Midwest and Its Children (Barker, Wright, 1955)

Midwest and Its Children (Barker, Wright, 1955)

Karl Weick cites this work as one source of his "double interact" concept. This study of children at play in a midwest town (actually, Oskaloosa, Kansas - the name "Midwest" belongs to a social science research center that generated the data) is useful because the activity of children provides an effective insight into the concept of power relations - "there occurs an initiating action, a reaction, and at least a subsequent action by the initiating participant"

Could Barker and Wright have based their work on Robert and Helen Lynd's "Middletown"?

The Middletown Studies

In the 1920s, husband-and-wife sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd arrived in Muncie, Indiana, with the goal of identifying the town's cultural norms and determining what social changes had taken place since 1890. In their published report, they kept the location anonymous, identifying Muncie as "Middletown."

p.280 Pressure means here external influence of any kind which is in any way inconsistent with the child's own momentary needs and goals.

p.308 There are approximately 1,200,000 behavior objects in Midwest... On Sundays the number of behavior objects which are freely accessible is reduced to approximately 200,000; and on some holidays the available behavior objects are further restricted... The figures given above refer to objects which are generally available and generally perceived.

p.328 As for complexity of interaction, two levels are differentiated. On one level, there occurs an initiating action followed by a concluding reaction (items 1 and 3), while on the other and more complex level there occurs an initiating action, a reaction, and at least a subsequent action by the initiating participant (items 2 and 4).

p.328-329 Power, here, means ability on the part of A, as this ability is perceived by S, to change the behavior of S. As perceived potential to change behavior, power may or may not be used: it may not be actualized in social pressure (see pp. 339-40) during an episode, or it may be so actualized in any degree.

p.330 One must continually ask the following: as far as S is concerned, to what extent is A now able, under all of the prevailing circumstances, to change the behavior of S?

p.339 Pressure is actualized social power; it is used ability to change the behavior of another individual... so long as two individuals interact, each acts in some degree to change the behavior of the other.

p.447 Pressure is a summarizing variable. Subsuming all kinds of used social power, it measures without reference to quality of influence only the amount of influence that one person brings to bear upon another.