Abstract
Community action is always societal action and all organizational behavior is always both local and national. Community movements and local organizations are shaped by mass cultural and political movements and by large-scale social events. Local people respond in their own personal way to these things and in a fashion that fits the context of local life. In this way life in small towns and in any community is always a manifestation of mass society (Vidich and Bensman, 1968).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alcoholics Anonymous (1953). Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing.
Belenky, M.F., Clincy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R., and Tarule, J.M. (1986). Women’s Ways of Knowing. The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. New York: Basic.
Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Borkman, T.J. (1999). Understanding Self-Help/Mutual Aid: Experiential Learning in the Commons. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Chaves, M. (2004). Congregations in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Collins, R. (2004). Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cunningham, W.J. (1998). Theoretical framework for conflict resolution. Thesis for the degree of Master of Literature in Political Studies at the University of Aukland (1998). Retrieved February 28, 2005 from: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/conflict/cunningham.htm.
Dahl, Robert A. (1961), Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Anchor.
Guilbert, CM. (Custodian of the Standard Book of Common Prayer) (1979). The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church. New York: Church Hymnal Corporation.
Hunter, A. (1992). National federations: The role of voluntary organizations in linking macro and micro orders in civil society. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterlv, 22:121–136.
Jarmin, N. (1998) Painting Landscapes: The Place of Murals in the Symbolic Construction of Urban Space. In: Symbols in Northern Ireland, ed. Anthony Buckley, Belfast: Queens University, Institute of Irish Studies 1998. Access the article through CAIN Web Service (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/bibdbs/murals.
Jeavons, T. (1994). When the Bottom Line is Faithfulness. Management of Christian Service Organizations. Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press.
Lavery, B. (2005). Protestants say anger and alienation are fueling riots in Belfast. New York Times, September 15:A3.
LeDuff, C. (2004). 12 years after the riots, Rodney King gets along. New York Times, September 19:1.22.
Loseke, D.R. (1992). The Battered Women and Shelters: The Social Construction of Wife Abuse. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Messer, J.G. (1994). Emergent organization as a practical strategy: Executing trustee functions in Alcoholics Anonymous. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 23:293–308.
Meyerson, M. and Banfield, E.C. (1955). Politics, Planning, and the Public Interest. New York: Free Press.
Mills, C.W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
Milofsky, C. (1995). The old order Mennonites as a “New Social Movement.” Paper presented at the University of Paris VIII, St. Denis, France. December 1.
Milofsky, C. (1998). Local interorganizational fields and the genesis of social service organizations: The case of a small religious nonprofit. Paper presented at meetings of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Seattle, November.
Milofsky, C. (1999). The Episcopal Diocese as a mediating structure. Paper presented at meetings of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Washington, DC, November.
Milofsky, C. (2001). Stories from Central Pennsylvania: Building the Susquehanna Institute. Lewisburg, PA: Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Paper prepared under contract for the Kettering Foundation. Unpublished.
Milofsky, C. and Elworth, J.T. (1985). Charitable associations. In: Issues in the Care of Children with Chronic Illness, ed. N. Hobbs and J.M. Perrin, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 790–810.
Milofsky, C. and Morrison, N. (1996). The evolving board-executive relationship at a women’s shelter. In: Nonprofit Boards and Leadership: Cases on Governance, Change, and Board-Staff Dynamics, ed. M.M. Wood, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 99–118.
Oster, S.M. (1992). Nonprofit organizations as franchise operations. Journal of Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 2:223–238.
Piven, F.F. and Cloward, R.A. (1979). The welfare rights movement. In: Poor People’s Movements. Why They Succeed, How They Fail, ed. F.F. Piven and R.A. Cloward, New York: Vintage, pp. 264–361.
Roof, W.C. and McKinney, W. (1987). American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Selznick, P. (1966). TVA and the Grassroots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization. New York: Harper and Row.
Selznick, P. (1992), The Moral Commonwealth. Social Theory and the Promise of Community. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Sills, D. (1957). The Volunteers: Means and Ends in a National Organization. New York: Free Press.
Skocpol, T. (2003). Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Smithey, L. (2004). Strategic Collective Action and Collective Identity Reconstruction: Parading Disputes and Two Northern Ireland Towns. Dissertation Abstracts International, A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 64:9, Mar, 3489-A.
Staggenborg, S. (1991). The Pro-Choice Movement: Organization and Activism in the Abortion Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stark, E., and Flitcraft, A. (1996). Women at Risk: Domestic Violence and Women’s Health. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Thompson, J.D. (1967). Organizations in Action. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Trueheart, C. (1996), Welcome to the next church, Atlantic Monthly (August):37–58.
Verghese, A. (1994). My Own Country. A Doctor’s Story. New York: Vintage.
Vidich, A.J. and Bensman, J. (1968). Small Town in Mass Society: Class, Power and Religion in a Rural Community (rev. edn.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Waller, WW. (1967). The Sociology of Teaching. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Warner, R.S. (1994). The place of the congregation in the contemporary American religious configuration. In: American Congregations, vol. 2, ed. J.P. Wind and J.W. Lewis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 54–99
Warren, R.L. (1963). The Community in America. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Warren, R.L. (1967). The interorganizational field as a focus for investigation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 12:396–419.
Wood, M.M. (1992). Is governing board behavior cyclical? Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 3:139–162.
Wuthnow, R. (Ed.) (2002). The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Zald, M.H. (1970). Organizational Change: The Political Economy of the YMCA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer Science + Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Milofsky, C. (2008). Small Towns and Mass Society. In: Cnaan, R.A., Milofsky, C. (eds) Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-32933-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-32933-8_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-75729-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-32933-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)