Behavior: Middletown Revisited

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Muncie adjusts to change

Though it sometimes galls the town fathers, Muncie, Ind. (pop. 83,000), is famous for being ordinary. In 1924, Sociologists Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd decided that Muncie was "the typical American city" that could reveal how small-town America had developed and where it was going. The Lynds trained themselves in anthropological methods and descended on Muncie as if it were a settlement of New Guinea headhunters. The result was two classic books, Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937), that shrewdly foreshadowed the next two generations of American life.

One of the Lynds' findings was that Munsonians—and by implication, most Americans—were living in two different centuries, desperately trying to adjust to rapid industrialization, yet holding on fiercely to the homespun values of 19th century rural America. Wrote the Lynds: "A citizen has one foot on the relatively solid ground of established institutional habits, and the other foot fast to an escalator erratically moving in several directions at a bewildering variety of speeds." Now a new team of sociologists headed by Theodore Caplow of the University of Virginia has moved in on Muncie to update the Lynds with a study titled Middletown III. Though not yet complete, the new study finds that Muncie has not changed much since the Lynds: it still has one foot on the escalator, the other planted firmly in the 1890s.

The Lynds (he died in 1970, she is retired) found a work-oriented town where "getting on" was important, as were self-reliance, civic pride, patriotism and Christian fervor. So did the Middletown III researchers of today. Caplow and Teammate Howard Bahr of Brigham Young University asked Muncie high school students of 1977 the same public opinion questions the Lynds asked 1924 students, and got much the same answers. Last year 50% of the students agreed that "the Bible is a sufficient guide to all problems of modern life," 78% said the U.S. is "unquestionably the best country in the world," and 47% (precisely the same figure as in 1924) said, "It is entirely the fault of a man himself if he does not succeed." Though today's students are more tolerant, say the researchers: "We have not been able to find any trace of the disintegration of traditional social values described by observers who rely on their own intuitions."

Yet young folks in Muncie today manage to juggle traditional beliefs and nontraditional behavior. The students like bubble-gum-blowing contests and marijuana, churchgoing and pornography. Says Muncie Student Danny Stanley, 16: "Yeah, we smoke dope all over, in our cars, walking around before class, any time, but that doesn't mean we don't believe in God or that we'll let anybody put God down. That can get you in a fight."

The Lynds picked up similar signs of cultural schizophrenia in 1920s Muncie: an antidivorce town with a rate of 42 divorces for every 100 marriages, a thrifty pay-as-you-go culture rushing to buy on credit, and a resentment of federal intervention that went hand in hand with a scramble for the federal dollar.