The Effect of Urban Life on Traditional Values

Three models predict an association between urbanism and nontraditional behavior: (1) that it is a function of the characteristics of individuals found in cities; (2) that it is due to the anomie of cities; (3) that it is due to the generation of and consequent influence of innovative urban subcultures. Secondary analysis of American survey data on religiosity, church attendance, attitudes toward alcohol and birth control confirm the general urbanism-deviance association. Controlling for covariates suggests that Model 1 is inadequate for there remains an independent effect of residence-albeit a quite small one-unaccounted for by individual traits. Some suggestive data point to Model 3 as the more accurate one. The common observation that cities harbor unconventional behavior has been fundamental to theories relating urbanism to the individual. As many reviewers have noted, the Chicago School's understanding of urban life was largely founded on interpreting these nontraditional behaviors as evidence of the social disorganization intrinsic to cities. It is the purpose of this paper to investigate, first, whether that common observation is empirically so, and most importantly, why it is so. Understanding the mechanism is crucial to understanding urbanism itself. This paper will therefore address the question: What is the effect of urban residence on the individual's adherence to traditional values? Our meanings should be made explicit: by "urban," we refer to the size of population concentrated at a place of settlement-a demographically defined rural to urban continuum. We know that there is great disagreement over the definitions of "city" and "urban" (cf. Dewey, 1960). This reductionist demographic definition is preferred for at least three reasons: (1) size is explicitly or implicitly an adjunct to most other definitions of the city and thus has the advantage of commonality; (2) rather than closing it off by definitional fiat, this approach leaves for empirical observation the proposition that size is generally related to other social phenomena (e.g., to heterogeneity, impersonality, etc.); (3) The models discussed below which depict urbanism as the cause of unconventionality derive the consequences largely from size. (For further argumentation, see Fischer, 1972a; 1972b.) We also know that operational definitions of cities are often arbitrary and vary greatly. Yet, if the general patterns we are discussing here actually exist, they should be revealed in spite of such vagaries. Previous research indicates precisely that. By "traditional value," we refer to an explicit norm dominant in a society, or, when in flux and ambiguous, previously dominant in a society. (The usage of traditionalism here is loosely equivalent to the notion of conservatism.) When referring to nonadherence, we will use the term, "deviance," meaning deviation from dominant cultural standards.' * The research reported here was supported largely by a fellowship from the Joint Center for Urban Studies of Harvard University and M.I.T. It represents a portion of dissertation work submitted to the Department of Sociology, Harvard University. The survey data used were obtained from the Roper Public Opinion Research Center, the Inter-University Consortium, for Political Research and the Institute for Social Research. Neither these-institutions nor the original investigators are responsible for the present use and interpretation of the data. Supplementary research funds were provided by Public Health Service Grant MH-1 8625 to Lee Rainwater, an Office of Education grant to Thomas F. Pettigrew and the Center for the Behavioral Sciences, Harvard. Thanks are rendered to Lee Rainwater, Barbara L. Heyns, David J. Armor, Andre Modigliani, Paul Burstein, Karl Dierup, and Ronald Abeles for helpful comments and assistance. 'We recognize the complexity involved in the concepts of tradition and deviance. There is no intention of referring to tradition in any of its usages in theories of unilineal evolution, or in theories of psychological dimensions of modernism. It refers here merely to a norm adhered to by a plurality of a society (or, when changing, previously so adhered to). Similarly, "deviance" is not meant to connote negative sanctioning; nor do we ignore subcultural variations. It is simply deviation from that central norm. Though the theoretical fogs around these terms are dense (Armer and