The Moral Order of a Suburb PDF
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THE MORAL ORDER OF A SUBURB This page intentionally left blank THE MORAL ORDER OF A SUBURB M. P. Baumgartner OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New York Oxford 1988 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1988 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 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
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