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LYND, ROBERT S. AND LYND, HELEN MERRELL 1892-1970, 1896-1982

SOCIOLOGISTS

Pioneer Sociologists

With their two groundbreaking studies of American life, Middletown (1929) and Middle-town in Transition (1937), Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd helped found the field of modern sociology. Their research made available for the first time an in-depth account of how average Americans lived their daily lives during the 1920s.

Background

Robert Staughton Lynd was born in New Albany, Indiana, and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He graduated from Princeton in 1914 and for four years served as the managing editor of Publishers' Weekly. Following a year of service in World War I, Lynd worked briefly for Charles Scribner's Sons and The Freeman Magazine before entering Union Theological Seminary. Helen Merrell was born in La Grange, Illinois, and attended Wellesley College, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1919. For two years she taught in girls' schools in New York, where she met Robert Lynd. They were married in 1922. After Robert Lynd received his divinity degree in 1923, the Lynds became missionaries in the oil fields of Montana. Their experiences in the oil fields convinced them of the inequities in American society, and their interests shifted from religion to sociology. In the mid 1920s Robert Lynd directed a series of "Small City" studies for the Institute of Social and Religious Research. As a result of these studies, he and his wife were selected to conduct a study of religious life in Muncie, Indiana. They found it impossible to focus solely on the single aspect of religion in community life and instead wrote a sweeping study of the community as a whole.

Middletown

The Lynds' first book was intended to be a factual, objective description of all aspects of life in Muncie, Indiana. They selected the city because they found it to be as representative as possible of average American life in the 1920s. The Lynds and a small team of researchers spent eighteen months—from January 1924 to June 1925—conducting interviews, compiling statistics, and distributing surveys to the city's residents. The published book examined such aspects of everyday life as earning a living, making a home, training children, and engaging in leisure and recreational activities. The study reflects the 1920s' concern with analyzing and describing American society. Though the Lynds did not moralize or attempt to evaluate the propriety of what they found, the book devotes much attention to the values and beliefs of Middletown's residents and depicts a materialistic elite, conspicuous consumption, and sharp class differences within the city.

Reception

Though the city is referred to throughout not as Muncie but as Middletown, Muncie residents identified themselves easily and denounced the study as slanted and disparaging. Middletown, however, gained instant popularity, with six printings in 1929, Its success created a demand for more social surveys and led other researchers to begin compiling facts about life in the United States. The book, moreover, was seized upon by writers and social critics as evidence of the vacuity and sterility of American culture.

Academic Sociology

Although Robert Lynd had no formal training as sociologist, Middletown created for him a reputation as a leading figure in the modern social sciences. In 1930 he became the secretary of the Social Science Research Council, a body organized to promote research and foster cooperations between anthropologists, economists, historians, statisticians, and sociologists. In 1931 Lynd joined the faculty of Columbia University as professor of sociology. His emphasis on research and "down-to-earth" methodology brought him into conflict with colleagues who advocated abstract theory, but Lynd's career at Columbia was instrumental in establishing sociology as an accepted academic discipline.

Return to Middletown

In the mid 1930s Robert and Helen Lynd returned to Muncie, Indiana, to investigate how the city had changed as a result of the Depression. Unlike its predecessor, Middletown in Transition was less descriptive and did not aim for detached objectivity. The Lynds instead focused on social change in the city, particularly the effects of industrialization and class stratification. The book analyzed the economic and social power structure of the city and was critical of the dominance of a small number of powerful families over the lives of Muncie's residents.

Contributions

Though they published no more major studies, both of the Lynds enjoyed long teaching careers, Robert Lynd at Columbia University and Helen Lynd at Sarah Lawrence College, and contributed to sociological journals and nonacademic periodicals such as The Nation. Helen Lynd became active in academic reform, arguing for interdisciplinary curricula, flexible scheduling, and the replacement of grades with written evaluations.