I took my blog name from the series of sociological studies in my home town.
The Middletown studies are a classic sociological case study of a city, Muncie, in Indiana, as contained in two books by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd: * Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, published in 1929. * Middletown in Transition : A Study in Cultural Conflicts, published in 1937. They wrote this about the first book: "The city will be called Middletown. A community as small as thirty-odd thousand...[in which] the field staff was enabled to concentrate on cultural change...the interplay of a relatively constant...American stock and its changing environment" (1929: p. 8). In these studies, the Lynds and a group of researchers conduct an in-depth field study of a small American urban center in order to discover key cultural norms and better understand social change. The first study was conducted during the 1920s, beginning in January, 1924, while the second was written during the Great Depression.
* Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, published in 1929. * Middletown in Transition : A Study in Cultural Conflicts, published in 1937.
They wrote this about the first book:
"The city will be called Middletown. A community as small as thirty-odd thousand...[in which] the field staff was enabled to concentrate on cultural change...the interplay of a relatively constant...American stock and its changing environment" (1929: p. 8).
In these studies, the Lynds and a group of researchers conduct an in-depth field study of a small American urban center in order to discover key cultural norms and better understand social change. The first study was conducted during the 1920s, beginning in January, 1924, while the second was written during the Great Depression.
