Assimilation and Localism: Some Very Small Towns in Mass Society |
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| Authors: | William W. Donner |
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| Affiliation: | Received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. He has done over three years of ethnographic research on Sikaiana, a Polynesian atoll in the Solomon Islands. Since 1988, he has been doing research on rural communities and among Pennsylvania Germans. He currently teaches at Millersville University and Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. |
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| Abstract: | A major theme in social theory concerns the transformation of social relationships in small communities as a result of modernization. This paper examines changing social relations in some small towns in southeastern Pennsylvania. For several hundred years, the residents of these towns have continuously developed institutions to preserve their local identity and maintain personal relations at the same time that they are incorporated into larger, regional social systems. The same local institutions and relations, however, are replicated in each small town, suggesting that local and particular interests are expressed through regional institutions. Although focused on a few small towns in one region of the United States, this paper examines the local expression of processes which are global. |
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