The 'Definition of the Situation'

This research paper is a report on just one aspect of the comparative study of two adjacent, competing, and sociologically similar communities. These data do show that the two adjacent, competing communities that contain similar population stocks, similar economic bases, and similar geographic characteristics did define the same stimulus in quite different ways. The methodological device of seeking for similar situations, which are differently defined, was fruitful. The hypothesis that communities to which different diffused values had been ascribed would define very specific situations in different ways is supported. One is impressed by the persistence of these definitions. Certainly that social change has a one to one correspondence with changes in modes of production or technology is not borne out here. These data cover the periods of the bloody Civil War, World War I, World War II; the depressions of 1859, 192 1-23, 1929-1941 occur in this time span, changes in the technologies of steamboats, railroads, roads, automobiles, canning sardines, and in communications by wire and air have come about, yet in this particular, Eastport, Maine, remains Eastport, and Lubec, Maine, remains Lubec, each distinguished from the other by specific local values.