Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 45

A sociological study of the effect of the artificial physical and social environment of the city upon the person will take conscious account of these social factors. The lack of attachment to home in the city tenant as compared with the sentiments and status of home-ownership in the village, the mobility of the urban dweller in his necessary routine of work and his restless quest for pleasure, the sophistication, the front, the self-seeking of the individual emanc.i.p.ated from the controls of the primary group--all these represent problems for research.

There are occasional references in literature to what may be called the inversion of the natural att.i.tudes of the city child. His attention, his responses, even his images become fixed by the stimuli of the city streets.[134] To those interested in child welfare and human values this is the supreme tragedy of the city.

2. Touch and the Primary Contacts of Intimacy

The study of the senses in their relations to personal and social behavior had its origins in psychology, in psychoa.n.a.lysis, in ethnology, and in the study of races and nationalities with reference to the conflict and fusion of cultures. Darwin's theory of the origin of the species increased interest in the instincts and it was the study of the instincts that led psychologists finally to define all forms of behavior in terms of stimulus and response. A "contact" is simply a stimulation that has significance for the understanding of group behavior.

In psychoa.n.a.lysis, a rapidly growing literature is accessible to sociologists upon the nature and the effects of the intimate contacts of s.e.x and family life. Indeed, the Freudian concept of the _libido_ may be translated for sociological purposes into the desire for response. The intensity of the sentiments of love and hate that cement and disrupt the family is indicated in the a.n.a.lyses of the so-called "family romance."

Life histories reveal the natural tendencies toward reciprocal affection of mother and son or father and daughter, and the mutual antagonism of father and son or mother and daughter.

In ethnology, attention was early directed to the phenomena of taboo with its injunction against contamination by contacts. The literature of primitive communities is replete with the facts of avoidance of contact, as between the s.e.xes, between mother-in-law and son-in-law, with persons "with the evil eye," etc. Frazer's volume on "Taboo and the Perils of the Soul" in his series ent.i.tled _The Golden Bough_, and Crawley, in his book, _The Mystic Rose_, to mention two outstanding examples, have a.s.sembled, cla.s.sified, and interpreted many types of taboo. In the literature of taboo is found also the ritualistic distinction between "the clean" and "the unclean" and the development of reverence and awe toward "the sacred" and "the holy."

Recent studies of the conflict of races and nationalities, generally considered as exclusively economic or political in nature, bring out the significance of disgusts and fears based fundamentally upon characteristic racial odors, marked variations in skin color and in physiognomy as well as upon differences in food habits, personal conduct, folkways, mores, and culture.

3. Primary Contacts of Acquaintanceship

Two of the best sociological statements of primary contacts are to be found in Professor Cooley's a.n.a.lysis of primary groups in his book _Social Organization_ and in Shaler's exposition of the sympathetic way of approach in his volume _The Neighbor_. A ma.s.s of descriptive material for the further study of the primary contacts is available from many sources. Studies of primitive peoples indicate that early social organizations were based upon ties of kinship and primary group contacts. Village life in all ages and with all races exhibits absolute standards and stringent primary controls of behavior. The Blue Laws of Connecticut are little else than primary-group att.i.tudes written into law. Common law, the traditional code of legal conduct sanctioned by the experience of primary groups, may be compared with statute law, which is an abstract prescription for social life in secondary societies. Here also should be included the consideration of programs and projects for community organization upon the basis of primary contacts, as for example, Ward's _The Social Center_.

4. Secondary Contacts

The transition from feudal societies of villages and towns to our modern world-society of great cosmopolitan cities has received more attention from economics and politics than from sociology. Studies of the industrial basis of city life have given us the external pattern of the city: its topographical conditions, the concentration of population as an outcome of large-scale production, division of labor, and specialization of effort. Research in munic.i.p.al government has proceeded from the muck-raking period, indicated by Lincoln Steffens' _The Shame of the Cities_ to surveys of public utilities and city administration of the type of those made by the New York Bureau of Munic.i.p.al Research.

Social interest in the city was first stimulated by the polemics against the political and social disorders of urban life. There were those who would destroy the city in order to remedy its evils and restore the simple life of the country. Sociology sought a surer basis for the solution of the problems from a study of the facts of city life.

Statistics of population by governmental departments provide figures upon conditions and tendencies. Community surveys have translated into understandable form a ma.s.s of information about the formal aspects of city life.

Naturally enough, sympathetic and arresting pictures of city life have come from residents of settlements as in Jane Addam's _Twenty Years at Hull House_, Robert Wood's _The City Wilderness_, Lillian Wald's _The House on Henry Street_ and Mrs. Simkhovitch's _The City Worker's World_.

Georg Simmel has made the one outstanding contribution to a sociology or, perhaps better, a social philosophy of the city in his paper "The Great City and Cultural Life."

BIBLIOGRAPHY: MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIAL CONTACTS

I. THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL CONTACTS

(1) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ An exposition of the main development in sociological theory from Spencer to Ratzenhofer, pp.

486-91. Chicago, 1905.

(2) Tarde, Gabriel. _The Laws of Imitation_. Translated from the French by Elsie Clews Parsons. Chap. iii, "What Is a Society?" New York, 1903.

(3) Thomas, W. I. "Race Psychology: Standpoint and Questionnaire, with Particular Reference to the Immigrant and the Negro." _American Journal of Sociology_, XVII (May, 1912), 725-75.

(4) Boas, Franz. _The Mind of Primitive Man._ New York, 1911.

II. INTIMATE SOCIAL CONTACTS AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE SENSES

(1) Simmel, Georg. _Soziologie._ Untersuchungen uber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Exkurs uber die Soziologie der Sinne, pp. 646-65.

Leipzig, 1908.

(2) Crawley, E. _The Mystic Rose._ A study of primitive marriage. London and New York, 1902.

(3) Sully, James. _Sensation and Intuition._ Studies in psychology and aesthetics. Chap, iv, "Belief: Its Varieties and Its Conditions."

London, 1874.

(4) Moll, Albert. _Der Rapport in der Hypnose._ Leipzig, 1892.

(5) Elworthy, F. T. _The Evil Eye._ An account of this ancient and widespread superst.i.tion. London, 1895.

(6) Levy-Bruhl. _Les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures._ Paris, 1910.

(7) Starbuck, Edwin D. "The Intimate Senses as Sources of Wisdom," _The Journal of Religion_, I (March, 1921), 129-45.

(8) Paulhan, Fr. _Les transformations saddles des sentiments._ Paris, 1920.

(9) Stoll, O. _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Volkerpsychologie._ Chap. ix, pp. 225-29. Leipzig, 1904.

(10) Hooper, Charles E. _Common Sense._ An a.n.a.lysis and interpretation.

Being a discussion of its general character, its distinction from discursive reasoning, its origin in mental imagery, its speculative outlook, its value for practical life and social well-being, its relation to scientific knowledge, and its bearings on the problems of natural and rational causation. London, 1913.

(11) Weigall, A. "The Influence of the Kinematograph upon National Life," _Nineteenth Century and After_, Lx.x.xIX (April, 1921), 661-72.

III. MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF MOBILITY

(1) Vallaux, Camille. "Le sol et l'etat," _Geographie sociale._ Paris, 1911.

(2) Demolins, Edmond. _Comment la route cree le type social._ Les grandes routes des peuples; essai de geographie social. 2 vols. Paris, 1901.

(3) Vandervelde, e. _L'exode rural el le retour aux champs._ Chap. iv, "Les consequences de l'exode rural." (Sec. 3 discusses the political and intellectual, the physical and moral consequences of the rural exodus, pp. 202-13.) Paris, 1903.

(4) Bury, J. B. _A History of Freedom of Thought._ London and New York, 1913.

(5) Bloch, Iwan. _Die Prost.i.tution._ Handbuch der gesamten s.e.xualwissenschaft in Einzeldarstellungen. Berlin, 1912.

(6) Pagnier, Armand. _Du vagabondage et des vagabonds._ etude psychologique, sociologique et medico-legale. Lyon, 1906.

(7) Laubach, Frank C. _Why There Are Vagrants._ A study based upon an examination of one hundred men. New York, 1916.

(8) Ribton-Turner, Charles J. _A History of Vagrants and Vagrancy and Beggars and Begging._ London, 1887.

(9) Florian, Eugenio. _I vagabondi._ Studio sociologicoguiridico. Parte prima, "L'Evoluzione del vagabondaggio." Pp. 1-124. Torino, 1897-1900.

(10) Devine, Edward T. "The Shiftless and Floating City Population,"

_Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, X (September, 1897), 149-164.