Symbolic Crusade: status politics and the American temperance movement

216 Pages·1963·8.921 MB·English

by  Joseph R. Gusfield

Temperance has been one of the classic political
and social issues on which divergent subcultures in
the United States have faced each other in the
battle for prestige and status.
This sociological interpretation of the important
role played by the Temperance movement through¬
out the entire history of the United States is a
significant contribution to the theory of status con¬
flict. Furthermore, it discloses the importance of
political acts as symbolic acts and offers a dramatis-
tic theory of status politics that provides a useful
addition to the economic and psychological modes
of analysis current in the study of political and
social movements.
The consumption or non-consumption of alco¬
holic beverages has been one of the major ways in
which Americans have delineated their group affili¬
ations and status identities. Thus, this book views
Temperance both as a protest against a changing
status system and a mechanism for influencing the
distribution of prestige.
In analyzing the history of the American Tem¬
perance movement, the author sees Temperance
as a reflection of the clashes and conflicts between
rival social systems, cultures, and status groups.
Sometimes the abstainer is winning. Sometimes, as
in contemporary society, he is losing.
In describing the American Temperance move¬
ment in its different periods of history, he discloses
how it has functioned to preserve, maintain, or
defend the social status of its adherents. He shows
us how the Temperance banner passed from the
New England aristocracy down to the middle class
and then down to the lower middle class.
With the development of the Anti-Saloon League
in 1896, the Temperance movement began to sep¬
arate itself from a complex of economic and social

SYMBOLIC CRUSADE
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS, URBANA, 1963
SYMBOLIC CRUSADE
Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement
JOSEPH R. SUSFIELD
© 1963 by the Board of Trustees of the University of
Illinois. Manufactured in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 63-10314.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/symboliccrusadesOOOOgusf