OCCUPATION, ETHNICITY AND RESIDENCE IN HAMILTON

Abstract

It is traditional in the preface to research on cities to elucidate the attitudes and values which underlie the selection of the problem and the theoretical approach used by scholars and others who undertake systematically to understand something of a city. In these introductions there usually emerges an inventory of attitudes with their historical antecedents and an examination of their effect on current research. In one recent example distaste for the masses in shown to first derive from Plato's thought and is seen as an influence on recent interest in social disorganization both as an empirical problem in cities and as a theoretical orientation. Most general writing on the city, it is claimed, implies a preference for either a rural or an urban existence. Antipathy to urbanism has been generated by the glorification of the simplicity and morality of agrarian or small town life, and the above mentioned distaste for the mob. Small town New England Protestantism and the Anti Saloon League in early America exemplify social movements which both symbolized and generated these urban aversions.