might compare model scores. The ratio: No. making modal positive judgement Total number of judgements made gives us such a measure. Table 9. Number of "Classes" Asserted to Exist by Sample Members in Three Communities. Number of M classes asserted Lake Town Factory Town Old Town to exist _N_ Per cent _11 Per cent __11 Per cent None 16 15.5 13 10.9 12 9.3 Two 16 15.5 8 6.7 17 13.2 Three 35 34.0 47 39.5 37 36.4 Four 6 5.8 19 16.0 16 12.4 Five 2 109 5 402 8 6.2 Six 0 " 2 1e7 0 " Seven 0 - 0 - 1 0.8 Number unspecified 21 20.4 16 13.4 19 14.7 "Don't know", refused 7 6.8 9 7.6 9 7.0 Sub-Total 103 99.9 119 100.0 129 100.0 Question not asked 1 2 6 Total 104 121 135 114 Table 9 gives us these values for the sample inclusive of the sample judges: Lake Town - .59 Factory Town - .58 Old Town - .53 While these values are very close, they are nevertheless in the predicted direction, since a high value indicates a high degree of consensus. Computed separately for sample judges and all other sample members the values are: Judges Others Lake Town .33 .66 Factory Town .44 .66 Old Town .40 .57 While the relatively low values for the judges in all three communi- ties can be explained in part through the instability of small numbers (N's of 12, 16 and 15 respectively in Lake Town, Factory Town and Old Town) it is still rather curious that there should exist such a considerable spread between judges and all other sample members. Before and during the period of the field work the writer had expected that the discipline of sorting names into status levels in the manner described in Chapter II (see Part B) would tend to yield a more consistently defined status structure than would the normal interview question. That this is not so is gratifying in one respect - clearly the sample members' lack of consensus is not an artifact of the pro- cedure itself. Questions about "classes", "status" and the like are both "touchy" and open to diverse interpretations. Since the process of interviewing the judges involved considerable discussion concerning the status levels as well as a process of defining these levels while 115 the sorting was being carried out, it would be expected that, had there been a commonly understood status system in the conmnity, it would have emerged in the sortings of the sample judges. Their great lack of consensus is a confirmation of the general absence of accord exhibited by the entire sample. The very small differences from town to town provide no sound basis for assertions of differences in consensus. Even more important, the data are partly contradictary: Lake Town judges exhibit the lowest degree of consensus, as expected, but the sample exclusive of the judges, exhibits the highest (along with the Factory Town sample). This is unexpected. Clearly, no conclusions can be reached on the basis of these data. Let us examine some further measures of consensus. 2. Consensus on the Placement of Individuals and Families It was Lenski's observation, in his study of a small New England community, that, while his judges exhibited little accord on the number of status levels in the community, they nevertheless were able to agree upon the relative positions of individual families residing in the connunity. (The precise amount of agreement is unknown since Lenski presented no data in support of his assertion.) On the basis of these findings Lenski concluded that there were no classes in the community; rather, status honor was distributed in continuous fashion. Of interest for our present purposes is the absence of a relationship between the two varieties of consensus. 116 AApparently it is possible for judges (and presumably others) to main- tain an extremely complex set of status arrangements without the reference points of status or class boundaries. Data were collected to permit test of the hypothesis through analysis of the extent of consensus upon the status position of the families: (1) in our sample; and (2) in certain selected voluntary associations in each of the communities. These data appear in Table 10 and 11. It will be necessary to describe the process whereby families and individuals were assigned to the different status levels on the basis of the reputational judges' placements. It will be recalled that each judge was asked to indicate the status position of each family or individual, whose name and address was presented to him on a 3 x 5 flash card. The pack of such cards presented to the judges included all locally residing members. .After the interview was completed the placements for each family and individual were recorded on the back of their (his) card. IAll those unknown to the judge were noted along with the rest. The result of this procedure is that every sample member and every association member received an array of ten placements if he was known to every judge, nine placements if he was known to only nine, eight if he was known to eight, etc. It will be immediately seen that the range of placements for any particular individual may be highly variable, or highly determinate. Ten placements at level I (the highest status category) or ten at level IV (the lowest) would constitute a highly determinate 117 composite rating. But three placements are level I, two at level II, three at level III and two at level IV would yield a highly indeter- minate one. For each of the situations defined by the total number of positive judgements (i.e., ten placements, nine placements, eight placements, etc.) there exists a specific determinant range of possible variation from the highly determinant composite rating to the highly indeterminate one. One way of instituting a comparison of the degree of consensus upon status positions of families and individuals in our three communities is to select some arbitrary standard of determinacy (of the composite placement) and apply it to each of the communities. This was done. The level of determinacy selected was that of a majoritygof placements by_the judges being. identical. Thus, in the case of ten placements, six must be identical (i.e., six must be at level I, level II, level III or level IV); in the case of nine placements, five would be required, in the case of eight, five again, in the case of seven, four, etc. In addition, it was decided that the lower limit of number of timesgplaced by judges (ten, nine, eight, etc.) would be set at four, and all cases below this would be excluded from analysis, except for those where three identical judgements were made. In such cases, regardless of what placement a hypothetical fourth judge might have made, there would still exist a majority of placements at a given status level. In Tables 10 and 11 all families and individuals not judged identically by a majority of the judges are brought under the rubric "nonconsensual". Inspection of Tables 10 and 11 reveal considerable differ- ences in the extent to which the status judgements were made 118 consensually by the reputational judges. The percentage of the total number of families and individuals judged who received a composite nonconsensual placement constitutes a useful index of the extent of status consensus. Thus, we observe in the case of the sample members (Table 10) that 59.8 per cent of the Lake Town sample members, 37.5 per cent of the Factory Town sample members, and 25.9 per cent of the Old Town sample members, received nonconsensual composite placements. This means that, by this measure, status consensus is greatest in Old Town and lowest in Lake Town. .A glance at Table 11 reveals essentially the same pattern of response in the association data. While these data clearly confirm.the industrial-nonindustrial half of our hypothesis, they reverse the predicted order for Old Town and Factory Town. 3. Consensus on the Placement of Each Family or Individual by g; Reputgtional Judges Our third measure of consensus penetrates beyond the gross status level of families and individuals into the details of the rating process itself. It is proposed to analyze the precise degree of consensus exhibited by the judges upon gash individual or family. This will penmit a far more exact determination than the mere dichotemization of "consensual" and "nonconsensual". The reader will recall that each individual or family received a maximum of ten positive (i.e., actual placements in the four-level status structure) placements. .Anyone receiving ten identical place- ments would, of course, be judged with perfect consensus. The .I. ll.‘ I'll-l (I 1'! ll flu-Ill I I: 119 Table 10. The Distribution of Judges' Status Placements of Sample iMembers in Three Communities.* Distribution of Sample Members in Status Levels of Three Communities Lake Town Factory Town Old Town Status level N Per cent N Per cent _§_. Per cent I (highest) 3 3.4 7 9.7 3 2.7 II 3 3.4 13 18.1 17 15.2 III 11 12.4 22 30.6 56 50.0 IV 9 21.3 3 4.2 7 6.3 Nonconsensual 53 59.6 _37 37.5 29 25.9 Total 89 100.0 72 99.9 112 100.1 * The table excludes sample members judged less than four times, except for those judged three times identically. Table 11. The Distribution of Judges' Status Placements of.Association Members in Three Communities.* Distribution of Club members in Status Levels of Three Communities Lake Town Egptory Town Old Town Status level __h_l_ Per cent __N__ Per cent _N__ Per cent I (highest) 43 10.4 75 15.4 33 4.6 II 18 4.3 76 15.6 119 16.6 III 75 18.1 98 20.2 358 50.0 IV 20 4.8 6 1.2 44 6.1 Nonconsensual 258 62.3 231 47.5 162 22.6 Total 414 99.9 486 99.9 716 99.9 * The table excludes association members judged less than four times, except those judged three times identically. 120 ratio: Total no. ofgpaired placements Total no. of paired agreements yields a figure which, for each individual and family judged, repre- sents the degree to which the perfect consensus is approached. If such a ratio is computed for all voluntary association members in each community a set of distributions will result which can be fruitfully compared. This has been done, the resulting data appearing in Table 12 and Figure 1. Figure 1 represents graphically the same data as appear in Table 12. Table 12. The Distribution of Reputational Judges' Consensus Upon Status Positions of Voluntary.Association Members in Three Conmunities. Community Consensus Lake Town Factory Town Old Town level* _N__ Per cent N Per cent N Per cent High* 9 2.2 31 6.3 81 11.3 Middle** 75 18.1 175 36.0 437 61.0 Low*** 330 79.7 280 57.6 198 27.7 Total 414 100.0 486 99.9 716 100.0 * 0.70 ‘ 1.00 ** 0.40 - 0.69 *** 0.10 - 0.39 One feature of these distributions should be noted. The absence of any cases in the 0.0 - 0.09 range is an artifact of the procedure used and the limited number of categories into which the 121 individuals and families could be placed by the judges.“ Since the internal structuring of the scales of consensus is identical, and the purpose is, as always, comparison, it was not necessary to make adjustments in the scales to eliminate this factor. Figure 1. The Distribution of Reputational Judges' Consensus Upon Status Positions of Voluntary Association Members in Three Commities. Lake Factory Old KEY: Town Town Town - High level of consensus a Middle level of consensus {‘3 Low level of consensus 7%? $0 «5'7. ‘ 9. Us: qfw'fic‘f Inspection of Figure 1 reveals enormous differences in consensus between the three towns in the same direction as those found in the case of consensus on the place of families and individ- uals in.Section B. Lake Town exhibits the least, and Old Town the 14. Thus, if over four positive judgements were made, some agreement is unavoidable, since only four status levels were available for placements. The lowest possible level of agreement in the case of five placements is .10; for six, .13; for seven, .14; for eight, 1.4; for nine, .17; and for ten, 1.8. 122 greatest degree of consensus. ‘Again the greatest difference appears between Lake Town on the one hand, and Factory Town and Old Town on the other, although the latter two seem somewhat further apart than in the earlier test. It should be remembered that this analysis is based on the same data as the previous one and merely involves greater precision. Thus, the virtually identical findings were to some extent expected. 4. Judges Compared.With the Composite Distribution Our fourth measure of status consensus approaches the problem through analysis of the agreement among the reputational judges. This is not the same as analysis of differences in units judged. In this case we are interested in the deviations of the individual judges from the composite distributions of status rank. Such a measure, of course, presupposes that ranks have been previously deter- 4mined. This, in turn, means that only those whose rank can in fact be determined may be analyzed. .Among the association members in the three communities, 186 in Lake Town, 255 in Factory Town and 554 in Old Town were judged consensually. Excluding those seldom judged (three times or less, except those judged three times identically), these figures represent 37.0 per cent of the Lake Town group, 39.5 per cent of the Factory Town group, and 69.4 per cent of the Old Town group. Proportions of placements made consensually by each of the judges were computed utilizing the following formula: Prop-'DL1'DL2'DL3'DL4 N 123 where, DLN - la - 2b - 4c a - the number of units placed one status level distant from composite placement b E the number of units placed two status levels distant from.composite placement c a the number of units placed three status levels distant from.composite placement N - total number of placements made by judge L - status level (of which there are four) This rather complicated method of computation was used in order to give greater weight to the more distant placements made by the judges. For example, if a judge placed a name in status level three that had received a composite placement in status level one, it was felt desirable to weight this as a lesser degree of consensus than would be present in the case of a judge who placed the same name in status level two. These ratios and the mean ratios for the three towns are presented in Table 13.15 The differences in Table 13 are in the same direction as those revealed earlier in this chapter, with Lake Town exhibiting the lowest consensus, Factory Town next, and Old Town displaying the greatest. The measures (mean ratio and mean deviation), however, assume that the impact of each judge is exactly equal to that of 15. Four by four contingency tables for all the judges were computed, in which the judges' ratings of all those judged by themwwere cross-tabulated with the composite status distributions. These tables appear in Appendix B. 124 every other judge. But because of the fact that some judges were able to place many more names in the status order than were others, Table 13. Reputational Judges' Ratios, Mean Ratios, and Mean Deviations of Status "Misplacements" in Three Communities. Ratios Judge Lake Town Factory Town Old Town NO. 1 e24 025 e30 No. 2 .38 .19 .43 NOe 3 s75 e41 e23 NO. 4 .26 .43 .16 No. 5 .42 .33 .35 NO. 6 .58 .74 .18 No. 7 .58 .74 .36 NO. 8 .58 .25 .15 NOe 9 037 032 e49 No. 10 .49 .45 Mean ratio .46 .37 .31 Mean deviation* .142 .117 .106 * The mean deviation was used instead of the S.D. because the distributions do approximate normality. this assumption is untenable. Accordingly, it is necessary to create some composite measure for the distributions that weights the contributions of the judges equally. Such a figure can be very simply computed by merely stating the ratio, not of each judge separately but of all judges together, of placements in disagreement with the compo- site rating to the total number of placements. These ratios appear in Table 14. These results parallel precisely those obtained earlier. There seems to be little doubt that a considerable difference in status consensus obtains between Lake Town on the one hand, and Factory Town 125 and Old Town on the other. Further, these differences are in the predicted direction. The smaller difference between Factory Town and Old Town, however, is not in the predicted direction. In the second part of this chapter we shall undertake an analysis of these differences by examining some of the internal distributions of the data. Table 14. Ratios of Total Number of Status Placements by‘All Reputational Judges in Disagreement with the Composite Distribution in Three Communities. Total number Total number of Of status status placements placements by by all judges in 811 JUdSGS disagreement with Community the composite rating_ Ratio Lake Town 1500 703 .47 Factory Town 1917 675 .35 Old Town 4085 1248 .31 C. Analysis of Differences in Status Consensus The data presented in part B have hormeout the hypothesis concerning differences in status consensus between industrialized and nonindustrialized communities, but reversed that concerning the differences between single-industry and diverse-industry communities. In this section we attempt, through analysis of certain related data, to ascertain, with some degree of precision, the reasons for the differences, and especially the unexpected differences in the comparison ovaactory Town and Old Town. 126 We shall engage the following lines of analysis: (1) the role of the "ceiling effect"; (2) the relation of occupation class to status consensus; (3) the relation between employment in a public institution versus employment in a private industrial concern insofar as it has some bearing on status consensus; (4) the relationship between "being known" and "status consensus"; (5) the effect of voluntary association membership on status consensus; (6) the signi- ficance of old families in Old Town; and (7) the differences between the judges themselves. 1, The "Ceiling Effect" Let us get a purely methodological consideration out of the way first. It is known that variations in scores at the end points of distributions tend to be smaller than variations in middle regions. This has been called the "ceiling effect", and results from.the fact that the maximum possible variation about any scale point is a function of the distance of the point from.the mid-point of the scale, the maximum possible variation increasing as one appraoches the mid- point. A glance at Tables 15 and 16 indicates that the ceiling . effect is probably involved to some extent in the difference between Factory Town and Old Town. If we dichotemize, for each town, the categories at the extremes (high white-collar and low blue-collar) and compute for each the per cent nonconsensual, we can get some idea of the extent to which the large numbers of the extremes of the Old Town occupational distribution are affecting the differences in 127 Table 15. The Distribution of White- and Blue-Collar Sample Members by Status Level in Lake Town, Factory Town and Old Town. * Read vertically ** Read horizontally Lake Town Status White-collar Blue-collar Totals .1219}. me my. mm 1m I 3 - - - 3 II 1 1 l 0 3 III 1 - 4 6 11 IV 1 - 6 ll 19 . Nonconsensual 14goz)*8 (897.) 13 L547.) 13(517.) 53 (60.2%) Totals 20 ** 9 24 35 88 (22.7%)(10.2%) (27.3%)(39.8%) (100.0%) Factory Town I 7 - - - 7 II 12 1 - - 13 III 1 6 9 6 22 IV 1 - - 2 3 Noncons ensual 8 (2872) 10 (5 97.) 8 (4 77.) l (117.) 27 (3 87.) Totals 29 l7 l7 9 72 (40.3%)(23.6%) (23.6%)(12.5%) (100.0%) Old Town I 3 - - - 3 II ' 15 1 l - 17 III 17 11 14 14 56 IV - - l 6 7 Nonconsensual 7(171) 6(332) 9(362) 7(26Z) 29(26Z) Totals 42 18 25 27 112 (37.5%)(16.l%) (22.3%)(24.1Z) (100.1%) 128 Table 16. The Distribution of White- and Blue-Collar Voluntary [Association Members by Status Level in Lake Town, Factory Town and Old Town.* Lake Town Status White-collar Blue-collar Totals level high 193 high Q I 40 - l 0 41 II 18 - - - 18 III 15 23 l7 19 74 IV 3 l 7 8 l9 Nonconsensual 114 47 48 45 254 (60%)“ (6 62L (6 62'.) (6 3%) (6 2m Totals 190 71 73 72 406 (46.9Z)***(17.SZ) (18.0%)(17.7Z) (100.12) Factory Town I 69 3 2 - 74 II 48 15 7 4 74 III 16 16 40 23 95 IV 1 - 1 4 6 Nonconsensual 110(4SZ)43(56Z), 45(4SZ)21(40%) 219(472); Totals 244 77 95 52 468 (52.1%)(16.5%) (20.3%)(11.1Z) (100.2%) Old Town I 30 - - - 30 II 92 13 2 - 107 III 134 46 60 40 280 IV 1 2 13 10 26 Nonconsensual 58(182)21(26Z) 26(26%)23(3ZZ) 128(23Z)_g Totals 315 82 101 73 571 (55.2%)(14.4Z) (17.7%)(12.8%) (100.1%) *All uncodable or unknown occupations removed from analysis (8 in Lake Town, 19 in Factory Town, 145 in Old Town) **Read vertically ***Read horizontally 129 nonconsensuality. These data appear in Table 17. Table 17. Extreme Categories Versus Internal Categories of Occupational Distributions in Three Community Samples. Per cent nonconsensual Per cent nonconsensual at distributional ex- in internal categories of tremes (high white-col- distribution (low white- Community lar and low blue-collar) collar, high blue-collar) Lake Town 58 (55)* 64 (33) Factory Town 24 (38) 53 (34) Old Town 20 (69) 45 (43) *The number on which the percentage is based. The ceiling effect appears in the data of each community, although the difference in Lake Town is much smaller than in the other communities. Now, the greater the concentration of cases at the dis- tributional extremes (i.e., the greater the proportion of cases falling at the extremes as against the proportion falling in middle range) the greater will be the impact of the ceiling effect upon the summary consensus score for the total distribution. Old Town has a distribu- tion of this type, with 62 per cent of the cases falling in the extreme categories, while the comparable figure in Factory Town is 53 per cent. A great deal of the 12 per cent difference between the towns can be accounted for by this fact. The difference at the extremes is only four per cent (24 per cent in Factory Town, 20 per cent in Old Town), but a considerably greater proportion of Old Town cases fall into these extremes. 130 2. Occupational Class The occupational class of sample members and voluntary association members constitutes a possible source of gross community differences in status consensus. The relevant comparative data appear in Tables 15 and 16. It will be seen immediately that the general absence of consensus in Lake Town is spread over all four occupational classes. In every class category in both the sample and club groups the percentage judged nonconsensually is higher than for its counterpart in Factory Town and Old Town. In this respect the industrial - nonindustrial difference, so pronounced, is unproblematic. Our problem in the case of the comparison of Factory Town and Old Town is to account for the “wrong" direction of the difference in consensus. One line of analysis is to determine whether any of the occupational classes are both "over-represented" and "deviant", in the sense of accounting for either more or less of the amount of consensus that would be expected. Consider the instance of the lower white-collar group. Fifty-nine per cent of the sample members of Factory Town falling in this category were judged nonconsensually, while the comparable figure for Old Town is 33 per cent. This group also has a higher representation in the total sample of Factory Town (23.6 per cent) than in Old Town (16.1 per cent). Thus, we can argue that if this "over-representation" in Factory Town were to be reduced its contribution to the total amount of nonconsensus would be smaller, and this would reduce in some measure that gross figure. Now, if the totals for each class grouping in Factory Town were adjusted such that 131 they represented precisely the same percentage of the total sample population under analysis as is the case empirically in Old Town it would be possible to determine empirically the degree to which the profile of class representation accounts for the empirical difference of 56 per cent as against 28 per cent for Factory Town. This was done. If each of the occupational classes in Factory Town were repre- sented in the same proportions as they are in Old Town, assuming the identical percentages within each were to be judged nonconsensually, the gross figure of "nonconsensually judged" would be reduced from 38 per cent to 33 per cent. The greater part of this involves redistri- bution from.the lower white-collar group to the lower blue-collar category. The comparable reduction, in analyzing the voluntary association data in Table 16 is from 47 per cent to 46 per cent. .All this, of course, does not change the empirical facts of the distributions of occupations in Factory Town and Old Town. It does focus attention on the differences in the internal distributions within occupational classes in all three communities. If different class distributions are to be advanced as explanatory of differences in status consensus, then such differences must themselves be explained.16 At a sheerly structural level such differences are mainly the result of the type of work organizations found in the community, a variable to be considered momentarily. 16. The greater proportion of lower white-collar workers, and the smaller proportion of blue-collar workers, in both the sample and the association populations of Factory Town occasions surprise, in the light of the known occupational composition of Factory Town and Old Town. Table 1 of Appendix C reveals that the combined clerical-sales category is 5.2 per cent greater in Old Town, while the combined operative-laborer category is 7.0 per cent smaller. These differences cannot be explained by our data. 132 ‘Assuming that the household sampling procedure was unbiased these differences are considerable. Only 22.7 per cent of the Lake Town sample was classified as upper white-collar, while the comparable figures for Factory Town and Old Town are 40.3 per cent and 38 per cent. The direction of the differences is reversed for the lower blue-collar group; 39.8 per cent of the Factory Town sample and 24.1 per cent of the Old Town sample did so. The differences in the two ‘middle groupings are of considerably lesser magnitude. .Any attempt to assess the significance of specific profiles for high or low consensus situations would be both difficult and hazardous. Indeed, after pursuing several lines of reasoning on this problem the writer was forced to conclude that no sense whatever can be made of these data insofar as their relevance for status consensus is concerned. 3. Employment in Public and Private Institutions The possible effect of the two large State institutions in Factory Town upon status phenomena there has been mentioned earlier. While there seems to be no good theoretical basis for expecting employees of such public organizations to differ from.amployees of private ones we nevertheless wish to examine our data for any light they might throw on the differences that have been demonstrated. Our voluntary association data do not permit the extraction of all employees of either the State institutions or of the large factory in Factory Town, and it is on these that our test will be most meaningful because of the larger numbers involved. The sources from which the data were drawn often did not contain such information as 133 place of work. It was possible, however, through inspection of the data available for all voluntary association members, to identify with virtual certainty 56 employees of the State institutions and 46 who were employed at the plant. The proportions of the total number of institution and plant employees present in the voluntary association universe represented by these 46 and 56 remains, of course, unknown, although there can be little doubt the factory group is much larger (Tables and cannot be used to estimate these figures with any precision). These 102 cases, fortunately, are ample for our purposes. Institutional and plant employees were cross-tabulated by consensual and nonconsensual placements, the results appears in Table 18. The employees of the plant, considered as a group, exhibit Table 18. The Distribution of Consensual Placements by Reputational Judges in Factory Town for Employees of Two State Institutions and a Large Factory. Type of status judgement Type of Consensual Nonconsensuglp 12321 employment __N__ Per cent __N_ Per cent State institution 26 46 30 54 56 Private plant 30 65 16 35 46 Totals 56 46 102 a considerably greater degree of consensus on their status than do the employees of the State institutions. Examination of the percen- tages in Table 18 should be performed in the context of the data presented in Table 16. There, it will be noted, 48 per cent of the voluntary association members were judged nonconsensually in Factory Town and 23 per cent were so judged in Old Town. This spread is 134 greater than that found in the sample. Now, if (1) other types of employment were held equal, a dubious assumption (see Table ‘Appendix C), (2) if all employment at the two State institutions was eliminated from Factory Town, and (3) if the number of employees of the two institutions was about equal to the number of Factory Town residents employed at the plant (which is assuredly not the case), then we would expect the proportion of Factory Town voluntary associa- tion members to exhibit a proportion of nonconsensual status place- 'ments on the order of 35 per cent. This would be in addition to the one per cent reduction due to overrepresentation within occupational class categories. (At best, than, these two factors taken together would still leave at least 12 per cant difference between Factory Town and Old Town, as measured on the voluntary association data. More detailed analysis of the Factory Town data reveals with greater precision the source of this difference between State and private employees. Table 19 presents the occupational class Table 19. The Relation of Occupational Class Differences to Level of Status Consensus for Public and Private Employees in Factory Town. State ggployees Plant ggployees Occupational Consensus level Consensus level class L211! Middle* Hi * £91 Middle High Upper W-C 9 5 2 12 6 0 Lower‘W-C 4 1 0 2 2 0 Upper B-C 14 10 2 3 4 0 Lower B-C 6 2 O 4 10 3 Uncodabls l O 0 0 O 0 Totals 34 18 4 21 22 3 * High, 0.70‘1000; middle, 0.40-0.69; 10W, 0.10-0.390 x2 - 5.6, P - .01 135 breakdown for employees of public and private organizations as these are distributed over high, middle, and low levels of consensus. It is easily seen that among State employees there are no differences in the proportions of high and low consensus. But in the case of employees of the plant this is not so; there, the proportion is dramatically reversed in the blue-collar category. The difference between the two employment situations is thus wholly accounted for by the blue-collar industrial workers, a very high proportion of whom were judged consensually by the reputational judges. Thus, it is in the industrial situation, as predicted, that consensus is highest. Why it is that white-collar industrial employees do not diverge from State institution employees in the fashion of the blue-collar workers remains somewhat of a puzzle. The probable answer to this lies in the low crystallization of most white-collar employees, a fact noted by many. An analysis of this type is now being planned for the community data. 4. 'Familiarity"and Status Consensus It has been demonstrated empirically that "being known" is a partial determinant of status placement. Scudder andAnderson17 found that, "families who do not receive ratings from.most of the prestige judges stand much lower on any index of status than the better l7. Scudder and Anderson, "The Relation of Being Known to Status Rating", Soc. and Soc. Res., 38 (1954), No. 4; and "The Range of Acquaintance and of Repute as Factors in Prestige Rating", Soc. Forces, 32 (1954), pp. 248-53. 136 known families".18 This finding is open to differing interpretations. Since the judges come from the upper reaches of the status distribu- tion, it may be that they are simply relatively unfamiliar with people from the lower ranges. Or, there may be some kind of constant rating factor whereby the unfamiliar are downgraded. If this is correct (and it cannot be established on the basis of Scudder and.Anderson's material) it might not be out of order to suggest that unfamiliarity is related to low levels of consensus. In fact, this would seem to be a rather obvious dimension of consensus. Data necessary for a test of this are available, and appear in Table 20., If "being known" by judges is a factor accounting to some extent for differences in levels of consensus in our three communities our data should exhibit two things: (1) a difference in the distributions of consensus within different knowledgeability levels in each town; and (2) differences in the percentages of cases found within specific knowledgeability levels from.town to town. If it can be shown that consensus is related in some way to "being known", and if, relative to one of the other towns especially knowledgeable segments of a community are "overrepresented", a case may be made for differential knowledgeability as a partial determinant of a community's 601188118118 score 0 18. Scudder and Anderson, "The Relation of Being Known . . .", p. 241. 137 Inspection of Table 20, unfortunately, reveals little. There appears to be a tendency in Lake Town for those known by a Table 20. Reputational Judges' Acquaintance With and Level of Status Consensus Among Voluntary Association Members in Three Communities. Lake Town Known Low consenggg_‘Middle consggggg. High consensus Totals .21:— __N_ Per cent _N_ Per cent _N_ Per cent _N_ Per cent 9-10 judges 176 78* 46 20* 5 2* 227 55** 7-8 " 114 87 13 10 4 3 131 32** 4-6 " 40 71 16 29 - - 56 14** Factory Town 9-10 judges 133 59 79 35 15 7 227 47 7-8 " 73 65 35 31 s 4 113 24 4-6 " 74 54 61 44 3 2 136 29 Old Town 9-10 judges 77 28 176 64 20 7 273 39 7-8 " so 29 92 53 32 18 174 25 4-6 " 71 28 169 66 18 7 258 37 * Read horizontally ** Read vertically middling number (7-8) of judges to be low on consensus (87 per cent low consensus versus 78 per cent and 71 per cent for many and few judges respectively). The situation is reversed at the highest level, 138 where four, or three per cent of those judged by 7 or 8 judges are to be found, along with two per cent of the well-known and none of the not well-known. Secondly, there seems to be a very slight tendency for those known to only a few judges to score higher on consensus than the well-known, although again, none of those known to only a few judges (4-6) are located at the highest level of consensus. Differences in Factory Town are even more inconclusive than those in Lake Town, if this is possible. Here, as in Lake Town, there appears to be a slight tendency for those known to 7 or 8 judges to display a lower order of consensus than is the case with those known to many or few judges. In Old Town there is a tendency for those known to 7 or 8 judges to exhibit a higher order of consensus (18 per cent as against 7 per cent for those known to many, and to few, judges). Now, if the high level consensus grouping were proportion- ately greater in Old Town than in Factory Town we could claim that this accounted, in part, for the difference in community status consensus levels between the two towns. But clearly this is not the case, since the grouping in Old Town exhibits only 25 per cent of the total, but 47 per cent and 29 per cent (for the two relevant groupings) in Factory Town. Thus, if these groupings were equated, the differences would probably be not less, but greater. The situation with respect to Lake Town is different. There, the grouping judged by the fewest judges and exhibiting the highest consensus, constitutes the smallest proportion of the total, 14 per cent. 139 Perhaps if this grouping were better represented it would tend to decrease the level of consensus in Lake Town. But this is highly problematic, since this grouping, while underrepresented at the lowest level of consensus, is totally absent at the highest. There is no consistency throughout the entire range of the status consensus scale. In summary, then, we are unable to assert that "being known" has any demonstrable effect on either the low level of consensus in Lake Town or the unpredicted reversal with respect to Factory Town and Old Town. 5. voluntary Association Membership and Status Consensus There are a number of areas of social participation that permit the securing of social identities within the community. Among the'most important are: (1) government or related spheres; (2) church participation; and (3) membership and participation in voluntary associations. Participation in such areas of social life involves, it may be assumed, relatively high social visibility as a role-player in the social structure of the community. One could argue that this might tend to lessen the ambiguity of one's status position (although ambiguity also ensues from.cccupancy of differ- ently evaluated roles) and cause judges to exhibit greater agreement than they otherwise would. If this were true, then the extent to which a community was "organized" would have a bearing upon the level of consensus it exhibited. 140 Since only a small segment of the population is active politically, and since the great majority of small-towners are church members if not church-goers,19 we shall test this idea on voluntary association membership data. If it can be shown that: (l) membership in voluntary associations is associated with being rated consensually by the judges; and (2) that more sample members are voluntary association members in Old Town than in Factory Town, then we may argue that a partial cause of difference in consensus levels in these communities has been isolated.20 Data permitting a test of this (i.e., proposition (1) above) were collected in the survey interviews (Appendix A, question 2) and appear in Table 21. Table 21. Mean Number of Voluntary Association Memberships for Sample Members Placed Consensually and Nonconsensually, by Sex, in Three Communities. Type of Lake Town Factory Town ‘Old Town placement _M__ep Women Men Women 113.3 Women Consensual 1.0 105 1.6 1e5 1s? 1s4 (30)* (33) (41) (42) (71) (79) Nonconsensual 0.9 1.3 1.5 1.7 1.0 1.1 (47) (52) (22) (26) (24) (27) * Number of cases on which means were computed. 19. See the portrayal of religious life in Small Town in Mass Society, Part IV. 20. This is undoubtedly loose usage of "cause", since it is usually held that statistical contingencies cannot formally establish such a relationship. While this is true I cannot agree with those who infer, on these grounds, that sociology should abandon the search for causes of social phenomena. What is needed is a sophisticated but workable definition of "cause". It is my belief that the current hegemony of the functional school inhibits theorizing in this direction. Ii 1 I'll-9.71.1 141 The data in Table 21 are organized by sex. The voluntary association memberships in each household were computed separately for men and women because the structure of their social worlds tends to differ considerably. While the differences between consensual and nonconsensual placements are small, in every case save one (Factory Town women) they are in the expected direction. And while even the sex differences do not reach statistical significance (the within-community differences, by consensus and sex), there seem, to be grounds enough for further pursuit of our hypothesis. Further examination, however, reveals that our idea is untenable. The second condition mentioned above, that more sample members be voluntary association members in Old Town than in Factory Town, is not the empirical fact. In fact, the reverse is the case (75 per cent in Factory Town, 68 per cent in Old Town). Therefore, we must reject the hypothesis. 6. 01d Families "Old Town" was dubbed such precisely because it is older than the other towns. On these grounds alone we might expect a greater role to be played there by traditional families. In addition, Old Town has played a rather dramatic role in State history, once in the 19th century being considered as a possible site for the State capitol. Prior to the Civil War it is reputed to have been a northern terminal point for run-a-way slaves. These things, of course, mean only that the commity does haves longer meaningful 142 natural history than the other two towns (see Table I-I in Norbert ‘Wiley's Ph.D. dissertation, p. 2-2, in which Old Town's longer history is detailed. Census information was available back to 1850 for Old Town, back to 1870 for Factory Town and back to 1880 for Lake Town.).20 ‘A glance at Tables 6, 7 and 8 indicates that our supposition is correct. There, 10 per cent of the Old Town sample members as against 6.8 per cent in Factory Town and 4.0 per cent in Lake Town mentioned old family residence as a status criterion. In addition, informal comments that often did not get into the interviews tended to impress both investigators with the aura of family tradition still invested with some meaning. ‘We do not wish to place reliance on this datum, for no direct connection between genealogical traditions and high status con- sensus has been demonstrated. Let us say that the relation seems plausible. Of importance, also, is the question of whether these old families retain their vitality as in Yankee City of the '30's, or whether, as in Springdale, they have descended into social and economic oblivion. My guess is that they would fall somewhere in between these poles, perhaps toward the Springdale end. Old Town's recent population history has not been a stable one. The per cent increase from 1950 to 1960 is mch greater than in the other two towns, as a glance at TableC-m in Appendix C will show. We know 20. N. Wiley, Politics in Three Communities,‘Michigan State University Ph.D. dissertation, 1962. 143 that this is not due to natural increase, because Old Town's fertility ratio is lower than the other towns. The State offices of the national insurance company have come since 1950. Precisely what is developing in Old Town is by no means clear, although it does not appear to be anything along the lines of the "status contest" reported in "Vansburg" by Stone and Form.21 But this influx of people makes us pause before . automatically attributing the high level of status consensus in Old Town to the prestige of genealogy. 4At the same time, Old Town families are still in evidence and cannot be summarily dismissed. The various pieces of evidence remain inconclusive. 7. Analysis of the Judges .Are there any characteristics of the judges, independent of their judgements, that might account for differences in composite community status consensus ratings? ,A.1imited set of data on the judges is available. These are summarized in Table 22 (for more detailed data on each judge separately consult.Appendix B). The reader will perceive that certain variables manifest rather different values in the three towns, while others do not. In the latter category fa11:(Dyears in the community (2), Duncan score (3), proportion upper white-collar (5), and perhaps the RHO's (12). Some of these other variables, however, are worth further investigation with an eye to differences that might, to some extent, help explain the differences in community status consensus levels. This then, is a 21. Stone and Form, pp, cit. 144 critical endeavor, in that we will try to ascertain if characteristics of the judges themselves can explain the presumed substantive differ- ences. If they can, then the theoretical force of the empirical sub- stantive findings will be sapped. On the other hand, if the results of the judges' analysis are negative, some additional confidence in the substantive findings will be warranted. a. Voluntary association.membership Table 22 indicates a lower mean number of voluntary association memberships for Old Town judges than for those in Lake Town and Factory Town.22 It is difficult to conceive of any reason why this should be related to status consensus levels. Nevertheless, the possibility was put to test, the results appearing in Table 23. In Table 22 we see that in Old Town four of the five "low agreement" judges were members of one or no voluntary associa- tions, while of four judges who were members of two voluntary associations, three were "high agreement" types. Presumably, then if more Old Town judges had been members of more voluntary associations the level of consensus in Old Town would have been higher (if indeed there is a real relationship present here, a very hazardous assertion because of the very small "N's"). The differential thus occurs despite the low number of voluntary association memberships of Old Town judges. 22. This, of course, is not a test of all voluntary association memberships of reputational judges, since it considers only memberships in those associations analyzed in each town. This is, admittedly, a considerable limitation of our analysis. 145 Table 22. Characteristics of Reputational Judges in Three Communities. Characteristics Lake Town Factopy Town Old Town (1) Number 9 10 10 (2)‘Mean no. yrs. resident in commity 34 36 32 (3) Mean score on Duncan occupational (4) Mean no. vol. ass'n memberships2 status scale (possible range 1.0 - 10.0)1 2.00 2.20 1.8 1 7 (5) Proportion having "higher white- collar occupation3 7/8 10/10 8/9 (6) Mean percentile rank position of judges in the sample status distri- bution4 5.8 6.3 3.5 (N-6)5 (u-7)5 (N-10)5 (7) Mean dev. of perc. rank distribu- tion of judges in the sample status distribution 3.7 2.6 1.3 (8) Mean perc. rank position of judges in the associational status distribution 13 5 9 6 (N-6) (u-7)5 (N-10)5 (9) Mean dev. of perc. rank distri- bution of judges in the associational status distribution 6.8 4.1 2.7 (10) Mean of consensus score distribution .373 .552 .480 (11) Mean dev. from mean of consensus score distribution .059 .145 .084 (12) RHO's for (l) deviations from consenses score (high to low); by (2) distribution of coefficients of agreement (high to low) -0.33 -0.22 0.22 (13) Mean of status assignments (the four level system) 1.70 1.34 1.55 (14) Mean dev. from mean of status 1. 2. 4. 5. assignments (the four level system) 021 013 e17 The scale is based on the North-Hatt scores, but assigns scores according to population deciles. See Otis Dudley Duncan, “A Socio- economic Index for All Occupations", Population Res. and Training Center, Univ. of Chicago, unpublished. I am indebted to Professor Duncan for permission to use the scale. This includes only membership in associations analyzed in the study. One judge in Lake Town and one is Old Town were unassignable. Using mean status assignment scores, and thus including everyone judged four or more times, plus those judged three time identically. The missing judges were not members of any of the associations analyzed. 146 b. Judges' status In Chapter II the method of selecting reputational judges was described. The procedure used was an effort to eliminate the often haphazard method of selection by reducing the procedure to one based on a definite principle. The reader will recall that the judges Table 23. Voluntary Association‘Memberships of Judges in Three Communities Number of I Level of coefficient voluntary association of agreement* memberships Low High Totals Lake Town 0-1 2 4 6 2 plus 3 0 3 Totals 5 4 9 Factory Town 0-1 3 2 5 2 plus 3 2 5 Totals 6 4 10 Old Town 0-1 2 4 6 2 plus 3 l 4 Totals 5 5 10 * Coefficients of agreement were computed from the tables in.Appendix B, using the formula presented on page 122. High and low coefficients were defined gg_hoc by either dicotemizing or perceiving "natural breaks" in the distribution. were selected upon nomination by members of the random sample of householders. They were chosen from the group of nominees falling directly below the top 10-15 in each community. The results of this procedure can now be assessed. 147 Lines 6-9 in Table 22 indicate: (1) that the status rank of the Old Town judges, is, as a whole, higher than their colleagues in Factory Town and Lake Town (lines 6 and 8); and (2) that the divergence in the status positions of the Old Town judges was least (lines 7 and 9). This fact could be interpreted as a further confirmation of our findings, but we shall not insist on this. Our interest focuses on the fact that differences in mean deviations are considerable. If differences in status position cause judges to perceive others' status differently we would then expect precisely the findings that have been presented, high consensus in Old Town and low consensus in Lake Town. Now, if a highly "deviant" status position of a judge is related to the divergence of his judgements of others' status from the judgements of other judges, then we would expect to find a correlation between his coefficient of agreement23 with the other judges and the "deviance" of his status position with respect to that of the other judges. This correlation was performed in each community using the Spearman Rank Correlation coefficient.24 The results were negative. The RHO's were: Lake Town .13 Factory Town .12 Old Town “.34 23. See bottom of Table 23 for explanation. 24. See Sidney Siegel, Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (New York: MbGraw-Hill, 1956), pp. 202 ff. 1 {.ll.‘ 'l‘ '31“ ‘ll 148 These are all extremely low, and in any case, the negative figure for Old Town is in the unexpected direction. None reaches conven- tional levels of significance. Another brief test of this hypothesis was made with the same result. Removal of the two most "deviant" judges in each community had no appreciable relative effect on the composite coefficients of agreement of the judges, as Table 24 shows. Table 24. Comparison of Composite Coefficients of Agreement of Judges in Three Communities‘flith and‘flithout Removal of Two Most Deviant Judges. Coefficients of Agreement Lake Town Factory Town Old Town .All judges .46 .37 .31 Two most deviant judges removed .41 .31 .25 Removal of the two most "deviant" judges had a slightly greater effect in Factory Town and Old Town. Clearly, divergent status of judges is not a factor that can account for high and low community consensus levels. c. Consensus on judges' status Table 22 (line 10) indicates the means of the consensus scores of the judges in each town. Line 11 gives the mean deviation of this distribution. Rather large differences obtain between the communities on this latter. Now, perhaps this difference in the "spread" of judges' consensus scores is related to the extent of their agreement 149 with their colleagues. .A correlation of these variables was performed. RHO's for the three communities appear in Table 22 in line 12. These coefficients are much too low to permit an assertion of the existence of a relationship. Furthermore, their direction is not right for such an inference. .All our tests of judges' characteristics have yielded nega- tive results. While there are many other possible characteristics of judges, and perhaps of the method of selecting them, that could be factors in explaining their performances, no further data are available. The test that has been performed permit us some degree of assurance that our substantive findings are not mere artifacts of the selection process. D. Conclusions Analysis of our status consensus data has verified strongly our hypothesis concerning the level of consensus in industrialized versus nonindustrialized communities. There seems to be no reason to doubt our evidence for this comparison, since the difference is both consistent and great.25 The findings relative to our hypothesis concerning single- versus diverse-industry communities, however, are more problematic, since the predicted values are reversed. Nevertheless, they are generally consistent in their direction. These unexpected findings 25. The only exception is the result of the "perception of the number of status levels" analysis (Section B-l), which was inconclusive. 150 occasioned further analyses in an attempt to determine what local factors might be accountable for the empirical difference. Of the several investigated, three appeared to play a role: (1) the "ceiling effect"; (2) the existence of the State institutions in Factory Town; and (3) Old Town's old families. Of these, the third is problematic. Taken together, they go some distance toward explaining the empirical difference in the level of status consensus in Old Town and Factory Town. CHAPTER V STATUS CLOSURE A. Introduction: The Problem.of Status Closure The idea of status closure, meaning associational and informal interaction based on status level, has been at the core of many stratification studies. ‘Warner, for instance, went to great pains to document the minutest details of the clique structure of Yankee City.1 He also analyzed associational memberships in terms of differential status participation. These analyses showed that some cliques, and some associations, were more homogeneous with respect to status level than were others. Later studies have revealed much the same thing. Vidich and Bensman describe briefly what appears to be a pattern somewhat on the order of Yankee City's, but on a smaller scale.2 There, such organizations as the American Legion drew their membership from several status groups, while the Music Clubs were completely closed within status levels. Evidently a somewhat different pattern existed in Plainville, for there, west notes, “All the special groups that have been described, whether formal or informal in organization, occupy definite posi- tions in the class systemu The only exceptions are the Republican and Democratic parties, but even here impor- tant social discriminations are involved." 1. See The Status System of a Modern Community, especially Parts I and 11s 20 Small Town 0 s 0, pp. 24'29, Chapter 3, pp. 126‘70 3. West, op, cit., p. 119. 151 152 There is no need to multiply examples of status closure arrangements in the literature. Because these materials are essen- tially noncomparable, there is little to be gained by a further listing of examples, although a great many could be culled from works in and out of the field of stratification. It is important though, to consider the theoretical significance of this variable. Warner has suggested that interactions across status lines function to integrate a community. The same idea has been proposed by Vidich and Bensman, and by many others. Thus, the associational arrangements of a community may be viewed as providing a counter-force to the divisive tendencies of status. .At the same time, however, it is recognized that, to the extent that persons in different status levels develop and value different culture traits and "styles of life", they will to that extent tend to avoid the company of others not sharing in these, and mix with their own kind. In these terms we may view the extent of associational and informal status segregation as a kind of resultant of communal (thus, "integrating") versus stratification (thus, dividing) types of actions. Probably a great many things affect the empirical contours of a community's status closure. These would include such things as threats from the outside and the extent of the differences between the subcultures of the different status levels. The former, following Sumner's in-group - out-group formulation, would presumably tend to unify the community and minimize its associational and informal closure. In the case of the latter, we would expect little formal or informal interaction across status lines if the differences were great. 153 Both our study design and our data prohibit a test of these. We did not inquire into possible residents' preceptions of threats to the community from outside, and it is likely that there are no particular differences between the towns in this respect, although the chronic unemployment situation in Lake Town might be a factor disposing residents there to perceive the environment as hostile. Again we have no good independent measures of cultural differences between the status levels, other than home ownership and income infor- mation, and some data concerning the amount and type of gadgetry in the households.4 Let us consider a third such factor: the extent to which status lines are in fact clearly drawn. Perhaps we could expect a "fuzzy" status situation to be associated with low closure. This "fuzzy" situation, of course, is nothing other than status consensus. We shall limit ourselves to the formal testing of one hypothesis: communities exhibiting a high degree of status consensus will also exhibit a high level of status closure.5 B. The Data: Voluntary.Associations Differences in status closure arrangements in our three communities will be examined in two behavioral areas: (1) formal 4. See Appendix A, question 25. 5. Had we prior to our status consensus analysis hypothesized the direction of our status closure findings we would have predicted the original order: Factory Town (high) - Old Town - Lake Town (low). It is felt at this point that there is little to choose from.in this respect. The discussion of the interrelationships among the variables in Chapter VI would not be affected by formal choice of another hypothesis for test, since the procedure and findings would have been identical. 154 association life, and (2) informal friendships and visiting patterns. The selection of associations for analysis in each community involved three steps. First, associations were defined as organiza- tions having an identity symbolized by a definite name known to all, and some degree of internal vertical differentiation. This eliminated groups of friends and buddies, and amorphous groupings of people understood to have certain things in common, such as "the 400”, "the 398's", and so on. - Second, since it was clearly impossible to analyze the universe of associations in each town because of budget, time, and personnel limitations, an attempt was made to "sample" associations. Since only a few could be chosen it was necessary to get relatively large ones. .At the same time, it was felt desirable to "match" them from commnity to conmunity as far as this was possible. The result was a list of eight associations in each town, six of which were present in all three. These six were the American Legion, the Masonic Lodge, the PTA and the Moose Lodge, all of which are affiliated to larger state or national bodies; and the Country Clubs and Hospitaleuxilliaries of the three towns. The latter two seemed to have much the same function in all the communities. In addition to these, the Lake Town and Old Town lists included the Oddfellows, balanced by the Elks in Factory Town. The Knights of Columbus, present in Lake Town and Factory Town, was matched by a luncheon club, the Exchange Club, in Old Town. These are the major organizations of the communities, and our analysis will be concerned exclusively with them. ‘We were 155 perfectly aware when involved in choosing them, of the dangers we were inviting, particularly massing certain exclusive groups like music and literary clubs. This remains as a limitation on our findings. Third, the membership lists of our organizations were obtained. Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain lists for all of them. Ne,therefore, had to proceed without the Mason list in Old Town, the Moose list in Lake Town and the PTA list in Factory Town. In addition, the Oddfellows of both Lake Town and Old Town proved to be too small to be useful for purposes of statistical analysis. ‘With this attrition, we were left with 19 associations, 7 in Factory Town, and 6 in Old Town and Lake Town. It would be possible to analyze each association separately in each town, or to compare like associations from.town to town. But such procedures are not apt to yield clear-cut comparisons. Since we are comparing the communities, it is felt necessary to develop a single measure of associational closure that can be applied to each town. This assumes that each community has an associational structure that, infigggg, will exhibit some degree of closure. Ideally, some measure of association should be the tool of comparison. However, even the weakest of such tests, the chi square test, is inadequate for our data. Chi square does not meet the requirements of our data because its value depends on the number of cases and the number of degrees of freedom, both of which vary from community to community. Since chi square is ruled out, estimates of correlation based on it, such as C or E; are also worthless. In fact, 156 exhaustive search and consultation revealed that no statistical test in existence could legitimately be applied to our data. This means that some ggwhgg_method of comparison had to be developed. The following procedure is complex and cumbersome, but I think it is adequate for the task. Table 25 gives: (1) actual distributions of members by status level in each association in each of the communities; (2) totals of these; (3) the mean deviationfor each status level; and (4) the proportion of the total number of association members consti- tuted by each association. In understanding the following procedure it will be helpful to keep this table in mind. We may compute for each association6 an ASSOCIATION DEVIATION SCORE, as follows: Letxa - Association Deviation Score Xa ' (el'ol)adjL1 '+ (e2-02)adjL2 -+ (e3-03)adjL3 -+ (e4-o4)adjL4 NL where: NL - the number of status levels (always four) e1 I the expected percentage of the total membership falling within a given status level 01 - the observed percentage of the total membership falling within a given status level (cl-01) - (cl-01) X the percentage of the total adle number in the association falling within L1 6. In this and subsequent analyses all association members judged four or more times (plus all those judged three times identically) regardless of whether they weregjudged consensually, form.the universe of analysis. In Laketown especially, the numbers become much too small for purposes of manipulation if only the consensually judged are used. 157 To compute anXa one must: (1) compute the percentage of club members falling within each status level (this is found in Table 25) (2) compute the expected percentages of club members falling within a given status level (this is the percentage of the total association universe membership that also falls within a given status level) (3) compute, for each status level, (e1-01) Example: For the Lake Town PTA, the deviation in status level I would be 15.3 - 25.2, or -9.9. Figures for the other three status levels would be 6.8, 1.8, and 1.2 respectively. (4) control for differences in the number of persons in different status levels, and also for large percentage differences resulting from small numbers. To do this, ‘multiply each deviation (e1-ol) by the percentage the total status level membership constitutes of the total association membership universe. This is (e1-01)adj. Example: For the Lake Town PTA, multiply -9.9 by 25.2, yielding 2.49; 6.8 by 25.4, yielding 1.73, etc. (5) sump the adjusted deviations, (el-ol) and divide adj's’ by the number of status levels. Example: For the Lake Town PTA the sum of the adjusted deviations is 5.01. Divided by the number of status levels (always four), the final figure 13 10250 This 18 X‘s These steps yield an.Xa for each association. Since this figure is based on percentages it can be used to compare associations with one another, and also permits computation of the mean of‘xa's for a given community. These means, furthermore, can legitimately be compared. Let us call this mean of adjusted deviations an Index of .Associational Status Level Overconcentration, and simply shorten this cumbersome term to the symbols ASO. For each community, then, the A30 will equal: 158 haamucouwuos doom as haasoeuump voom s Aooo.uv Aoso.v Aeea.v eon..v Amo~.V xe~u.v asxoom.v 0.0. max on ea. «H. mm. as «Nu ~m..~w, - Ae.~ q. Ae.oev Am.~ev jaw.m~v Am.enw1 m.wH ~o~ - m we ow mu m» Aa.m~V no.0mv Am.mmV A..~mv Aa.a~v Ae.n~v A..Hmv m.~ mNN m «e on as «N as Am.e~v “n.0sv Am.~nv an.s v A...nv Am.hmv “~.n~V m... as. e. as m as mm mm Aw.euv An.m~v Am.an Ah." v A~.e~v Ae.a v an.osv o.o. mm. x mm m as a mu 330m. $533.” 930 huucsoo once: 334 .30: come..— .84 a case see Aooo.HV AHmo.v Aue~.v AmNH.v ANMH.V Amue.v Amme.v asaoec.v a.m an“ so mm. mm OOH as am. mm 3.5 w 3... w G; u 3:: .. ~35 3..., a G; o e.s «m s H. o . ea m e Ah.w~v Am.a~v Aa.omv an.m~v Ao.eav an.omv Am.aev Am.omv a... meu a. as as e. as am am Am.a~v Am.H~v Am.smv Ao.auv Ao.a~v Ae.~Hv A..HMV an.m~V o.¢ .HN m. we a“ mu NH as m. As.env Au.eev Ao.m~v Am.~sv Ao.smv Aq.~.v A..~ev aa~.mev o.¢. can an an «s an «a Na 5 maouoa 0 mo M exam acommz. pogo euucsoo omooz .xod «meow seemed c309 huouoom Aooo.ev AmHH.V Amo~.v AhoH.v AmoH.v A~H~.v «.AN.H.V «Nm No «a. on an an. an ~s.aev Ao.umwx a..smv AJ~¢.njw, 1~m.mav Ae.qev as.mewl a.¢ em a. an n m a. a. AH.~mv Am.mmv A..oev an.eee An.oav an.mmV Am.an a.m me. am no m e an ow As.m~v no.H~v A¢.hHV AH.HmV Ae.umv Am.wmv Au.~mV a.m an. m. mm a. m. «m m. Au.m~v Au.s~v Am.e~v Au.msv AH.~ev Ae.m~v ann.mev o.o. NM. me an an em cu m .>on com: ofiwuoa :OHwoA_9&<. 0 «o x psaujwuucsou .xd<..mmom accumz_ .aHM pace axed .ooauecseaoo mouse a“ Ho>oA usuuum Heeoom he manmuonamz coauowoommd_>uuuusao> mamuoa >H HHH HH naeuoe >H HHH HH naouoa >H HHH HH H Ho>oa mauoum .mN manna Table 26. Deviations From Expected Membership Levels in Selected Voluntary Associations by Social Status in Three Communities. Lake Town Status Hosp. ountry level ETA_ Masons .Aux. Club K of C Legion I 2.49 .45 4.26 5.80 1.84 .25 II 1.73 .86 1.57 1.56 1.91 1.18 III .58 .39 6.93 5.71 2.67 .58 IV .21 .52 .28 2.09 1.17 .63 Totals 5.01 2.22 13.04 15.16 7.59 2.64 X3 1.25 .56 3.26 3.79 1.90 .66 Factory,Town Am. Hosp. Country Legion Aux. Moose Masons Club Elks K of C I 8.35 4.10 8.74 2.37 7.50 2.48 2.86 II .14 .92 .95 .06 .32 1.78 1.81 III 6.37 3.10 6.26 1.49 4.22 .69 .23 IV .04 .27 1.25 .07 .50 .11 .04 Totals 14.90 8.39 17.20 3.99 12.54 5.06 4.94 Xa 3.73 2.10 4.30 1.00 3.14 1.27 1.24 Old Town : . Am. Hosp. Country Exchange are easier .sse- ose .9129... £12.12... I 1.09 1.21 1.83 2.37 2.47 1.09 11 .82 2.87 1.39 5.73 1.58 5.37 III .54 1.94 .66 .66 1.20 .03 IV 2.09 .66 3.85 9.11 6.69 7.34 Totals 4.54 6.68 7.73 17.87 11.94 13.83 X3 1.14 1.67 1.93 4.47 2.99 3.46 160 xa+Xb+xc+xnggg Na-i-b-I-cI-n... We are now ready to test the differences in status closure among our commities, as measured by the A80. Table 26 gives adjusted deviations, sums and means for each association. Table 27 gives ASO's and'Mean Dev.gso's. It will be seen that the differences Table 27. ASO's and Mean Dev.Aso's for Three Communities. Comnity 2.5.9: Mean Dev. ASO* Lake Town 1.90 1.08 Factory Town 2.40 1.14 Old Town 2.61 1.45 * Computed from figures in Table 26. are in the expected direction, Lake Town having the smallest A80 and Old Town the largest, with Factory Town falling in between, but closer to Old Town. 'We thus conclude that our hypothesis is confirmed by the data. Consider the associations in the light of their presumed functions as either dividing or integrating the community. In each town we observe considerable differences in this respect. The statistic, 'Mean Dev.Aso, summarizes these differences for each community. 'We observe the greatest spread in Old Town, where the mean deviation is higher than that in the other towns. When we examine specific associations we perceive that some, the Masons, and to a lesser extent, the PTA, seem to come closer to 161 the integrative variety, while others, most notably the Moose and to a lesser extent the Country Clubs, appear to be more divisive. The Legion exhibits no consistent pattern, having a low.ASO in Lake Town and Old Town, but a low one in Factory Town. The Hospital Auxilli- aries also seem to have no pattern, being in Lake Town clearly a status-typed body, but in Old Town tending more toward the integrative type. Thus, all three communities have a considerable spread in organizational overconcentration within status levels. Finally, the Eggggg of these differences is practically identical, being 3.33 in Old Town, 3.30 in Factory Town and 3.23 in Lake Town (see Table 26: these figures represent the scale distance from the lowest to the highest.Xa for each community), despite the fact that they cover different segments of the status closure scale. It is the sheerest speculation, of course, but we wish to suggest that there may be a constant functional relation between integrating and dividing forces in community stratification arrangements.7 This is one possible interpretation of these data. This idea might well inform future conmunity stratification studies. C. The Data: Friendship and Visiting Patterns Sociologically, friendship and visiting, informal behavior patterns so ubiquitous, differ from associational life in that they are (in theory, at least) private and thus enjoy an element of 7. On the other hand, thesefigures might represent no more than an arithmetic accident. Unfortunately, there is no way of testing this with our data. 162' freedom of choice and intimacy not typically present in associational life. In some respects, the principal differences between the two types has been the subject of some of the most trenchant theorizing in sociology. ‘While not explicitly discussed by Cooley as a variety of primary group,8 the friendship certainly has the sociological properties discussed by him: initimacy, face-to-face contact, smallness, and often, long duration. Toennies gemeinschaft1 while emphasizing and perhaps idealizing the importance of consanguinity, nevertheless also seems to well characterize friendship, while gesellschaft epitomizes the 9 Much the same polarity is 10. rational instrumental association. caught up in Weber's communal and societal types of actions. What these and other discussions suggest for our purposes is that we might well expect quite different stratification patterns in the two situations. Perhaps in an ethos of ideological equalitarianiam the norms defining public (that is, associational) behavior would mitigate against a high level of status closure, but would not apply to private life. In such a situation one would expect a low degree of associational closure, but a higher level in informal life. In any case, a test of our status closure hypothesis on friendship and visiting data may both illuminate the relationship between the two arenas of social life and serve as another test of the findings of the analysis of the voluntary association materials. 8. Charles H. Cooley, Social Organization (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915), pp. 23-4. 9. Ferdinand Toennies, Fundamental Concepts of Sociologyh(New York: 1940), Charles P. Loomis trans. 10. Max Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization. (New York: Oxford, 1947), Parsons and Henderson trans. 163 The friendship and visiting data were obtained from the sample members at the termination of the interviews. Each respondent was presented with a list of all sample members and asked to check once those with whom.we was acquainted with well enough to speak to on the street in a friendly way. After the respondent had completed this task he was asked to go back over the list and check those with whom we had exchanged home visits. It was made clear that this excluded the "visits" of repairman, doctors, ministers, etc. Despite the fact that the individuals were identified by listing of their addresses some errors crept into the checking process. In a few cases names were misspelled, creating a bias.. In two or three cases the checking was unfinished due to circumstances beyond the control of the interviewer. But for the most part it was felt that the data obtained were reasonably good. The resulting data were analyzed using a technique presented by Coleman.11 For simplicity of analysis status levels I and II, 11. James 3. Coleman, "Relational Analysis: The Study of Social Organi- zations with Survey Methods", Human Organization, Vol. XVII (1958-9), pp. 28-36. The index is a ratio of "actual minus expected over max- imum minus expected". ". . . the expected value can be defined as follows: Let hi I number of persons in subgroup 1 m1 - number of choices made by persons in subgroup i n - number of persons in total group 311' expected number of choices from persons in subgroup i to other in subgroup 1 Then: ni-l eii ' n - 1 Having determined the expected (random) number of in-group choices we can determine the tendency toward in-group preference by the following equation: Let hi be the measure of in-group preference aii be the number of in-group choices Then: 164 and III and IV were combined. Table 29 gives the results for both reciprocated and unreciprocated speaking acquaintances and home visits for the three communities. Furthermore, for purposes of comparison, the index is computed on both the consensually designated, and on all those judged positively four or more times, plus those judged identically three times. It should be noted that the socie- metric procedure used was inherently self-verifying since all acquain- tance and visit claims can be checked simply by ascertaining whether the party checked on the sheet reciprocated in naming the subject. Table 28 gives the per cents of total acquaintance and visit claims that were reciprocated in each town. The differences are consider- able, especially in the case of visiting, and in both types of rela- tions they are in the same direction.12 11 (continued) 311 ' 911 - h es hi m1 - 311 (w an “ii 11) a - e 11'1- “ 11 (when an 811) 8ii The index may vary between 1 and -1. If all sociometric choices were made within one's group, the index would be 1.00, if all were made without, it would be -l.00. If choices were random it WWId be 0.000 12. These computations were made by Norbert Wiley and I am indebted to him for theme See his Politics in Three Communities, Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1962, Table VI-I, Chapter Six. 165 The relatively few cases of verified home visits presents a serious problem.for our analysis. If we remove the nonconsensuals from our analysis, as well as the nonreciprocals, the total number of cases is reduced to a point where no analysis is possible. Table 28. Reciprocated Speaking and Visiting Relations as a Per Cent of all Relations, in Three Communities.* Visitingrrelations _§peakinggrelations Community __3L_ Per cent __£1_ Per cent Lake Town 189 41.5 2755 35.4 Factory Town 175 34.5 2425 32.3 Old Town 283 29.1 2460 30.7 * Lifted from Wiley, 92. cit., with permission. Accordingly, we are included in Table 29 data on the nonconsensually judged. Now consider Table 29. }In the case of reciprocated acquaint- ances of the consensually judged only, the direction of the differences is precisely that predicted. However, if we include in the analysis the nonconsensually judged, Lake Town achieves a higher score than does Factory Town, with Old Town's remaining the highest. Turning to reciprocated visits, we observe little change in the Old Town- and Factory Town situations, but enormous increase in the Lake Town score. AApparently there is something about Lake Town not present in Factory Town that could account for this difference between consensu- als and nonconsensuals. 166 Table 29. Extent of.Acquaintance and Visiting Closure as ‘Measured by Coleman Index Scores in Three Communities. Lake Factory Old Town Town Town Reciprocated acquaintances, (including nonconsensuals)* .076(1364)** .048(824) .095(1l78) Reciprocated acquaintances, (excluding nonconsensuals) .093(l60) .121(350) .149(600) Reciprocated visits (including nonconsensuals) .447(112) .053(58) .136(94) All acquaintance claims, (including nonconsensuals) .352*** .134 .048 .297(2862) .012(1505) -.075(2373) All acquaintance claims, (excluding nonconsensuals) .245 .123 .148 -.312(3°7) .103(532) -.156(1242) All visit claims, includin nonconsensuals .455 261 .337 ( g ) .029‘295) 1104(135) -.156(339) .All visit claims (excluding nonconsensuals) 1.000 .245 .343 -.329(51> .346‘90) -.001(157) * AAll figures for reciprocated relationships are measures of high status preference, but these are always identical with low status preferences because of the structural symmetry of reciprocity. ** .All figures in parentheses are N's on which the index is computed. *** The top figure represents high status preference, the low one, low status preference. Inspection of the nonreciprocated choices confounds the picture nicely. Here, there seem to be three consistencies: (1) visits are likely to occur within status levels; (2) the members 167 of the lower status levels in Old Town tend more consistently to choose outside their level than is the case in either Factory Town or Lake Town; and (3) Lake Town upper status internal preferences are greatest in all four cases, while Factory Town upper status choices are lowest in three of the four situations. In addition, internal preferences seem to occur more frequently among upper status levels. Perhaps we should concentrate our analysis on the consensually judged only, on the grounds that the nonconsensually judged, being unverified, have no place in an analysis such as this. Note the direction of lower status choices for the nonreciprocated - the highest internal preference score is that of Factory Town and lowest that of Lake Town, in the case of acquaintances and visits both. This is interesting, for it is precisely the direction we would have expected on the basis of our original hypothesis of degree and type of industrialization: the industrialized, single-industry community exhibiting the greatest closure and the nonindustrialized community displaying the least. The trouble is that the data on reciprocated choices only is inconsistent with this interpretation: in this case, Lake Town is highest and Factory Town is lowest. I am afraid that these inconsistencies make any conclusions virtually impossible. It could be argued, I suppose, that the "consistency of the inconsistencies" here merely reflects the freedom.of private life. But this would be to assume that status-related or status-determined cultural and life-style differences were of little salience. {And a 168 host of other studies indicate otherwise. Or it may be that our measures of status and of interaction are too crude to catch up the subtleties of social ranking and social interaction. If this is the case it can be demonstrated only by further studies. De Summary This concludes our analysis of status closure. In the case of the associational analysis it was demonstrated that the direction of differences was the same as in the case of our status consensus analysis: highest closure in Old Town, lowest in Lake Town. Also, as in the case of our status consensus analysis, Factory Town appeared to be closer to Old Town than to Lake Town. Our analysis of acquaintances and visiting patterns in the three communities proved inconclusive due to the many inconsistencies between universes of analysis. It was suggested that perhaps our sociometric technique requires greater technical sophistication. CHAPTER VI SUMMARY.AND CONCLUSIONS In this final chapter an attempt will be made to pull together the findings of the three previous ones and assess their collective significance. AA. The Findings Assembled It is assumed that the data analyses of the previous three chapters have given some demonstration that status criteria, status consensus and status closure exhibit considerable variation from community to community. (While one study such as this is indeed flimsy grounds for any but the most tentative assertions that empirical generalizations have been discovered, I feel that the evidence is such that further study along these lines is desirable.) The differences, as expected, were greatest between the two industrialized communities on the one hand, and the nonindustrialized one on the other. The differences between the two industrialized ones were more problematic. Status criteria were elicited from sample members by asking them to describe the characteristics of the "social classes" they had previously delineated in their community. Nine criteria were mentioned ten. times or more: (1) "economic"; (2) "occupational"; (3) "social life"; (4) "behavioral and attitudinal characteristics"; (5) "morals"; (6) "ethnicity"; (7) "civic participation"; (8) "old families"; and (9) "ecological". The frequency of mention varied 169 170 from 100 in the case of "economic" to 11 for "ecological". The pre-eminence of economic and occupational criteria, along with the relative insignificance of old families and particularly of education are the most interesting properties of the listing. Our interest centered on the differences between the towns. As predicted, economic criteria were more important in Lake Town, occupational criteria more so in Factory Town and Old Town. Old families were evidently of some significance in Old Town, being mentioned by 10.1 per cent.of the sample members there. Ethnicity was also more important in Old Town. Ethnicity was unmentioned in Lake Town. Social life was mentioned by twice as many Lake Towners as Factory Town or Old Town sample members, while moral criteria were about twice as important in Old Town and Factory Town as they were in Lake Town. Our findings with regard to status consensus were quite clear-cut, especially the expected difference between Lake Town on the one hand, and Factory Town and Old Town on the other. Clearly, little consensus exists in Lake Town, while such consensus is very high in Old Town. Factory Town consistently fell somewhere in between the two, but evidently closer to Old Town than to Lake Town. To some extent the unexpected differences between Old Town and Factory Town could be attributed to a methodological factor, the ceiling effect, but the existence of two large State institutions in Factory Town was of importance as well, since it clearly tended to raise the consensus level there. This was due to the considerable difference between judges' consensus upon institutional versus plant blue-collar workers. 171 The old families probably also played a role in the lower level of consensus in Old Town, but this proved difficult to 8.88688. Table 30. Summary of Findings in Three Communities. Variable Lake Town Factory Town Old Town Status criteria: 1.Economic more Occupational more Occupational more important than important than important than occupational economic economic 2."Social life" "Social life" rela- "Social life" rela- relatively impor- tively unimportant tively unimportant tant 3."Morals" rela- "Morals" relatively "Morals" relatively tively unimportant important important 4.Ethnicity non- Ethnicity of minor Ethnicity relatively existent importance important 5."Old families" "Old families" "Old.femd1ies" of unimportant ‘of minor importance moderate importance Status consensus: Low ‘Middle to high Very high Status closure: l.Associational ‘Associational closure Associational closure very low 2.1nformal clo- sure high for uppers, low for lowers moderately high Informal closure low for uppers, high for lowers closure very high Informal closure low for uppers, high for lowers Our study of social closure pursued two avenues of analysis: voluntary association memberships and informal acquaintances and visit- ing patterns. The results of the former analysis were relatively 172 unambiguous - Lake Town clearly displayed a much lower level of closure than either of the other two towns, these being quite close, with Old Town slightly higher. The analysis of informal life proved essentially abortive. It was clear that visiting behavior exhibited somewhat greater status closure than did acquaintance reports. Aside from this, Lake Town seemed to display a relatively high upper status closure and a relatively low lower status closure for visiting behavior. Both Factory Town and Old Town exhibited relatively low upper status closure and higher lower status closure in visiting relationships. Beyond this our findings were inconclusive. Thus, Lake Town, our nonindustrialized community, exhibits a complex of stratification characteristics which set it off from our other two towns. Table 30 summarizes the major findings of our research. B. Discussion of the Findings 1. Status Criteria Consider first the fact that economic criteria led all others if we consider the combined data (for all three towns). This is perhaps to be expected in our market society with its money economy.1 But the dominant theme of our modern economic life, and the epitome of its rationalism, is the great industrial or business enterprise. 1. See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Rinehart and Co., Inc., 1944) 173 Wealth, as Weber noted, in his discussion of capitalism, has practi- cally everywhere been an object of intense striving.2 ‘And wealthy men have often been prestigious figures. But in modern times it is the bureaucratically organized economic enterprises that have increasingly become the principal condition of wealth getting. One's occupation, viewed as a complex of skills and knowledge for sale on the labor market, has become the decisive condition for money- making as the employee society grows. I believe that this is why one's occupation, even in a money and market economy, has so frequently been asserted to be the most important determinant of one's status position.3 Our finding that occupational criteria were more important quantitatively in our industrialized communities is consistent with this generalized fact about modern society. In these communities the rationalism of modern life, in the form.af occupational positions incorporated in large industrial and commercial organizations, and in 2. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), Talcott Parsons trans, pp. 13-31. 3. See Kahl and Davis, 22. gig,, who concluded, after an analysis of 19 stratification variables, that the single best indicator of status was occupation. Note that this interpretation differs from that of the functionalists, who argue that the prestige of an occupation is principally dependent on the magnitude of the con- tribution it makes to society. For this school of thought, money and other occupational rewards serve merely to entice people to make the sacrifices necessary to climb into the position. See Kingsley Davis, "Souls Principles of Stratification", & - Soc. Rev., Vol. 10 (1945), pp. 242-9; and Bernard Barber, 22. gig,, Chapters 1 and 2. See also W. L. Warner, Socigl Class in America, Chapter 1. 174 the service of ideologies of production and efficiency,4 has penetra- ted most deeply. Conversely, in Lake Town, which is an industrial backwater, and whose connection with the larger economy is primarily as an aggregate of consumption units, this rationalism is not so pervasive. This does not mean that one's economic fate is any the less important in determining his status, only that the structural condi- tions of attaining high or low economic rewards differ.5 The relatively greater significance of “morals" as a criterion of status in our industrialized communities can be under- stood by an extension of the foregoing reasoning. The rationalism of the firm takes the form.af bureaucratization, with all its rules of punctuality, persistent work habits, sobriety and submission to discipline. As is well known, the range of motivations sufficient to impel men to adequately and consistently perform industrial jobs such that the results of the work can be calculated and projected over long spans of time is not excessively broad. .Attempts to organize production rationally in traditionalistic contexts testify to this. (On the other hand, it is equally clear that the range is not so narrow that only the Protestant Ethic can suffice.)6 The greater significance of "morals" as a criterion of status in our industrialized communities probably lies in the fact that the 4. See, above all else, Reinhard Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry (New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1956). 5. For the empirical differences, see Table C-II, Appendix C. 6. See Bendix, pp. cit. See also his "A Study of Managerial Ideologies", Econ. Dev. and Cult. Change, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 118-28. 175 habits of work discipline in the enterprise are conceived as morally good. To work is good; idleness is evil. It is common knowledge that our industrial organizations have always been the bearers of this conception of work;7 thus, the high incidence of the application of moral criteria in our industrialized communities. The low inci- dence of this criterion in Lake Town may be due not only to the relative absence of penetration by the rationalism of the firm, but also to the chronic unemployment rate. It does no good to enjoin men to work if work opportunities do not exist. So the structure of the situation would seem.to be propitious for a relative tolerance. The absence of ethnicity in Lake Town would seem to be an anomalous finding. Since it is usually thought that the effect of economic rationalism is to smash traditional structures like ethnic groups one would expect ethnicity to be especially important in Lake Town, which has a proliferation of such groups, most prominently French-Canadian, Irish and Polish. These are all Catholic and still retain their separate churches.8 Perhaps the equal Protestant-Catholic 7. Industrial firms have rationally attempted to control the incul- cation of such motivations in unreliable labor forces. See, for instance, Liston Pope's Millhands and Preachers (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1942). Pope documents beautifully the problems faced by industrial‘managers in a situation of emerging indus- trialization. The labor force, actual and potential, was utterly unreliable. The industrialists actually made formal arrangements with church officials to remake them into more acceptable types for industrial purposes. The compact, of course, served the interests of both institutions. 8. .According to Herberg, the significance of this lies in the fact that religion supplants the larger ethnic culture, which can be maintain- ed only illegitimately in the face of pressures to assimilate. See ProtestantyyCgtholic,gJew, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955). 176 9 makes status judgements on the basis of ethnicity balance there impossible.10 In both Factory Town and (especially) Old Town ethnic criteria occur, despite the fact that extremely small minorities are present.11 It would be pressing matters much too far to interpret this as either a necessary or probable industrialization correlate, since important ethnic situations have existed independently of industrialization. .And yet there is a connection already noted. To the extent that such.mdnorities, however small, fail to share basic institutional values with the rest of the community, it may be expected that they will be the object of moral disapproval. Perhaps it is the fact that Lake Town Catholics and Protestants share roughly equally not only the main tenets of the Protestant Ethic (no irony intended), but Herberg's "religion of Americanism", that best accounts for the complete absence of ethnic criteria there. (The potential objects of such moral disapproval are, culturally, all well within Western traditions (unlike the much smaller groups in Old Town and Factory Town). Associated with this is the fact that all of them.have relatively long histories in the community, with the result that they tend to be relatively dispersed in income and power hierarches. Thus, cross-cutting cleavage may also play a role. 9. See Table C-III, Appendix C. 10. Wiley (22. cit.) observed that political conflict there was high, but that this_seemed to occur independently of religion. 11. See Table C-III, Appendix c. 177 It was in Old Town that the highest proportion of sample members mentioned old family residence as a status criterion. Yet, even in Old Town this ranked only seventh (tied with civic participa- tion) in frequency of mention, and was negligible in the other two towns. Even if Old Town once did approximate Yankee City in the strength of its genealogical lines this is clearly no longer the case. While the vestiges of the past still linger, it is clear that industrial and finance organizations, along with a high rate of immi- gration (see Table C-III, Appendix C) have to a considerable extent superceded the old families as determiners of status. 2. Status Criteria and Status Consensus Status criteria would seem to be related to the level of consensus in rather simple fashion: if people hold differing ideas about the criteria, it seems likely that they would differ on the placement of individuals. This is a direct relation. ‘While our data offer no really good test, we must note that, while practically all the criteria occur with ggg§_frequency in all three communities, the levels of consensus diverge greatly. In fact, it is in Lake Town that we should, on this argument, expect to find the highest consensus, since it is there that the criteria are slightly more concentrated than elsewhere (see Table 7, Chapter III). There are other ways to approach the problem. It is a commonly accepted axiom, based on considerable evidence, that con- sensus is often the result of a high frequency of 178 communication.12 If this principle were operative in our three communi- ties it is again in Lake Town that we should find the greatest consensus, for it is here that the greatest amount of communication occurs. .Analysis shows that the mean number of visiting relations per person was 1.37 there, while only 177 and 189 in Factory Town and Old Town respectively.13 The same was true of speaking acquain- tances. In Lake Town, the mean per person was 14.20, while in Factory Town it was 9.69 and in Old Town 9.29. Obviously communication is not the key to the difference. Familiarity does not increase consensus. It is our thesis that the significant relationship between status criteria and status consensus is an indirect one, mediated by our independent variable, industrialization. The bureaucratic structures of industry and finance in penetrating the community create the dominant hierarchies of status. The comparison of lower status factory workers with lower status State employees in Chapter IV indicated the extremely high degree of consensus on the factory worker's status relative to that of the State employees. Thus, just as community differences in status criteria are interpreted as consequences of extensive industrialization, so, too, are differences in status consensus. The structure of industry "skews" the criteria 12. In socio-psychological research, the classic work remains, to my knowledge, Muzafer Sherif's WA.Study of Some Social Factors in Perception", Arch. Psychy, No. 187 (1935). Note also that this idea is a very basic tenet in both empirical and normative political theories of democracy. 13. These computations were performed by Norbert Wiley, to whom I am indebted for them. 179 of status judgements; it also "clarifies" one's status in terms of industrial occupational structure. 3. Status Closure Differences in status closure between the communities can be less securely related to differences in industrialization. Our approach will be more devious and utilize assumptions for which we can present no evidence. First, I think we may fairly expect greater closure in situations where status consensus is high, because in such situations people know where they and others stand. Now, we know that this is empirically the case in our communities. Thus, levels of status closure can be linked to degrees of industrialization in this slightly circuitous fashion. But this is not all that may be said. Community differences in status closure imply different degree of social exclusiveness within status levels (this is, in fact, a tautology). On the face of it, this would seem.to imply higher levels of status awareness, or status consciousness. Our investigations have not really touched upon this latter. But I think it safe to assume that status consciousness is a social psychological variable intervening between the structural phenomena of industrialization and status consensus. Thus, a high level of status consciousness is the more proximate determinant of a high level of status consensus. Status consciousness is certainly a condition of high status consensus; therefore, since in situations where consensus is high 180 we may reasonably assume relatively high status consciousness, we would expect high consensus situations to be associated with those of greater closure, to the extent that status consciousness is a condition of status closure. That this is the case, however, is by no means certain. The social exclusiveness suggested by high social closure does not neces- sarily imply a high status consciousness on the part of participants in characteristic activities of a status level. It is entirely possible, perhaps often the rule, that associational activities, visit- ing, friendships and the like, are engaged in with little or no thought of the status exclusiveness that may be involved. To put this in a somewhat different way, the cultures and life styles of different status levels may occasion a high level of behavioral closure inde- pendent of status consciousness. Our argument ("speculations" might be a better term) has carried us to the point of suggesting that cultural differences between status levels may be the decisive determinants of status closure. This raises the question of whether, or better, to what extent, such cultural differences may be imputed to industrialism,14 Part of the answer 14. By "cultural" and "culture" I am.here denoting a more limited range of phenomena than would most cultural anthropologists. In their usage "culture" often includes anything of a symbolic or meaning- ful nature that is transmitted (or perhaps, transmissible) and shared by some human grouping. It thus includes all the rules of social structures as well as systems of knowledge and belief such as technologies, religions and science itself. Upon such usage status evaluations and criteria would constitute part of a comp munity's culture. However, the range of things here denoted by "cultural" is restricted to such phenomena as attitudes and values, styles or techniques of homemaking, leisure, child raising, and beliefs about such things as the supernatural, the nature of the community and its inhabitants, various social structuresiandi the groups, etc. There is little to be gained here by dragg ng nb old 'culture-society" argument. I personally believe this to e- principally a sematic confusion. In my opinion, the best conc§p tual treatment of this problem is that of Siegfried Nadel, in 18 The Social Foundations of Anthropology. 181 to this question might seem to lie in wage and salary differentials, which admittedly are important shapers of cultural orientations. But money, as such, it seems to me, primarily sets limits such as size, quality, quantity, etc., on what can be had, done, or participated in. Furthermore, wage and salary differentials are not peculiar to industrialism, but characterize virtually all of modern economic l ife. 'While considerable research into the nature of class cultures has been done,15 very little of it has attempted to isolate specifically the cultural effects of industrialism.16 The only recent analysis is that of Inkeles.17 He has shown, admittedly in highly provisional fashion, that industrial work, independent of cultural and national differences, tends to produce similarities in, "experience, perception and values", among those sharing a common status. Using survey samples from several countries, Inkeles investi- gated the relative incidence of such things as the tendency to laugh and cry, the "optimismemastery" complex, and work values, concluding that these were to some extent determined by the industrial work 15. I will not here attempt to either encompass this literature bibliographically or, through listing of representative works. It is a very well-known literature and has already been the object of a number of bibliographies. 16. There are some excellent antecedents. For nineteenth century England see J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, The ége of the Chartists, CLongmans Green, London, 1930). For the U.S., see Pope, 22, cit. 17. .Alex Inkeles,'Industrial Man: The Relation of Status to Experience, Perception and Value:VAmerican J. of Soc., Vol. 66 (July 1960), pp. 1-31. 182 situation. Thus some evidence does indicate that industrial situations have somewhat standardized effects for at least some cultural traits.18 The above discussion, relating our findings to the major hypothesis of the study, that concerning industrial - nonindustrial status differences, has necessarily been partly speculative and gone somewhat beyond the data. This is both desirable and necessary. It is the purpose of sociology, as it is the purpose of any science, to strive for generalizations of the greatest scope possible. Generally, the further removed such generalizations as that concerning the general effects of the rationalism.of industrial society, the less securely are thqfounded on data. But it is only within such master formula- tions such as those characterizing industrial society generally, that such highly limited studies as this achieve sense and meaning. If, as Weber and many others saw, the rationalism of industry as the central dynamic of modern society tends to ramify throughout other segments of the social order and remake them in its image, this study stands as a small partial confirmation of this hypothesis. Our investigation of certain facets of the status arrange- ments in three communities has by no means yielded unambiguous or unquestioned results. However, it is felt that some degree of substan- tiation for the hypothesis has been discovered. Further substantiation 18. There are several rather complicated controversies here that I would prefer to avoid at the present time. Probably the most important of these is the assessment of the impact of education, versus other factors, in the creation of ”class cultures". Unfortunately, Inkeles does not appear to recognize the contro- versial nature of this problem (see p. 30, gp.‘gi§.). Recently, Bergel has maintained that it is precisely education that is decisive. See his excellent Social Stratification (New York: MeGraw-Hill, 1962), Part Five. 183 rests with students of the future. C. Problems and Limitations It remains only to mention the restrictions that must be placed on the study. It is hoped that placing this discussion of the study's limitations at the end will cause the reader to share with the writer the sense of the tentativeness and lack of sure conviction concerning the findings. The most obvious and also the most important limitation on the findings of our research has to do with the basic design itself. It was hoped to draw from three communities evidence for an hypothesis that probably requires 30 or more for a really sound test. Thus, the practical limitations set by funds, the needs of the sponsoring agency, and the capabilities of two individuals having greater commitments as well as this research, operated to severely restrict the scope of the study, when this was perhaps its most urgent methodological requirement. The three-community design represents a half-way house between the depth study of a single community and ecological correlation of a large number ' through use of existing data. Thus, we see that the highly provisional nature of the findings was, in a sense, inevitable. Perhaps, in the end, only the program of Reiss will suffice. Secondly, there are certain limitations on the data that was obtained. For one thing, our community samples are rather small for any but the most simple analysis. It is fortunate that in some cases it was possible to supplement analysis based on the sample population 184 with one based on the association members. It seems in retrospect that it would be more efficient to concentrate on nonsurvey methods of data collection, such as more reputational judges, greater use of records, extensive historical analysis, etc. Furthermore, the use of only ten reputational judges, despite the fact that Gordon regards this number as (barely) adequate, invites the introduction of idio- syncratic elements into the analysis. Undoubtedly, the control list technique of Hollingshead is superior, but it is also extremely time consuming. However, if a survey is eliminated it would probably become feasible. One more point. The use of so few associations in each community must cause us to reflect before assuming the associational closure findings to be valid. The roles of dozens of other groups in the towns have gone completely unresearched, and so. undiscovered. Third, our method may be thought of (with a little stretching) as that of ecological correlation.19 And since the number of cases is so few, data demonstrating in more microcosmic fashion the presumed relationships would have been desirable. Perhaps the Lynds' and Warner's models of industry-community analysis should be more closely 19. There has been a running argument in the literature over pre- cisely what "ecological correlation" means. This was touched off in 1950 by W. S. Robinson, in his "Ecological Correlations and the Behavior of Individuals", American Soc. Rev., Vol. 15, pp. 351-57. The principal point of contention has been whether such correlations are methodological substitutes for micro- analyses of individual characteristics unobtainable singly (such as votes), or investigations yielding findings concerning large- scale social phenomena (cities, regions, etc.) of theoretical interest in their own right. The argument is purely semantic, at one level: neither meaning, of course, is more "real" than the other. Here, we have the second in mind. For a recent discussion, see 0. D. Duncan, Ray P. Cuzzort, and Beverley Duncan, Statistical Geography (Glencoe; 111.: The Free Press, 1961) Chapter One. 185 adhered to in future investigations, budgets and other resources permitting. But this brings us back to the dilemma of intensive versus extensive analysis, to which no final solution will here be made. Fourth, we wish to raise a point little mentioned in the stratification literature. This is the salience of a set of stratification arrangements. In his study of a New York upstate community, Hicks20 wrote that, in his estimation, social stratifi- cation was rather unimportant alongside other community phenomena. A.very similar point was made by Vidich and Bensman, who wrote that, "Although . . . gggigl class does exist in the community, the numbers involved are relatively small and their importance is diminished by the public ideology of equality".21 Perhaps the differences between our communities are such as these: differences of importance. Perhaps status is simply unims portant in Lake Town, and this accounts for the configuration of stratification phenomena discovered there. It may be that in our study we have been guilty of an untenable assumption: that status has about equal importance from town to town, and that only its several properties very. Warner himself seems to have touched on at least one aspect of salience when he wrote that the gggpg_or province of status controls was one of two, "Questions about the access to each other of . . . the members of a given group".22 He felt that a status system could 20s HiCkS, 22s Cite ‘ 21. Vidich and Bensman, op. cit., p. 62. 22. Social Class in.America, pp. 257-8. 186 exhibit either a limited or inclusive hierarchy of status controls. Certainly an extremely limited one would have little salience. Finally, our investigations deliberately centered on only three dimensions of status, ignoring others of great importance. The most important of these latter (apart from salience), in my opinion, is the historical dimension. Many of the best community studies have been of interest precisely because they have illuminated the "main drift" of the larger society in the history of the community. In my opinion the best of these remains the Middletown volumes. Our investigation has necessarily dispensed with this type of analysis at any other than the most superficial of levels, and is the poorer for it. The basic dilemma of modern community studies, whether stratification is the focus or not, lies in the choice between doing intensive and historical analysis of one community, or superficial but extensive analyses of many. If this study has any merit at all, it must be traced to our attempt to steer a course between the horns of this dilemma, through the comparison of three case studies. BIBLIOGRAPHY Amory, C., The Proper Bostonians (Boston: Dutton, 1947). Barber, B., Social Stratification: A Comparative Analysis of Structure and Process (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1956). Barnard, C., The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1938). Barnard, C., "Functions and Pathology of Status Systems in Formal Organizations", in Industry and Society,‘William.F. Whyte ed., (New York: MeGraw-Hill, 1946), pp. 207-43. Bendix, R., “A Study of Managerial Elites", Econ. Dev. and Cult. Change (V01. 5, NOs 1, 1957), PP. 118-280 Bendix, R., Work and Authority in Industgy (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1956). Bendix, R., and Lipset, 8., Class, Status and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1953). Bergel, E., Social Stratification (New York: MeGraw-Hill, 1962). Blau, P., Bureaucracy in Modern Society (New York: Random.House paperback, 1956). Brotz, H., "Stratification and the Political Order", American J. of Soc., Vol. LXIV (March 1959). . Chapin, F. S., The‘Measurement of Social Stgtus by the Use of the Social Status Scale (Minneapolis, Minn.: Univ. of Minn. Press, 1933). Cooley, C. H., Social Organization (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915). Dahrendorf, R., Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1959) Danley, R..A., and Ramsey, C. E., Standardization and Application of 5 Level of Living Scale for Farm and Nonfarm Families (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ..Agr. EXP. Stats Mam. 362, JUly 1959). Davis, A. , and Gardner, B., and Gardner, M. , Deep South: A Social- .Anthropological Study of Caste and Class (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1941). 187 188 Drake, St. Claire, and Cayton, H., Black Metropolis (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1945). Duncan, 0. D., “A.Socio-Economic Index for All Occupations", Popula- tion Research and Training Center (Univ. of Chicago), unpublished. Duncan, 0. D., Cuzzort, R. P., and Duncan, B., Statistical Geography (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1961). Duncan, 0. D., and Artis, J., Social Stratification in a Pennsylvania Rural Community (Pennsylvania State Exp. Stat. Bull. 543, October 1951). Form, W., and Miller, D., Industry, Labor and the Community (New York: Harper, 1960). Gee, W., “A.Qua1itative Study of Rural Depopulation in a Single Township", American J. of Soc., Vol XXXIII (1933), pp. 21-31. Gerdon, ML, Social Class in.American Sociology (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1958). Gross, L., "The Use of Class Concepts in Social Research", American Jo Of SOCs, Vol. LIV (March 1949), PP. 409-210 Hammond, J. L., and Hammond, B., The.Age of the Chartists, (London: Longmans Green, 1930). Herberg, W., Protestant,yCatholic,_Jew (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday .Anchor, 1955). Hicks, 6., Small Town (New York: MacMillan, 1946). Hollingshead, A., Elmtown's Youth (New York: Wiley, 1949). Inkeles, A., "Industrial Man: The Relation of Status to Experience, Perception and Value", American J. of Soc., Vol. 66 (July 1959) PP. 1'31. Kahl, J., The American Class Structure (New York: Rinehart, 1953). Kahl, J., and Davis, J., “A Comparison of Indexes of Socio-Economic Status", American Soc. Rev., Vol. XX (June 1951), pp. 317-25. Kaufman, H., Prestigg Class in a New York Rural Communigy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Agr. Exp. Stat. Mem.260, March 1944). Kaufman, H., "Defining Prestige Rank in a Rural Community", Sociometgy, V010 VIII (May 1945). 189 Kaufman, H., "Members of a Rural Community as Judges of Prestige ' Rank", Sociometry, Vol. IX (February 1946), pp. 71-85. Lasswell, H., and Kaplan, M., Power and Society (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950). Lenski, G., “American Social Classes: Statistical Strata or Social Groups?", American J. of Soc., Vol. LVIII (1952-3), pp. 139-44. Lipset, 8., and Bendix, R., Social Mobility_in Industrial Society (Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1959). Lipset, 8., and Bendix, R., "Social Mobility and Occupational Career Patterns", in C1ass,,Status and Power, Bendix, R., and Lipset, 8., eds., (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1953) pp. 454-64. Lipset, 3., and Bendix, R., "Social Status and Social Structure: ‘A Re-examination of Data and Interpretation: 1, Brit. J. of Soc., Vol. 11 (June 1951); and 11 (September 1951), pp. 150-68 and 230‘54s Lipton, L., The Holy Barbarians (New York: MacMillan, 1959). Lundberg, G., "The Measurement of Socio-Economic Status", American Soc. Rev., Vol. V, (February 1940), pp. 29-39. Marshall, T. H., Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1950). Martindale, D., American Social Structure (New York: Appleton Century Martindale, D.,.Aggrican Sociegy (New York: Van Nostrand, 1960). Merton, R., Social Theory and Social Structure (Chicago: Free Press, 1949). Merton, R., Gray, A. P., Hockey, B., and Selvin, H., Reader in Bureaucracy (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952). Mills, C. W., "The Middle Classes in Middle-Sized Cities", American Soc. Rev., Vol. 11 (December 1946), pp. 52-69 Mills, C. W., White Collar (Oxford Univ. Press, 1951). Mills, C. W., Review of Warner's The Social Life of a Modern Community, .American Soc. Rev., Vol. VII (April 1942). 190 Oyler, H., Neighborhood Standing_and Population Changes in Johnson and Robertson Counties,_Kyg_(Univ. of Ky. Agr. Exp. Stat. Bul. 523). . Parsons, T., “A Revised Analytical Approach to the Theory of Stratification", in Class, Status and Power, Bendix, R., and Lipset, Eds., (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1953). Pfautz, H., and Duncan, 0. D., "A Critical Evaluation of Warner's Work in Community Stratification", American Soc. Rev., Vol. XV (April 1950), pp. 205-15. Polanyi, K., The Great Transformation (New York: Rinehart, 1944). Pope, L., Millhands and Preachers (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1942). Reiss, A., "Some Methodological Problems in Community Research", Soc. Forces, Vol. 33 (October 1954). Reuss, C., WA.Qualitative Study of Depopulation in a Remote Rural District: 1900-1930", Rur. Soc., Vol. 1 (1937), pp. 66-75. Riessman, L., Class in American Society (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1959). Robinson, W. 8., "Ecological Correlation and the Behavior of Individuals", American SOC. Rev., V01. 15. (1950), pp. 351'7s Schuler, B., "Social and Economic Status in a Louisiana Hills Community", Rur. Soc., Vol. V (March 1940). Scudder, T., and Anderson, E., "The Relation of Being Known to Status Rating", Soc. and Soc. Res., Vol. 38, No. 4 (1954), pp. 24‘45s Scudder, T., and Anderson, E., "The Range of Acquaintanceship and Repute as Factors in Prestige Rating", Soc. Forces, Vol. 32 (1954), pp. 248-53. Sewell, W., The Construction and Standardization of a Scale of the ‘Measurement of the Socio-Economic Status of Oklahoma Farm Families (Okla. Agr. Exp. Stat. Tech. Bul. No. 9). Sherif, H., "A.Study of Some Social Factors in PerceptionH, Arch. Psych., No. 187 (1935). Siegel, S., Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (New York: McCraw-Hill, 1956). Smith, E. D., Technology and Labor (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1939). l9l Stein, ML, Eclipse of Community (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Stephanson, C., Fedieval Feudalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1959). Stone, G., and Form, W., "Instabilities in Status",.American Soc. Rev., V01. XVII (April 1953), PP. 149-62. Toennies, F., Fundamental Concepts of Sociology, Charles P. Loomis, trans. (New York: ‘American Book Co., 1940). Useem, J., Tangent, P., and Useem R., "Social Stratification in a Prairie Town", American J. of Soc., Vol. 37 (June 1942). Vidich, A., and Bensman, J., Small Town in Mass Society (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1960). Warner, W. L., and Lunt, P., The Social Life of a Modern Community (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1941). Warner, W. L. and Lunt, P., The Status System of a Modern Communigy (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1942). Warner, W. L. and Srole, L., The Social Systems of.American Ethnic Groups (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1945). Warner, W. L., and Low, J. 0., The Social System of the Modern Factory (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1947). Warner, W. L., Meeker, M., and Eels, K., Social Class in America: ‘A‘Manual of Procedure for the Measurement of Social Status (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960). Warner, W. L., and others, Democracyyin Jonesville (New York: Harper, 1949). Warner, W. L., American Life: Dream.and Reality (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953). Weber, Ms, Ancient Judaism, H. H. Gerth and D. Martindale trans. (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1952} Weber, M., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, trans. and eds. (Oxford Univ. Press, 1946). Weber, H., Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society, M. Rheinstein ed., and E. Shils trans., (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1954). J'\ 192 Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism, T. Parsons trans. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930). Weber, M., The Religion of China, H. H. Gerth trans., (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1951). Weber, M3, The Religion of India, H. H. Gerth and D. Martindale trans., (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958). Weber, M., The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, T. Parsons and W. Henderson trans. (Oxford Univ. Press, 1947). West, J., Plainville, USA (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1945). Wheeler, W., Social Stratification in a Plains Community (Minneapolis, Minn.: Privately printed, 1949). Wiley, N., Politics in Three Communities, Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State Univ., 1962. Williams, W. H., The Sociology of an English Village: Gosforth (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956). - Wirth, L., "Urbanism as a Way of Life", in Schuler, E., 55, EA}, Readings in Sociology, (New York: Crowell, 1952). 1. 2. 3. ‘APPENDIX.A THE SURVEY SCHEDULE* (A) Type of unit: husband and wife men only woman only (B) Respondent ___husband ___wife ___§ingle man ___ping1e woman (C) For a beginning, could you tell me a little about yourself? How long have you lived in town? ___husband _ ___wife (D) Ase: husband wife (E) Husband's occupation Husband's place of work Wife's occupation Wife's place of work Husband's father's occupation Wife's father‘s occupation Do you belong to any clubs or associations. Does (spouse)? CSUGGEST: LODGES, CHURCHES, UNIONS, PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES, RECREATIG‘IAL, CIVIC, BUSINESS, SERVICE, WOMEN'S, MITICAL) (wife) Name of Club Officer? (How often attend) (husband) (A) Do any of these associations ever endorse candidates for local public office? (Which?) (What elections?) (B) Do any of these associations every attempt to influence local government policies? (Which?) (What policies?) *Some questions appearing in the original schedule but eliminated later are not reproduced here. Also, this is not a facsimile reproduction of the schedule, allowing for space for answers and interviewer's coments o 193 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 194 (C) Have you or your (spouse) been in any associations in the last five years, besides those mentioned, which sometimes took a position on local elections or government policies? OWhat associations?) (What elections or government policies?) (D) Have your (or spouse) been in any informal groups of friends, neighbors or work associates which tried to influence local government decisions? (SUGGEST: TALKING TO COUNCIL MEMBERS, ATTENDING COUNCIL MEETINGS, PETITIWING, USING PUBLICITY) (IF 'YES', describe) We would like to get some idea of how you feel about government in this community. Would you tell me whether you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the things I mention? law enforcement public schools sewage and.water services street maintenance In your Opinion, who are the most respected and well-thought-of families in town? (OFTEN FCLLWED WITH FURTHER EXPIANATIONS: "families of highest standing", "with most prestige") HA.feW'more questions about politics now (ON THE BASIS OF HUSBAND'S OR WIFE'S OCCUPATION MENTALLY ASSIGN RESPONDENT TO ONE OF THE FOLLWING CLASSES: ”FACTORY WORKERS", ”WHITE-COLLAR WORKERS AND SALESMEN", "INDEPENDENT CRAFTSMEN", "RETAIL MERCHANTS", PROFESSIONAL PEOPLE", "INDUSTRIAL AND COMFERCIAL EXECUTIVE AND GJNERS"; THEN ASK:) . . - (A) Do you think (class) should act together politically in national affairs? State affairs? Local affairs in this community? Do you think it would be possible for (class) to improve their position in (name of city)? (IF YES: How?) (IF NO:‘Why not?) Do you consider yourself a Republican or Democrat? How about your (spouse)? ___husband ___wife (If independent,.ASK:) Which party do you (and/or spouse) feel closest to? ___husband ___wife (If neither, ASK:) Which party do you (and/or spouse) think gets the better men to run for office? ___husband ___wife 9. 10. ll. 12. l3. 14. 15. 16. 195 If someone outside the community asked you what classes of people are found here in (community), what would you tell them? (IF RESPONDENT IS NOT CLEAR‘ABOUT QUESTION, ASK.FOR "SOCIAL PRESTIGE GROUPS", OR "PRESTIGE GROUPS") ‘What are they? Do you tend to associate more with one class of people than with another? We would like to know something about public affairs in the community. (A) Can you tell me the names of the members of the city council? (B) Can you tell me the names of the members of the school board? (C) How about this year's budget for city government? (D) What is the property tax rate? The U.S. Congress has recently enacted legislation regulating the internal affairs of labor unions. This bill is called the Labor ReformwACt. Do you think this is a wise piece of legislation or not? Which of these statements do you most agree with? (A) "The most important job for the government is to make it certain that there are good opportunities for each person to get ahead on his own." (B) "The most important job for the government is to guarantee every person a decent and steady job and standard of living."* Do you agree or disagree: "The Way they are run now, labor unions do this country more harm.than good" (AND) "The big companies control too much of American business". Here are some statements about politics and government. Would you tell me whether you agree or disagree: (A) It is hard for a person to go very far in politics without becomdng corrupt. (B) People like me don't have any say about government in this City. (C) Adults have a moral obligation to participate actively in politics. ' You know that the Federal Government is sponsoring a long-term highway construction program, and this is administered by the individual states. Do you think this program is being well- administered in Michigan? (A) In some communities in Michigan new highways are being built around the towns instead of through them, as the old highway went. Is that going to happen in this community? (B) (IF "YES", ASK:) Do you think this highway by-pass will help this community, hurt it or make no difference? (C) (IF "YES", ASK:) Will it affect you personally? (If ”Yes", ask:) In what way? * Taken from.Richard Centers, The Psychology of Social Classes (Prince- ton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1949). 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 26. 196 Please tell me if you have any adult relatives living here. Do you have a religious preference? That is, are you Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or someting else? How about your (spouse)? (IF RESPONDENT IS RELIGIOUS, ASK:) Do you attend church? Does (spouse)? (IF 80:) What church? (SPOUSE'S CHURCH)? (IF RESPONDENT IS RELIGIOUS, ASK:) How often do you attend? (Spouse)? (A) In what country were your parents born? Your (spouse's)? (B) (IF ANY OF THE PARENTS WERE BORN IN U.S., ASK OF THE RELEVANT PARENT:) What was the original nationality of your (mother's family, father's family, spouse's mother's family, or spouse's father's family)? What is the highest grade in school you completed? How about your (spouse)? What would you estimate your income was last year after taxes? Do you own your own home? (IF BUYING THEY ARE CONSIDERED OWNERS) ‘What would you estimate its value to be? If you were having some friends in for a party, which three families would you invite (no relatives)? Do they (for each) live in town? Occupation? Religion? Now I would like to ask you about a few things you have in your home (INTERVIEWER ASKS 11' EACH ITEM IS PRESENT). Inside faucets, both hot and cold Piano Automatic or semi-automatic washer .Automatic or semi-automatic dryer Pressure cooker Electric sweeper Two or more automobiles Separate freezer Telephone Television PM or phono equipment worth $150.00 or more Dishwasher Livingroam set (matching pieces) When contracted to have house painted? Magazines (list) (SOCIOMETRIC) Would you glance at this list of names and place a check if you have met and have a speaking acquaintance with either the husband or wife? (HAND LIST TO RESPONDENT, HAND PEN) Place a second check if you have been in their homes and they in yours on some social occasion (EXPLAIN MEANING OF "SOCIAL") Judge #1 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #2 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #3 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent APPENDIX B JUDGES' ANALYSIS Lake Town Judge #1 Composite Placements .Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 33 8 l 42 .24 95 2 13 2 17 .24 89 4 46 16 66 .30 77 l 23 24 .04 65 35 25 50 39 149 .24 80 (23.5)(16.8)(33.6)(26.2)(100.l) Lake Town Judge #2 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 36 7 l 44 .20 100 2 10 2 2 16 .50 84 25 39 64 .61 74 l 24 25 .04 68 38 17 29 65 149 .38 80 (25.5)(11.4)(l9.5)(43.6)(100.0) Lake Town Judge #3 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 41 3 . 44 .07 100 7 10 l 18 .44 95 34 21 26 81 1.10 95 1 6 6 6 19 1.16 51 83 4O 33 6 162 .75 87 (51.2)(24.7)(20.4)( 3.7)(100.0) 197 Judge #4 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #5 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent JUdge #6 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent 198 Lake Town Judge #4 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 19 20 l 40 .60 91 l 16 17 .06 89 2 1 53 5 61 .16 71 2 20 22 .09 59 22 37 55 26 140 .26 75 (15.7)(26.4)(39.3)(18.6)(100.0) Lake Town Judge #5 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 13 24 7 44 .86 100 12 7 19 .37 100 85 85 .00 99 31 3 34 .91 92 13 36 130 3 182 .42 98 ( 7.1)(19.8)(7l.4)( 1.6)( 99.9) Lake Town Judge #6 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 43 43 .00 98 13 6 19 .68 100 12 38 32 3 85 .76 99 l 4 17 15 37 .78 100 69 48 49 18 184 .58 99 (37.5)(26.1)(26.6)( 9.8)(100.0) Judge #7 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #8 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #9 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent 199 Lake Town Judge #7 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 43 1 44 .02 100 13 4 2 19 .79 100 18 18 44 5 85 .69 99 2 9 3 16 30 .97 81 76 32 49 21 178 .58 96 (42.7)(18.1)(27.5)(11.8)(100.1) Lake Town Judge #8 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged 1 2 3 4 Total D positively 10 9 15 9 43 1.53 98 13 5 1 19 .37 100 3 71 12 86 .17 100 9 27 36 .25 97 10 25 100 49 184 .58 99 ( 5.4)(13.6)(54.3)(26.7)(100.0) Lake Town Judge #9 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 30 13 l 44 .34 100 2 13 l 2 18 .39 95 2 9 38 28 77 .53 89 33 33 .00 89 34 35 40 63 172 .37 92 (l9.8)(20.3)(23.4)(36.6)(100.l) Judge #1 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #2 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #3 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent 200 Factory Town Judge #1 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 48 23 71 .32 95 l 46 13 6O .23 79 7 44 51 .14 51 l l .00 17 49 76 58 0 183 .25 72 (26.8)(41.5)(3l.7)( 0.0)(100.0) Factory Town Judge #2 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 72 l 1 74 .03 99 8 56 2 2 68 .21 89 2 19 65 5 91 .31 93 4 4 .00 67 82 76 68 11 237 .19 93 (34.6)(32.1)(28.7)( 4.6)(100.0) Factory Town Judge #3 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 73 l 74 .01 99 21 49 70 .30 92 9 53 21 83 .86 88 2 3 5 .40 83 103 103 23 3 232 .41 91 (44.4)(44.4)( 9.9)( 1.3)(100.0) Judge #4 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #5 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #6 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent 201 Factory Town Judge #4 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged 1 2 3 4 Total D positively 30 19 8 57 .61 76 l 28 14 2 45 .42 59 2 36 8 46 .22 47 2 2 .00 33 31 49 58 12 150 .43 59 (20.7)(32.7)(38.7)(18.0)(100.1) Factory Town Judge #5 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 71 71 .00 95 21 33 4 l 59 .46 78 10 15 31 56 .73 57 3 3 .00 50 102 48 35 4 189 .33 74 (54.0)(25.4)(18.5)( 2.1)(100.0) Factory Town Judge #6 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 8 14 19 41 1.27 55 16 20 2 38 .47 50 1 27 9 37 .27 38 0 8 31 66 11 116 .74 45 ( 6.9)(26.7)(56.9)( 9.5)(100.0) Judge #7 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #8 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #9 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent 202 Factory Town Judge #7 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 74 74 .00 99 27 36 63 .43 83 23 14 2 39 .64 40 O 101 59 14 2 176 .30 69 (57.4)(33.5)( 8.0)( 1.1)(100.0) Factory Town Judge #8 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 6O 9 5 74 .26 99 5 44 17 2 68 .38 89 8 71 3 82 .13 84 2 2 4 .50 67 65 61 95 7 228 .25 89 (28.5)(26.8)(41.7)( 3.1)(100.l) Factory Town Judge #9 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 42 28 1 71 .42 95 l 30 28 59 .49 78 3 62 l 66 .06 57 1 2 3 .33 50 43 61 92 3 199 .32 78 (21.6)(30.7)(41.2)( 1.5)(100.0) Judge #10 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #1 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #2 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent 203 Factory Town Judge #10 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 38 30 6 1 75 .61 100 34 18 10 62 .61 82 46 20 66 .30 67 4 4 .00 67 38 64 70 35 207 .49 81 (18.4)(30.9)(33.8)(l6.9)(100.0) Old Town Judge #1 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 15 17 l 33 .58 100 7 71 20 l 99 .29 83 ll 88 17 116 .24 32 2 10 12 .17 27 22 99 111 28 260 .30 47 ( 8.5)(38.1)(42.7)(10.8)(100.1) Old Town Judge #2 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged 1 2 3 4 Total D positively 33 33 .00 100 31 64 5 100 .36 84 13 49 72 134 .56 37 2 l 3 1.60 07 77 115 78 0 ‘270 .43 49 (28.5)(42.6)(28.9)( 00) (100.0) Judge #3 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #4 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #5 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent 204 Old Town Judge #3 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 26 7 33 .21 100 19 65 31 2 117 .46 98 2 23 311 19 355 .13 99 19 24 43 .44 98 47 95 361 45 548 .23 99 ( 8.6)(17.3)(65.9)( 8.2)(lO0.0) Old Town Judge #4 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged 1 2 3 4 Total D positively 32 l 33 .03 100 16 82 17 1 116 .30 97 22 275 9 306 .10 55 13 17 30 4,43 68 48 105 305 27 485 .16 87 ( 9.9)(21.7)(62.9)( 5.6)(100.l) Old Town Judge #5 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged 1 2 3 4 Total D positively 31 2 33 .06 100 23 64 25 3 115 .47 97 25 121 37 183 .34 51 9 9 .00 20 54 91 146 49 340 .35 61 (15.9)(26.8)(42.9)(14.4)(100.0) Judge #6 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #7 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #8 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent 205 Old Town Judge #6 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 10 23 33 .70 100 l 84 26 111 .24 93 13 230 4 247 .07 69 6 14 20 .30 45 11 120 262 18 411 .18 74 ( 2.7)(29.2)(63.7)( 4.4)(100.0) Old Town Judge #7 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged 1 2 3 4 Total D positively 27 2 29 .07 88 15 72 2 89 .19 75 56 60 16 132 .55 37 l 7 8 .13 18 42 130 63 23 258 .36 47 (l6.3)(50.4)(24.4)( 8.9)(100.0) Old Town Judge #8 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 32 l 33 .03 100 8 99 8 115‘ .14 97 l 28 228 22 279 .19 77 2 37 39 .05 89 41 128 238 59 466 .15 84 ( 8.8)(27.5)(51.1)(12.7)(100.l) Judge #9 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent Judge #10 Placements 1 Status 2 level 3 4 Total Per cent 206 Old Town Judge #9 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged l 2 3 4 Total D positively 13 15 5 33 .76 100 3 60 51 4 118 .41 99 14 168 162 344 .51 96 43 43 .00 98 16 89 224 209 538 .49 97 ( 3.0)(16.5)(4l.6)(38.8)(99.9) Old Town Judge #10 Composite Placements Status level Per cent judged 1 2 3 4 Total D positively 8 23 2 33 .82 100 8 88 14 4 114 .26 96 6 111 192 14 323 .42 90 3 30 6 39 .92 89 22 225 238 24 509 .45 92 ( 4.3)(44.2)(46.8)( 4.7)(100.0) APPENDIX C Table C-I. Occupational Composition of Three Communities.* Occupation Lake Town Factory Town Old Town Professional, technical and kindred workers 11.1 13.0 13.7 Farmers and farm.managers 0.5 - 0.5 Managers, officials and proprie- tors, except farmers 15.4 12.6 10.5 Clerical and kindred workers 11.2 12.8 15.8 Sales workers 9.2 7.9 10.1 Craftsmen, foremen and kindred workers 12.5 9.1 13.9 Operatives and kindred workers 16.3 22.6 16.3 Private household workers 5.1 3.3 3.1 Service workers, except private household 15.2 14.5 12.0 Farm laborers and foremen 0.8 O 0.4 Laborers, except farm and mine 2.8 4.2 3.7 (Number of cases) (1642) (2407) (2526) * From.U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1960. 207 208 Table C-II. Industrial Composition of Three Communities.* Industry .Agriculture, forestry and fisheries Mining Construction Durable goods manufacturing Nondurable goods manufacturing Transportation, communication, and other public utilities Wholesale and retail trade Finance, insurance and real estate Business and repair service Personal services Entertainment and recreation services Professional and related services Public administration (Number of cases) 1.8 10.7 11.4 4.3 6.0 29.1 2.7 1.7 12.8 1.5 12.5 5.4 (1690) Lake Town Factory Town 0.2 3.8 23.8 7.9 5.4 21.4 4.0 1.4 6.5 1.0 16.4 8.3 (2433) Old Town 1.5 3.8 23.5 8.1 5.5 23.1 9.2 1.1 5.7 0.3 13.8 4.4 (2546) *From.U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1960. 209 Table C-III. Selected Population Characteristics for Three Communities.* Chargcteristic Lake Town Egggprnyown Old Town Population (rounded) 5850 6750 6750 Z increase, 1950-60 3.0 5.3 16.6 Z nonwhite 6.3 0.2 0.4 2 under 18 39.1 36.8 35.4 Z over 65 11.1 13.2 12.2 Fertility ratio 615 526 475 Z unemployed 13.2 3.6 4.7 Median school yrs. 25 and over 9.9 12.0 12.0 Median income, families and unrelated individuals $3858 $4865 $5666 Z of females 14 and over working 30.0 36.1 36.1 Z Catholic** 47.1 21.5 13.3 % Protestant** 51.0 68.6 84.4 Other religion** 1.0 0.8 4 No religion** 1.0 9.1 2.2 * From U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1960. ** Proportions drawn from.the survey sample. HAPPENDIX D Table D-I. The Distribution of Failure to Express Class Criteria (Contentless Classes) Among Sample Members and Judges in Three Communities. Sample Sample Lake Town members judges Totals Total number asserting classes exist , 73 12 85 Number failing to express class criteria 8 l 9 Per cent failing to express class criteria 11.0 8.3 10.6 Factory_Town Total number asserting classes exist 115 16 131 Number failing to express class criteria 7 0 7 Per cent failing to express class criteria 6.1 0 5.3 Old Town Total number asserting classes exist 107 16 123 Number failing to express class criteria 20 l 21 Per cent failing to express class criteria 18.7 6.7 17.1 210 .APPENDIX E Table E-I. Status Distributions of Association Members in Three Communities. Lake Town Old Town Factory Town Status level N Per cent N Per cent N Per cent 1 44 ( 8.8) 33 ( 4.1) 75 (11.6) 2 l9 ( 3.8) 119 (14.9) 76 (11.8) 3 86 (17.1) 358 (44.9) 98 (15.2) 4 37 ( 7.4) 44 ( 5.5) 6 ( 0.9) Nonconsensual 317 (63.0) 244 (30.6) 390 (60.5) Total 503 798 645 211 “'Tl’t‘r'litmfluflflmmiiW{iafifilmlmwmifllT~'Es 3 1293 03143 1