While there are many places in the U.S. actually named Middletown, the Lynds were interested in an idealized conceptual American type, and concealed the identity of the city by referring to it by this term.
The first study was conducted during the prosperous 1920s, beginning in January 1924, while the second was written, with far less fieldwork, late in the Great Depression in the United States.
The Lynds used the "approach of the cultural anthropologist" (see field research and social anthropology), existing documents, statistics, old newspapers, interviews, and surveys to accomplish this task.
The stated goal of the study was to describe this small urban center as a unit which consists of "interwoven trends of behavior".
[3] Or put in more detail, "to present a dynamic, functional study of the contemporary life of this specific American community in the light of trends of changing behavior observable in it during the last thirty-five years.
"[4] The book is written in an entirely descriptive tone, treating the white citizens of Middletown in much the same way as an anthropologist from an industrialized nation might describe a non-industrial culture.
Following anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers' classic Social Organization, the Lynds write that the study proceeded "under the assumption that all the things people do in this American city may be viewed as falling under one or another of the following six main-trunk activities:"[5] In the 1920s, the Lynds found a "division into the working class and business class that constitutes the outstanding cleavage in Middletown."
They state: The mere fact of being born upon one or the other side of the watershed roughly formed by these two groups is the most significant single cultural factor tending to influence what one does all day long throughout one's life; whom one marries; when one gets up in the morning; whether one belongs to the Holy Roller or Presbyterian church; or drives a Ford or a Buick ...[6]The study found that at least 70 percent of the population belonged to the working class.
Also, new technology such as supermarkets, refrigeration, and washing machines have contributed to a downswing in traditional skills such as cooking and food preservation.
With the rise of these activities, interest in such institutions as book discussion groups (and reading in general), public lectures, and the fine arts is in sharp decline.
Owning a car, and the prestige it brings, is considered so important that some working-class families are willing to bypass necessities such as food and clothing to keep up with payments.
For example, the "business class", traditionally Republican, grudgingly supported the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and accepted the money the New Deal brought into town.
They end on a strongly negative note, fearing that a dictator such as Huey Long or Adolf Hitler could conceivably draw support from such a population.
For example, even today, many news agencies, when trying to figure out what the "average American" believes, visit Muncie, Indiana.
[citation needed] This view was only furthered by the results of the second study – if the Great Depression was unable to cause major changes in the town's social structure, the implication is that nothing will.
While a growing number of sociologists and social critics (i.e., Robert D. Putnam) complain of less community involvement, their detractors point directly to the Middletown study.
The argument is this: in 1925, observers were worried that new inventions such as the radio were destroying community ties, that morality was on the decline, and that the very fabric of American democracy was in danger.
[citation needed] The Lynds tried carefully to avoid any ideological biases in the first study, offering it as a neutral set of observations.
Data from the Middletown III and IV replications is available from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research under study number 4604.