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Whyte /IN DEFENSE OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY 53

Nutsy and Frank were not members of what I called the leadership subgroup, which consisted of Doc, Mike, Danny, and Long John. I cannot fault her for omitting them in her interviews. When she began her study, Doc and Danny had died. Mike had moved to Hudson, New York, where he was a union organizer. I had lost track of Long John. To get a fuller picture of the reactions of the Nortons, it would be important to hear from members of the top group.

I will deal later with my relations with Doc. In a letter to me from Mike (Frank Luongo) in May 1944, he writes, "Bill, read your book and thought it was swell and will look it over again and if I have any comments to say you know I will but I think and know you covered everything O.K." In another Luongo letter dated March 22, 1944, he writes that Danny, who, according to Doc, had already read the book, now wanted an autographed copy-and offered to send me the money for it.

On reactions from another street corner man, on first reading SCS, Sam Franco (Angelo Ralph Orlandella) wrote me on March 9, 1944, "BILL, YOUR BOOK IS EXCELLENT!! ... Bill, your preface is perfect and I want you to know that this book can only bring a new light upon the people of 'Cornerville'. It can't harm us, it's the greatest thing that ever happened to us. Why? Because it's sincere, and you have proved that in my district, we have human beings." Later, after lending SCS to some of his friends and neighbors, he wrote me (March 6, 1948) on their reactions: "Anthony Palladino (used to be my group leader when I was young) read your book at least 3 times. I discussed it with him in my house. He thought it was the only true picture of our district or of any other parallel district, that he ever read." He then describes the enthusiastic reactions of several others and closes with this statement: "Yes, Bill, all they say when they return it to me is wonderful, great, how did he ever do it, I never read anything like it."

Boelen says she talked with five members of the Italian Community Club: Chick Morelli, Angelo Cucci, Joe Gennusi, Tom Scala, and Pat Russo. On pages 350-52, I have reported my own feedback discussion with Chick. As I had expected, he

54 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY I APRIL 1992

was not happy with my treatment of him and the Club, but he said, "Bill, everything you described about what we did is true all right, but you should have pointed out that we were just young then. That was a stage we were going through. I've changed a lot since then" (p. 351}. Many years later, I did see him quoted as attacking the "distortions" in the book.

Boelen talked with two settlement house workers, Clara G. and Mr. Kendall (Frank Havey). As far as I can judge from her account, the criticisms they raised involved mainly my failure to deal with the family and family relations. When I talked with Frank Havey about the book, I was pleased to find that he did not challenge my thesis on "The Social Role of the Settlement House."

I will deal later with Boelen's account of her interviews with "the restaurant family."

The remaining sources she cites were all people who were not characters in the book and who did not know me: Doc's sons, Doc's brother and niece, George Ravello, Jr., Bill Foppiano, and Dr. Merluzzi. The last two names I cannot place, since I knew nobody with those names, nor were they pseudonyms I gave them.

It is significant to note some of the main omissions from Boelen's list of informants or participants in her feedback. While she criticizes my treatment of racketeer influence, she did not consult with any member of the Garnerville Sand A Club, my most important source for tracking the linkages between corner boys and racketeers. She interviewed Angelo Ralph Orlandella, my fellow participant observer, who knew more about me and my study than anyone except Doc (Ernest "Dean" Pecci). She did not include him in her feedback list. In a Boelen letter that Orlandella passed on to me, she wrote, "Attached is the rnformation I gathered from our talk. If you agree, will you kindly let me know." She gave him a phone number to call. Orlandella looked over the brief notes, decided at various points he did not agree, and therefore did not bother to reply. He reports that Boelen did call him later but at that time only checked with him on information regarding his personal career, and Orlandella


volunteered nothing regarding his disagreements. He explained to me that because I had referred her to him and she professed to be a great admirer of SCS, he assumed she was a friend of mine and did not wish to offend her! If Boelen had pursued the feedback with Orland ella more vigorously, looking for disagreements as well as agreements, he would have been able to correct various factual errors and misrepresentations-but, in that case, she might no longer have had the basis for an article.

ON THE SLUM ISSUE

The most serious charge is that I falsified my data. Boelen supplies me with a motive for lying: i wanted to describe Garnerville as a slum and had therefore "fictionalized events and situations I had experienced or observed."

To support this charge, Boelen notes that at the University of Chicago, I had "immersed myself in the sociological [slum] literature" (p. 356). She neglects to report the rest of that sentence and the one that follows. I went on to state "and I became convinced that most of it was worthless and misleading. It seemed to me it would detract from the task at hand if I were required to clear away the garbage before getting into my story."

I report the problems I had getting SCS accepted as a doctoral thesis (see pp. 356-57). Louis Wirth led the interrogation, claiming I could not define a slum district without using the concept of "social disorganization." I argued that overcrowding, housing conditions, unemployment, and poverty were items that could be concretely described and measured, whereas social disorganization struck me as a term applied by middle-class people to areas not organized in standard middle-class ways. Far from slanting my treatment of Garnerville to conform to then current sociological beliefs, I argued that the district was highly organized in its own pattern. In effect, I was trying to get sociologists to rethink the nature of life and organization in low-income, congested urban districts. Some believe that SCS served that purpose well.


Boelen reports that Herbert Gans studied a neighboring district, which he did not consider a slum. Neither did I. Boston's West End had a higher social reputation than Garnerville (the North End) and had superior housing conditions, lower unemployment, and more people with middle-class occupations.

On the use of "gangs" for informal corner groups, I was only using the term commonly used in the district at that time. It had no implication regarding crime and delinquency. Furthermore, in the larger society, the term was used in the same way. In the 1920s, Hollywood productions of "Our Gang Comedies" were very popular, and they dealt with lively and sometimes mischievous boys, without any implications of criminal behavior. There was also a popular song whose refrain asked, "Whatever happened to that old gang of mine?"

WAS I AN INSIDER?

Boelen questions whether I was really an "insider" in Garnerville. She notes that I sometimes had "the feeling that the people I was interviewing would much rather have me get out of there altogether" (p. 283). In the first place, on the street corners, I did not do any formal interviews. I did indeed feel ill at ease during my abortive study of housing conditions, which I soon abandoned. To be sure, I felt ill at ease, as anyone would, when I first made contact with a new group, but that feeling was short lived. I found I enjoyed life on the street corners so much that it was a real emotional wrench to tear myself away from Garnerville.

Boelen also cites the case where I went looking for a corner acquaintance and traced him to the building where he lived, only to be told by everybody there (including his sister) that nobody had ever heard of him. That also is taken out of context. In a population of over 20,000 people, I could not be expected to be known and trusted by everybody. I was well known on a number of street corners, but Chichi lived in an area where I was not known. I had known him primarily from a rented room where he was running a crap game. His sisters and friends might well


have assumed that I had some connection with the law. When Chichi heard my voice and stepped forward, that problem was solved.

Whether I was an insider depends on how one defines the term. I never tried to "pass" as a local Garnerville man or as an Italian American-although one corner boy lost a bet on me when he argued that my family name had originally been Bianchi. My aim was to become accepted and trusted as someone who had a sincere interest in Garnerville and its people. That I achieved such a level of acceptance and trust is best demonstrated by the frank and open way in which so many Garnerville people talked with me and involved me in their activities. The fact that I could mobilize members of about 10 corner gangs for the protest march on City Hall also provides evidence that I was trusted.

INFORMING AND FEEDING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY

Boelen makes two charges here: that I never informed community people that I was making a study and expected to publish something from that study and that I did not feed back the results of my study to the community.

In my first encounter with Doc (Ernest "Dean" Pecci), I explained as well as I then could what I hoped to write about Garnerville. Pecci then commented, "I think you can change things that way. Mostly that is the way things are changed, by writing about them" (p. 293}. He then told me I could count on him to explain my purposes to the Nortons and to his other local contacts.

When I went toP. A. Santosuosso, editor of The Italian News, for advice on my study, he interviewed me at length and then volunteered to help me find a place to live. He guided me to the Martinis (the Orlandis), the restaurantfamily, and told them I was making a study of the district. While I lived there, we frequently talked about the study. Besides, nearly every morning, they

58 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY I APRIL1992

could hear me in my room whacking out my notes on the typewriter.

As Boelen notes, the leader of the Italian Community Club, Chick Morelli, knew that I would be publishing something out of my project. Could it be that fle was the only one smart enough to figure that out? I wonder what others who knew me thought I was doing, attached to Harvard University, and spending 3-1/2 years in Cornerville, just hanging around.

Boelen wrote, "The Nortons mentioned that they had frequently seen Whyte scribbling notes on small pieces of paper, but whenever they asked why he did so, apparently Whyte had answered, 'Oh, nothing, just something I want to remember.' Their recollection was that Whyte was somewhat reticent about the matter."

That conversation is sheer fantasy. I never took notes in the field, except when I was serving as secretary of the Italian Community Club, with the responsibility of keeping the minutes, and when I stepped into the toilet in the Cornerville S and A to jot down notes on spatial positions of members. In fact, Chick Morelli told Boelen that I did not take notes in the field. Furthermore, one of the most obvious lessons a participant observer learns is not to give evasive answers to questions about what he is doing, since that would lose him the trust of informants. I did not tell the other Nortons what I was doing because they never asked me, and I assumed they had been fully informed by Doc.

Boelen suggests that I "committed an ethical cardinal sin by not taking the manuscript back to the field and checking the contents with the subjects." This is an ethical principle invented by Boelen. I know of nowhere in the literature where such a principle has been stated, nor can I recall anthropological or sociological community studies in which such community feedback has been attempted.

I suspect I did more feeding back than is usually attempted. I will deal later with my relations with Ernest Pecci, my initial guide and collaborator, but here just let me note that beside the innumerable discussions we had over the years, he read the first draft of SCS and we went over it together in great detail.


I worked closely with a second coparticipant observer, Angelo Ralph Orlandella, and reviewed my data and conclusions with him. My interest in feedback did not end when I left Garnerville in 1940. On March 3, 1941, I sent Pecci an article I was publishing, writing that it "represents some of the general conclusions that I am planning to work into my book. If I have made mistakes in the article, it is too late to correct them, but at least I can revise my conclusions for the book, if that is necessary."

Pecci did not respond to that letter. I assumed he was just not a letter writer, but I did not let it go at that. On questions of feedback on the book, before or after publication, or on articles I sent them, I asked Frank Luongo (of the Nortons) to report Pecci's views. In a letter from Frank (April 22, 1944), he wrote, "Bill, I was talking to the Dean [Pecci] about your book and he still feels about the book as he told you when he looked at it with you up [at] your house" (for Pecci's reaction at that time, see p. 341).

Through visits back to Garnerville and correspondence with friends there, I continued to ask and receive feedback on topics concerning the book or information on other topics. For example, when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Louis Wirth was studying whether our involvement in World War II had increased discrimination against Italian Americans. I asked Frank Luongo for his own views and suggested he consult Pecci. He did so and wrote me a long letter (February 24, 1942). My files up to 1948 contain 42 letters from Frank Luongo and 25 from Angelo Ralph Orlandella as well as a scattering of letters from half a dozen other Garnerville people.

ON MY RELATIONS WITH DOC

On page 341 , I state that Ernest Pecci and I went over the draft of SCS, consisting then of five manuscripts: studies of the Nortons, and the Italian Community Club, and "The Racketeer in the Garnerville S. and A. Club," "The Social Structure of Racketeering," and "Politics and the Social Structure." The


manuscript submitted to the publisher contained no major changes. The rewriting involved primarily condensation.

Boelen quotes Pecci's sons as saying that this feedback could not possibly have happened. However, the Frank Luongo letter cited earlier supports my account of the Pecci feedback.

I recognized in the feedback session with Pecci that he had mixed feelings about the book. As I reported on page 341, "At times, when I was dealing with him and his gang, he would smile and say: 'This will embarrass me, but this is the way it was, so go ahead with it.'"

As I expected, when the book came out, he undertook to distance himself from it. Because he was known as having worked closely with me, and I often quoted him making critical remarks about members ofthe Nortons or the Italian Community Club, those who read the book could well have been annoyed with him. Besides, when the street corner beliefs are that everyone is equal, it is not pleasant to read that you were a low-ranking member of a group headed by Pecci. Nevertheless, we remained on friendly terms until at least 1953, 10 years after publication. At that time Kathleen and I visited him and his family in Medford. In later years, when I tried to see him, he put me off, and it was clear that he did not wish to see me.

My interpretation of the change is that when we were working together and when it came to the attention of the academic community what a contribution he was making, he enjoyed the role he was playing. When his role in SCS became known in the Boston area academic community, he was invited to speak with classes at Harvard and Wellesley. At first, he enjoyed those performances, but later he tired of them and wrote to ask that I not identify him as "Doc." He believed in what we were doing together and accepted what I wrote because he thought the accounts of events were accurate. But later, when he was feeling the embarrassment he had expected, he began to think that his costs were too high. In my last meeting with Frank Luongo, at the time of his terminal illness, I asked him to explain my estrangement from Pecci. He told me that I should not take it personally; since moving to Medford and establishing himself


as a successful executive in an electronics firm, Pecci had lost contact with his Garnerville friends.

Doc's sons state that I had exploited their father. While I grant that I got more from the relationship than he did, that was not my intention. When he was running for political office, I lent him money to support the campaign-and wrote off the debt when that effort ended. Through connections I made at Harvard, I got him a job interview at the telephone company. (Because they only had linemen's jobs open, his physical handicap disqualified him.) When Mr. Kendall (Frank Havey) was starting the storefront recreation center program, I persuaded him to hire Pecci as director of one of the centers. He did an outstanding job, but unfortunately, funding for the program ran out after 6 months. After I had left Cornerville, I learned that Havey had an opening on his regular staff for a boys' worker. I phoned to urge him to appoint Pecci. I followed this up with two letters to Havey (May 11, 1941 ), one for him personally and one recommending Pecci to his board of directors. Apparently the board was not prepared to appoint a high school dropout, no matter what abilities he had already demonstrated working with boys. After that, Pecci needed no help from me or anyone else. In the wartime labor shortage, he got a job, and his own abilities launched him on a successful career.

ON MY RELATIONS WITH THE RESTAURANT FAMILY

Boelen claims that I falsified my account of the "Martini" (Orlandi) family so as to make them appear poorer than they actually were; that, instead, Papa was a well-to-do man in a large restaurant "frequented by famous singers and composers," and their home had two bathrooms, not the one toilet I had reported. She also reported that they took me in, as a poor student, without charging me rent.

When I lived with the Orlandis, they rented the second and third floor of a building on 7 Parmenter Street. The restaurant


was on the second floor; their living quarters were on the third floor.

My field notes taken at a time when I was looking for a room (February 6 and 8, 1937) report these conversations with Averaldo Orlandi. Avy says, "It's not luxurious, you understand. If we had anything better, we would give it to you .... There is no bath, you know." I asked Avy if the toilet next to the restaurant was just for customers or also for the family. He replied, "That is the only one." At the time, including me, there were nine people for that one toilet shared with the restaurant.

On establishing the rent, I offered $15 per month. "He looked solemn for a moment, and I thought he was going to protest the smallness of the amount. Then he said, '$15 a month is too much. $12 is enough.'"

My notes tell me that in Italy, Papa had owned property but had suffered financial reverses, which led to his emigration. In Boston, he went into partnership with another Italian American who spoke English and who took over handling the funds for a restaurant in a fashionable area of Boston. That was probably where the Orland is encountered Caruso and other singers and performers. Then the partner had put the restaurant funds into stock market speculation; they were subsequently wiped out in the stock market crash.

When I was with them, they had a small restaurant with about 40 or 50 capacity, and I never saw or heard of any well-known people eating at their establishment on 7 Parmenter Street. Later, they did try to expand, taking over a place a block away that may well have had 160 seats.

Because the Orlandis had a small business that supported Papa, Mama, and Avy, they were indeed more affluent than the average in that district. They were hard-working people, who provided excellent food and service. I was happy to be considered part of their family, and it pains me to think that I would misrepresent them for any purposes.

On my relations with the Orland is (as also in Boelen's critique of my discussion of racketeers and street corner behavior), Boelen gets mixed up because she fails to recognize the changes

Whyte I IN DEFENSE OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY 63

that had taken place in Garnerville between the depression years of the 1930s and the more prosperous times of the 1970s and 1980s.

THE ROLE OF RACKETEERS

On racketeers, Boelen claims that my interpretations are based on "rumors and hearsay." She supports this charge by stating, "I then showed them [the Nortons] the charts on pages 184, 188, and 222 of SCS where it was stated that members of the racket organization participated or headed Norton group activities or their clubs. They looked puzzled and denied that there was ever any contact with the racketeers."

Of course, they looked puzzled. The charts on pages 184 and 188 represent the structure of the Garnerville S and A Club, and the chart on page 222 depicts the structure of the Ravello political organization for his congressional campaign! The charts have nothing to do with the Nortons, and they would not have been familiar with either the Club or the Ravello campaign organization.

Boelen seems to be saying that because I showed a strong linkage between one corner boys' club and a racketeer, I was trying to prove that racketeers dominated street corner life and local politics. SCS never mentions any contact between the Nortons and the racket organization. I made no claim that racketeers were involved with every Garnerville group. There were many individuals and groups who avoided such ties.

I have acknowledged that I did not penetrate the racket organization as deeply as I had hoped, but I did know "Tony Cataldo," a "50% man"-middle management in the racket organization-and I got to know his brother (who was close to his business) even better. I heard plenty of "rumors and hearsay" on the street corners, but I wanted to find concrete ways of assessing their local influence. I found that opportunity with the Garnerville S and A Club. That case clearly shows how, at some critical points, Tony influenced Club decisions, although he had strong opposition.


Regarding the influence of racketeers in politics, it was widely believed at the time that several prominent local politicians were closely linked to the racket organization. This was not believed regarding State Senator George Ravello. Nevertheless, during Ravello's congressional campaign, his wife, Carrie Ravello, said to me, "Let's not kid ourselves, Bill; when we want to win, we go to the racketeers-all of us" (p. 205}. Because she was intimately involved in every aspect of the campaign, I did not regard that statement as "rumor or hearsay." That is one piece of evidence supporting the Ravello campaign chart on page 222.

It would be quite natural these days for Garnerville people to play down the influence of racketeers in the 1930s. Apart from the urge to distance themselves from disreputable activities, there had been a major change in the social and economic climate. In the 1930s, the racketeers were almost the only men highly visible on the street corners who had money as well as political influence. The numbers racket still goes on, but in the 1970s and 1980s, Garnerville unemployment was far below 1930s levels, and many more people had "good jobs," so the financial leverage and local influence of the racketeers would be substantially reduced.

ON ITALIAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Boelen states that Italian was the language used on the street corner in the late 1930s. In all of my contacts with corner groups, I never heard any Italian spoken, except for an occasional swear word.

Boelen faults me for not recognizing that the custom of young men hanging on street corners was brought over from Italy. I never did consider that possibility. I knew that before the Italians moved into Garnerville, Irish young men had been hanging out on the corners, and in other large cities, Hispanic and Afro-American young men are hanging out on street corners. Did those customs come here from Ireland, Puerto Rico, Mexico, or Africa?


She underestimates my ability to speak Italian and my knowledge of and interest in Italian culture. In a letter dated March 13, 1937 to a college friend, I describe learning Italian by the Linguaphone method. Of the 30 lessons in the course,

I managed to get through the 16th by the time I got here [with the Orlandis] early in February. When I came here, I found that I could say simple sentences, read the newspaper, and understand simple sentences addressed at me. I talk a little Italian with Papa Orlandi just about every evening. We have now reached the point where we can discuss religion, politics, war, and love at some length, and I am beginning to follow conversation that is not addressed at me. They say that my pronunciation is genuinely Italian.

That letter was written a little over a month after I moved in with the Orlandis. Shortly thereafter, I finished the Linguaphone course. Following that letter, I had another 14 months before getting married. During most of that period, besides the frequent conversations with Papa, I joined the family for Sunday dinner, where the conversation was in Italian. My fluency had to improve with such constant practice.

I continued my reading in Italian, concentrating on the works of a remarkable Sicilian physician, Giuseppe Pitre. Between 1889 and 1913 (the period within which many Garnerville Sicilians had immigrated), he published 25 volumes on his Biblioteca delle Tradizioni Populare Siciliano on family life, religious customs, and folklore in Sicily. Based primarily on reading three of those volumes, I wrote an article on "Sicilian Peasant Society," which was published in American Anthropologist (January-March 1944).

To be sure, I did not make much use of Italian in my fieldwork, but there were occasions when it came in handy. Once when I was on the corner with the Nortons, someone came by passing out a handbill in Italian. They could not make it out and asked me to translate for them. (I assume most of them did talk to the older generation in the dialect of their area of origin, but some dialects are rather remote from authentic Italian.) Then, when we were getting organized for the march on City Hall, we needed someone to go through some of the streets to announce our


plans to the older generation. Because none of the corner boys I was then with had enough confidence in his Italian, I had to pick up the bullhorn and make the announcement myself.

When I was exploring the light that the saints' day festas might throw on peasant conceptions on the relationship between the sacred and the social structure, I interviewed one of the oldtimers involved in planning the ceremony honoring the saint in his home town. That interview was done in Italian. Readers will find his interview (see pp. 270-71) rather long and complex.

My Cornerville fieldwork, plus my library research on Italian culture, led to a Harvard appointment in 1943. Sociologist Talcott Parsons and anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn offered me a job teaching in the program for officers in training to take over military government following the American landing in Italy. The job was to involve half-time research on Italian culture and society. Besides further library research, this would have brought me back to Cornerville interviewing, but this time concentrating on the older generation and family life.

That job was aborted when the polio virus I had contracted in Oklahoma caught up to me in Boston. In fact, I was in my old room with the Orlandis, planning to use that base as I looked for housing for my family. Avy Orlandi got the doctor for me, and he and a friend then got me to the hospital. When I was ready to go back to work 11 months later, the Harvard job no longer existed.

ON THE FAMILY AND FAMILY RELATIONS

In SCS, I wrote that "it seemed inconceivable that one could write a study of Cornerville without discussing the family" (p. 324). I did indeed have field notes on the family, but I made no systematic study of family relations. I therefore decided I would have to confine my book to the areas where I had substantial and systematic data: corner boys, college boys, the settlement houses, and racketeers and politicians. SCS can legitimately be faulted for not being a complete community study-as I have


acknowledged. Still, one researcher can hardly cover every significant aspect of life in a community of over 20,000 in 3-1/2 years of field work. Furthermore, I wonder whether devoting more attention to the family would have affected the analyses I made of those organizations I did study.

MISCELLANEOUS ERRORS AND MISINTERPRETATIONS

Beyond the points already noted, I found a number of other errors and misinterpretations, which although they have no direct bearing on the main themes of her critique, reflect on the quality of Boelen's scholarship.

I called Boston "Eastern City." Boelen calls it "Easter City." The first time I saw that, I assumed it was a typographical error. On the contrary, it remains "Easter City" all five times it appears in her manuscript.

She says that for one Sunday dinner with the Orland is, I had not only brought my wife but my in-laws "who seemed to impress them most since they did not speak English." Clarence King and Alice Seabrook King were native speakers of English, descendants of generations of English speakers. It would not have been difficult for Boelen to correct that obvious error. On page 320, SCS reports my marriage to Kathleen King. That name could hardly be foreign-unless it were Irish or English.

Boelen claims I reported that "the racketeers paid for the charter of the club" (p. 160). SCS describes discussions in the Garnerville S and A club regarding getting a charter, but the idea was abandoned.

Boelen does not understand the numbers racket. She illustrates this in her description by explaining how the payoff on a 5-cent bet would be distributed among the bettor, the bookie, and the police. She makes no allowance for the profit to the racket organization. They were hardly running a not-for-profit business. Above the bookie (who, as I recall, got about 15% of the profits), was the middleman to whom he turned in his betting slips. That man got 50% of the profits and turned in his bets to


"the office"-top management, which collected the remainder of the profits from innumerable 50% men.

Boelen does not understand what is meant by "repeating" in elections. She gives the impression that most "cheating" takes place by "adding names of deceased persons or fictitious names to the voting list." Who votes for the dead and imaginary people? Repeaters, of course.

CONCLUSION

How do we evaluate reports of events written up shortly after the observations versus general statements based on the recollections of selected informants 30 to 40 years later? Throughout her critique, Boelen builds her case on generalizations made by informants who, in some cases, were not even involved in the events I described. Where she does challenge me on specific points, I have been able to cite evidence from field notes or correspondence to reject her claims. What her article does demonstrate is that in the years since 1940, a good deal of folklore has grown up in Garnerville regarding Street Corner Society.

Boelen faults me for leaning on my own value and belief system and "by not voicing the view of the subject population." It would be hard to find a book that devoted such a large proportion of the text to quotations from people in the community studied.

WILLIAM FOOTE WHYTE has been president of the American Sociological Association, the Industrial Relations Research Association, and the Society for Applied Anthropology. Street Corner Society is his best known book. His most recent books are Social Theory for Action: How Individuals and Organizations Learn to Change and Making Mondragon: The Growth and Dynamics of the Worker Cooperative Complex (rev. ed., coauthored by Kathleen King Whyte). He is now Professor Emeritus and Research Director of Programs for Employment and Workplace Systems in Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.

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