Robert Staughton Lynd

Robert Staughton Lynd (September 26, 1892 in New Albany, Indiana – November 1, 1970 in New York City) was an American sociologist born in New Albany, Indiana. He was a professor of sociology at Columbia University, New York City.

Robert and Helen Lynd are best known for writing the groundbreaking "Middletown" studies of Muncie, Indiana - Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937), which are classics of American sociology. Muncie was the first community to be systematically examined by sociologists in the United States.

Lynd attended college at Princeton University and earned a divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary. After working as a chaplain in Elk Basin, Wyoming, at a Rockefeller oil camp, Lynd wrote the article "Done in Oil" as an expose of the conditions there. This publication and his community work brought Lynd to the attention of the Rockefeller family and resulted in his being hired for the Middletown community study by the Rockefeller Institute of Social and Religious Research. Subsequent to the study of Muncie, Lynd earned a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University, using an abridged version of Middletown as his dissertation.

Staughton Lynd, a lawyer and historian noted for anti-war, civil rights and community activism, was one of two children of Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Lynd.

Works

• Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (1929)
• "The Consumer Becomes a 'Problem'", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 173, The Ultimate Consumer. A Study in Economic Illiteracy (May, 1934), pp. 1-6
• Middletown in Transition (1937)
• Knowledge for What? The Place of the Social Sciences in American Culture, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press (1939)

External links

• Irving Louis Horowitz, "Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences: Biographical Supplement, ed. David L. Sills, Free Press, 1979.
• "Series 1 - Robert & Helen Lynd", Staughton Lynd Collection, Kent State University
• Center for Middletown Studies, Ball State University
• Middletown Studies Collection and Digital Archives, Ball State University Archives and Special Collections Research Center
• FBI file on Robert Lynd