New From Aldine M O T H E R S IN POVERTY by Louis Kriesberg, Syracuse University This book attempts explanations of the way of life of poor people and the possible role their way of life plays in the intergenerational transmission of poverty, assessing basic alternative explanations: the development and main tenance of a subculture of poverty; and circumstances that make people poor, keep them poor, and to which the poor respond. 384 pp. $9.75.

T E A R O O M TRADE: Impersonal

Sex

in Public

Places by Laud Humphreys, Southern Illinois University This book stands out from all other studies of sexual deviance. It is the first research involving detailed observation of sex acts in situ, facilitating the first sociological analysis of a sexual game from "positioning" through "payoff." And, by following the players to their homes, so to speak, it provides hitherto unavailable knowledge about the life-styles of men whose deviant sexuality remains hidden from families and neighbors. 208 pp. $5.95.

SOCIAL A C T I O N A N D LEGAL CHANGE: Revolution within the Juvenile Court by Edwin M. Lemert, University of Cali/ornia, Davis Based on a detailed analysis of change in law and in the administration of justice affecting juvenile offenders in California, this book examines the way in which changing attitudes toward social phenomena result in pressures for change that alter social institutions. It asks how Iaw, particularly procedural law, develops on a long term basis and under what conditions and by what processes do revolutionary changes in law occur? And, to what extent can social change be directed or controlled by means of legislation? 240 pp. $7.50.

AldinePublishingCo. 529 S. Wabash Chicago 60605 58

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that occurs in all societies is determined primarily by sex. For the exclusively female occupations he cites water-carrying, grain-grinding, cooking, gathering of herbs and the manufacture and repair of clothing. It is interesting that as societies become industrialized and urbanized many of these primary and traditional female occupations pass into the hands of men. Perhaps one can prophesy a cyclical pattern such that eventually we shall return to a nomadic hunting existence. Only this time it will be the women, no longer bound to the biological cycle of pregnancy, nursing, weaning, etc., who will engage in the h u n t - - w i t h other women. As I reflect on Tiger's essay, with its emphasis on the universality of male groups from prehistoric to contemporary times, on the males' propensity for bonding, on the importance that the hunt has had in determining modern

social organization and "male" and "female" personality characteristics, I find it hard to mesh the importance of or the significance of this biologically rooted propensity with the world in which we live today. W o m e n seem to have just as much enjoyment of each other's company, seem to need it as much, seem to seek it out as much and seem to think it worth their while that they engage collectively in organized pursuits for the achievement of peace, temperance, equality or safe streets, as do men. In short, Men in Groups is in places informative and sometimes amusing, but it does not leave me with the sense that I have had an important intellectual experience.

Rita James Simon is professor of sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

No Paradise Lost AKENFIELD. PORTRAIT OF A N ENGLISH VILLAGE

by RONALD

BLYTHE

New York: Pantheon, 1969, 287 pages, $6.95

Reviewed by LAURENCEWYLIE The village of Akenfield is in East Suffolk and about 90 miles from London. Akenfield is not its real name, for as is customary with this sort of book, pseudonyms are used in order to preserve the privacy of the individuals involved. Privacy is a matter of legal ritual rather than of fact here, however, since the book consists mostly of taped interviews and autobiographies, all "true and verbatim," so that any one of the 49 individuals interviewed can surely be identified by their friends--and enemies-in this community of 300 people. Even the village may be identified since the author says he lives only a mile from it, and a bit of research reveals that he lives in Woodbridge--to which I suspect he has given a pseudonym etymologically related to his native village of Acton (see W . W . Skeat, The Place-Names of Suffolk, Cambridge: Deignton, Bell and Co, 1913). Anyone who has made a community study is only too aware of the problems involved in this "invasion of privacy." If the community is in the Brazilian jungles whose inhabitants will undoubtedly never read their "self-portrait," the problem is minimized. However, students of "modern" communities have

rarely been tempted more than once to "tell all" about any group of their contemporaries who can read. The whole truth makes human relations sticky. W h e n it comes down to print, people do not like to be described except in flattering terms. W e cannot help wondering what has happened since the publication of this book to the relationship of the author to Akenfield and, even more, of the people of Akenfield to each other. Fortunately for us, that is their problem, and we outsiders can allow ourselves to enjoy to the fuiI the revelation of life in Akenfield. Some readers have been shocked by this image of rural life. John Leonard, one of the New York Times daily reviewers, comments: "On the whole, I'd prefer hell. Or even Philadelphia." The trouble is that urbanites, beset by the ugliness of the city and fleeing to the mock rurality of the suburbs, have imagined that rural life was a kind of paradise lost. The reality of rural life, and it comes through in this book with authenticity, is harsh. Discomfort, isolation, dependence on the whims of nature, the bare revelation of life and death, the inevitable predacity of living beings, the need for TRANS-ACTION

social intercourse but the treachery of social pressure, the unrelenting rhythm of hard work---all these form the other side of the coin of which we prefer to see only the side showing the image of the noble savage. Many people cannot tolerate this kind of life. Mental illness is often high in rural areas. Ronald Blythe points out that in 1966 there were 14 suicides in Ipswich, the urban center of East Suffolk, and 20 in the less populated rural area. Often the most gifted and imaginative individuals depart for the city. Of those who remain, there is the characteristic attitude expressed in the conclusion by one Akenfielder: "However, one must soldier on . . . . " (This reminds us that many of the New England puritans came from precisely this area of England!) The most enthusiastic villagers are really suburbanites, refugees from the city who have supplementary incomes so they may live comfortably in their nostalgically reconstructed cottages. If one can face life for what it is, however, there are better compensations than nostalgia for living in Akenfield. The subtitle of the book, Portrait of an English Village, is deceptive: it implies a sense of community that rarely exists in any village, except in the myth imagined by urbanites. The compensations are found in the solutions worked out by each of the 49 individuals who happen to be living in the geographic and administrative unit called Akenfield and who have little else in common. Each has his rationalization for '*soldiering on," and it is the rambling exposition of these rationalizations that makes this book truly fascinating. There is the poor farm laborer who finds his reason for carrying on in his will to do his job right, even though he will receive no material compensation or social recognition for it. (One is reminded again that this was the cradle of Puritans, also that the countrymen of East Anglia are rather looked down upon as "boobs" by the rest of the British!) There is the young pig farmer who loves and respects his wards: "Pigs are very interesting people and some of them leave quite a gap when they go off to the bacon factory." There are the individuals who find a lifelong avocation in bell ringing, an astonishing system of life that was unknown to me: Handel called the bell the English national instrument and still, in a great loud web of percussion, there are the hundreds of bell-ringing societies, guilds and associations which unite town with village from one end of 60

the country to the other . . . . There is something in the tensely permutating atmosphere of the ringing chamber, the dozen or so reaching out figures, the leaping ropes and the blindly passionate clamour above, which suggests the climatic ascension of young blood. The ringers are utterly absorbed. Such a total absorption takes over their mortgaged, classbound, year-measured lives and these conditions of existence are temporarily cancelled and the Self revels in noise, logic, arithmetic and a kind of intoxicating joy which accompanies the striking of one's own particular bell in the deafening harmony . . . . Ringing is an addiction from which few escape once they have ventured into the small fortress-like room beneath the bells, and the sally--the soft tufted grip at the end of the rope leaps to life against the palm of the hand like an animal. There then begins a lifetime of concentration, of perfect striking and a co-ordination of body and mind so destructive to anxieties and worries of all kinds that one wonders why campanology isn't high on the therapy list. There are the ubiquitous retired army officers who can continue to put order in the nature of their gardens as they did among human ciphers of their regi-

ments. There is the smith with an artistic soul who expresses himself by adapting his forge so that he no longer works for farmers but for the romantic city refugees: "The man with money to spend on a village house in England has got to have everything quaint and curly." There is the old grave digger, the most thoroughly socialized and therefore the most thoroughly isolated Akenfielder, whose experience has forced him to accept life for what it is--and death for what it is. He finds no consolation in the idea of the resurrection of the body: "The people I've accidentally smashed to pieces in my time, they're going to have a rum time of it." He prefers the company of his cats to that of people. One of the schoolmasters, musing about his own life, says: "I am interested, presumably in showing people how to preserve the valuable part of themselves." Essentially this has been the function of the author--or editor-of this book. From the many hours of tape recordings he has given us what seems to be the "valuable part" of each of these 49 very ordinary human beings. This makes them extraordinary and intensely interesting. Laurence Wylie is C. Douglas Dillon professor of the civilization of France at Harvard.

Adolescence & Politics POLITICAL T H I N K I N G A N D CONSCIOUSNESS: THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE POLITICAL MIND by ROBERT E. L A N E

Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1969, 348 pages, $6.95 Reviewed by PETER W.

SPERLICH

Robert Lane's new book provides an interesting addition and counterpart to his earlier Political Ideology, The basic objective has remained the same--the discovery and explanation of regularities in the associations of life experience, personality needs and political ideas--but there are major differences in method of data collection, type of respondents and focus of inquiry. The data for the earlier analysis were obtained through interviews of 15 adult members of the working and lower-middle class, the primary focus of conversation being the institutions and events that constituted the respondents' social and political environment. The data for

Political Thinking and Consciousness

come from essays of "ideological selfanalysis" written by 24 college undergraduates, most of whom had middleor upper-middle-class backgrounds. Ideological self-analysis is an analysis of one's own political values, opinions, and beliefs, and the functions they serve in one's personality and life situation. It is an extended response to the questions "Of what use to me are my political ideas?" and "How did I come to have these political ideas?" Self-analysis demands more of the respondent than interviewing, and while it provides better data for a study of intrapersonal dynamics than most inTRANS-ACTION