The Moral Order of a Suburb

183 Pages·1989·7.7 MB·English

by  M. P. Baumgartner

THE MORAL ORDER OF A SUBURB
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THE MORAL ORDER
OF A SUBURB
M. P. Baumgartner
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York Oxford
1988
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1988 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baumgartner, M. P.
The moral order of a suburb / by M. P. Baumgartner.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-19-505413-X
1. Suburbs—New York (N.Y.)—Case studies
2. Conflict management—New York (N.Y.)—Case studies
3. Suburban life—New York (N.Y.)—Case studies
4. Neighborhood—New York (N.Y.)—Case studies
I. Title.
HT351.B38 1988
307.7'4'097471—dc 19 88-5145 CIP
We gratefully acknowledge permission to include in this book passages
that were first published in somewhat different form:
"Law and the Middle Class: Evidence from a Suburban Town," Law and
Human Behavior, Volume 9, Number 1, March 1985, pp. 3-24.
"Social Control in Suburbia," Toward a General Theory of Social Control:
Volume 2, Selected Problem!, ed. Donald Black, Academic Press, 1984,
pp. 79-103.
987654321
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Preface
This is a study of how people in an American suburb manage their
conflicts. It is the result of twelve months spent in a single town,
observing, questioning, and conversing with the individuals who
live there. At the very beginning of the project, several townspeo-
ple voiced doubts, wondering what of any value could be learned in
their community about conflict. One remarked that the setting was
"just a quiet little town"; another stated that it was "a boring place
to look at conflict" since "nothing ever happens" in it. A few
people were surprised the investigation was not taking place in a
city. "You could find some good conflicts there," one person noted.
Intermingled in these comments seemed pride at the peace which
prevailed in the town, along with some regret that the community
might appear uninteresting and insignificant to outsiders.
In fact, as the study progressed, it became apparent that open
conflict in the town was indeed rare. The suburbanites studied
were handling their grievances and disagreements in ways that
systematically undermined confrontation of all kinds, producing a
moral order noteworthy for its restraint. They were tolerating
offenses and avoiding offenders, while shunning physical aggres-
sion and courtroom challenges. To this extent, the skeptical resi-
dents were accurate in their assessment of conflict in the town.
They were very wrong, however, to think that the absence of
confrontation in their community makes them uninteresting sub-
jects of sociological study. To the contrary, a system of social
control that relies primarily on the tolerance of offenses, avoidance
vi Preface
of troublesome people, and comparable tactics, making little use of
violence or formal settlement procedures, is of great significance
both theoretically and practically. Discovering the factors that
create and sustain nonconfrontation of this sort can shed light not
only on the conditions that promote tolerance and avoidance but
also, by implication, on those that undermine quarreling, violence,
mediation, adjudication, and a host of other sequels to disapproved
acts. This knowledge, in turn, can facilitate efforts to increase or
decrease these practices. More generally, given how precarious
peace has proven to be in the human experience, it is of great
interest to consider a community where peace prevails spontane-
ously, and does so with little reliance on armed vigilance or third-
party intervention.
In light of these issues, the immediate purpose of this book is
twofold. First, it is an effort to describe the suburban moral order
in some detail, showing how a system of restraint and nonconfron-
tation actually operates on a day-by-day basis. Second, and more
important, it is an attempt to explain such a system by specifying
the social conditions that give rise to it. The book also strives to fill
in a few pieces of a larger puzzle—that of how people in all
settings choose to respond to the wrongdoing of their fellows, by
whatever means. In other words, this study is meant to be a
contribution—however small—to the general theory of social con-
trol.1 It would certainly shock the doubting members of the town
to learn that their behavior could have implications for a global
theory that ultimately addressed such topics as revenge killings,
witchcraft accusations, and litigiousness. There is nonetheless con-
tinuity and connection among all the various ways in which people
seek to maintain moral order, and it is the premise of this book
that careful consideration of one part of the larger picture can
further an understanding of the whole.
New Brunswick, New Jersey M.P.B.
June 1988
A cknowledgments
During the years leading up to this book, I have incurred many debts
to people and institutions who helped along the way. I owe the most
to Donald Black, who worked closely with me at every stage of this
project, from the study design to the editing of the manuscript. His
invaluable assistance has made this a much better book. Other
people who read earlier drafts and were kind enough to comment
include Valerie Aubry, Joan Bossert, Mark Cooney, Kai Erikson,
Allan V. Horwitz, Scott Lenz, Stanton Wheeler, and an anonymous
reviewer. I have also benefitted from the suggestions of Daniel
McGillis, Sally Engle Merry, Alden Miller, Calvin Morrill, Lloyd
Ohlin, Frank Romo, Thomas Rudel, and Susan Silbey.
While conducting the field research on which this book is
based, I was fortunate to receive financial support from the Gradu-
ate School of Arts and Sciences of Yale University. Later, the
Center for Criminal Justice at Harvard Law School, the Depart-
ment of Sociology and Anthropology at Seton Hall University, and
the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University provided insti-
tutional support for the project. Kathleen Keeffe, Susan Flood, and
Toni Gould helped by typing various drafts of the manuscript.
Finally, I owe much appreciation and gratitude to the people of
the suburb I studied. In order that their privacy be preserved, it is
necessary that they remain anonymous and that their town be
known here only by a pseudonym. These people—ordinary citi-
zens and officials alike—inconvenienced themselves in many ways
to further this research. They were generous with their time and
viii Acknowledgments
open with their information. Beyond this, their intellectual inter-
est in the problems of the study stimulated them to advance
numerous analytical and interpretive remarks about the issues
under investigation. They thus proved to be colleagues as well as
subjects, and it was a pleasure to work with them.
Contents
1. INTRODUCTION 3
Theoretical Context 4
The Significance of Suburbia 6
Moral Minimalism in the Suburbs 10
2. THE TOWN AND THE STUDY 14
The Setting 14
The Study 18
3. THE MORAL ORDER OF FAMILIES 21
Conflict in Families 21
Variations 45
Toward a Theory of Moral Minimalism 55
4. THE MORAL ORDER OF FRIENDSHIPS
AND NEIGHBORHOODS 72
Conflict Management without Confrontation 73
Variations 85
Weak Ties and Moral Minimalism 90