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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
This paper is based upon data collected in a survey of public attitudes toward the energy crisis, and toward U.S. energy policies, in several California communities in mid-1975. The authors believe that some of the information obtained in this survey makes possible a significant, though by no means conclusive and exhaustive, comparison of two models of civic ‘affect’. Following the usage of Almond and Verba, we take ‘affect’ to be ‘feelings about the political system, its roles, personnel, and performance’.
1 The study employed a systematic random sample of 1,600 persons, 800 from Sacramento, 600 from Winters and 200 from Capay Valley. The sampling frame for Sacramento was a city directory while the telephone directory was used for Winters and Capay Valley. The questionnaire was a fourteen-page self-administered instrument covering a wide range of energy-related issues as well as demographic and socioeconomic information. A mail survey procedure was utilized using a reminder postcard, a second questionnaire, and telephone calls to stimulate responses. Eight hundred and forty-three valid questionnaires were received from all areas, a 62·5 per cent return rate; of particular interest for this study is the fact that our use of a one-year-old (1974) city directory in Sacramento resulted in 252 questionnaires returned as not deliverable. The sample of highly mobile urban individuals in our study is thus in all likelihood underrepresented.
According to U.S. Bureau of the Census information, the Sacramento SMSA (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area) ranked forty-fifth in 1960 and forty-first in 1970. The increase in ranking placed the Sacramento area in the upper fifth of the largest 100 urban areas of the United States. The population increase in percentage terms (28 per cent) put Sacramento in the leading fifteen urban growth centers in the country. There has also been considerable accretion and change in the economy of Sacramento, with the consequent likelihood of more people with new jobs, new associations and new patterns of interaction, and thus some corresponding ruptures in previously established patterns of residence, work, association and the like. By all indications Winters occupied a middle ground both in terms of the quantity and quality of its social change, with the rural area of Capay Valley showing a population decline (from 305 to 255) but with little economic and occupational fluctuation between 1960 and the mid-1970s. See State Division of Highways, Tabulation Showing Population of California Cities and Unincorporated Towns: January 1, 1963 (Sacramento, Calif.: Office of City and County Projects Engineer), pp. 5 and 40Google Scholar; State of California Division of Highways, Population and Other Data of California Cities and Unincorporated Places: January 1, 1968 (Sacramento, Calif.: Office of City and County Projects Engineer), pp. 7, 9, 19, 25, 35, 50et seq.Google Scholar; State of California Business and Transportation Agency, Department of Transportation, California City and Unincorporated Place Names: July 1, 1973 (Sacramento, Calif.: Office of City and County Projects Engineer), no pagination.Google Scholar
2 Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), p. 14.Google Scholar
3 See Aberbach, Joel, ‘Alienation and Political behavior’, American Political Science Review, LXIII (1969), pp. 86–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Agger, Robert E., Goldstein, Marshall N., Pearl, Stanley A., ‘Political Cynicism: Measurement and Meaning’, Journal of Politics, XXIII (1961), 447–506Google Scholar; Litt, Edgar, ‘Political Cynicism and Political Futility’, Journal of Politics, XXV (1963), 312–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Feuer, Lewis S., ‘What Is Alienation? The Career of a Concept’ in Stein, Maurice R. and Vidich, Arthur J., eds., Sociology on Trial (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 127–47.Google Scholar See also Gilmour, Robert S. and Lamb, Robert B., Political Alienation in Contemporary America (New York: St Martin's Press, 1975). pp. 1–22.Google Scholar The traditional conceptualizations of alienation have included perceptions of distrust, feelings of powerlessness, normlessness, meaninglessness, cynicism, and sometimes also individual perceptions of isolation and estrangement within the political environment.
On characteristic findings, see Miller, Arthur H., Brown, Thad A. and Raine, Alden S., ‘Social Conflict and Political Estrangement, 1958–1972’Google Scholar (paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association convention, Chicago, 1973): ‘higher levels of support are found among the professional group than among gray or blue collar workers’, p. 21Google Scholar; on the greater alienation among blacks, see pp. 12–16; on the greater supportiveness of government by upwardly mobile whites as compared with downwardly mobile, p. 34; older people (over 50) are found to be more politically estranged than younger people (p. 59). According to Ada W. Finifter, ‘Individuals with high powerlessness scores…are likely to be older and have less education’, ‘Dimensions of Political Alienation’, American Political Science Review, LXIV (1970), 389–410, p. 405Google Scholar: those with high perceived normlessness are likely to be characterized, among other qualities, by low income and poor education. See also Agger, et al. , ‘Political Cynicism’Google Scholar, relating high levels of cynicism to lower class backgrounds, minimum education, and advancing age, pp. 499–500; and the findings on alienation in Gilmour, and Lamb, , ‘Political Alienation in Contemporary America’, by family income from 1960 to 1972 (figs. 2–6 and 2–7), pp. 43, 44Google Scholar; by level of education (fig. 2–8), p. 48; by sex (fig. 3–1), p. 54; and by age (fig. 3–3), p. 64.
4 Kornhauser, William, The Politics of Mass Society (New York: Free Press, 1959).Google Scholar See Olson, Mancur Jr., ‘Rapid Growth as a Destabilizing Force’, Journal of Economic History, XXIII (1963), 529–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wada, George and Davies, James C., ‘Riots and Rioters’, Western Political Quarterly, X (1957), 864–74.Google Scholar See also Gurr, Ted R., Why Men Rebel (Princeton, Conn.: Princeton University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; and Feierabend, I., Feierabend, R. and Nesvold, Betty A., ‘Social Change and Political Violence: Cross-National Patterns’ in Graham, H. D. and Gurr, T. R., eds., Violence in America (New York: New American Library, 1969), pp. 606–58Google Scholar; Carstairs, G. M., ‘Overcrowding and Human Aggression’Google Scholar, in Graham, and Gurr, , eds., Violence in America, pp. 730–42.Google Scholar See also Manderschied, R. W., Silbergeld, S. and Sager, E. Z., ‘Alienation: A Response to Stress’, Journal of Cybernetics, V (1975), 91–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The authors suggest that ‘reduced affiliation, cohesion, and involvement covary with increased stress’, producing various types of alienation effects, p. 95.
5 On the relationship between social integration and alienation, see Erbe, William, ‘Social Involvement and Political Activity: A Replication and Elaboration’, American Sociological Review, XXIX (1964), 198–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Finifter, , ‘Dimensions of Political Alienation’, particularly pp. 400–6Google Scholar on the inverse relationship between political participation and organizational activity and perceptions of powerlessness; and Aberbach, , ‘Alienation and Political Behavior’, p. 96Google Scholar on the relationship of voting to powerlessness. See also Cantril, Hadley, The Politics of Despair (New York: Basic Books, 1958)Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour M., Political Man (New York: New American Library, 1958)Google Scholar; and Horton, John E. and Thompson, Wayne E., ‘Powerlessness and Political Negativism: A Study of Defeated Social Referendums’, American Journal of Sociology, LXVII (1961–1962), 485–93Google Scholar; also Ransford, H. Edward, ‘Isolation, Powerlessness and Violence: A Study of Attitudes and Participation in the Watts Riot’, American Journal of Sociology, LXXIII (1967–1968), 581–91.Google Scholar
6 Kornhauser, , The Politics of Mass Society, p. 93.Google Scholar
7 Kornhauser, , The Politics of Mass Society, p. 193.Google Scholar
8 See Martin, William C., Bengtson, V. L., and Hoeck, A. C., ‘Alienation and Age: A Context Specific Approach’, Social Forces, LIII (1974), 266–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the view that alienation is likely to vary inversely with the length of continuous institutional experience.
9 See, e.g., Sorokin, Pitrim, Social Mobility (New York: Harper, 1927), Chaps. 21, 22.Google Scholar In Sorokin's conception, the urban dweller is the more likely to become restless, cynical, confused and, with but slight economic and social provocation (or sense of deprivation), rebellious. The mobile, urban individual is also seen as more prone to mental disorders and criminal behavior. Through a device Sorokin calls ‘misoneism’, the uprooted individual is likely to be attracted to mass movements offering him the hope of psychological and social reintegration on the basis of some simplified principles, whether political, racial, cultural, or religious. See also Lunden, Walter A., Crimes and Criminals (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1967), pp. 64–5.Google Scholar Lunden uses the term ‘detribalization’ to describe the atomizing effect of urban life. On the linkage between urban anomie, crime and mental disorders, see, among others, Farris, R. E. L. and Dunham, H. W., Mental Disorders in Urban Areas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939)Google Scholar; and more recently Abrahamsen, David, The Psychology of Crime (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960)Google Scholar and Potter, David M., People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 The questions selected for the first two scales were constructed using the technique of item analysis. Only those items correlating at the ·05 level of significance with the overall average were retained in the scale. An attempt to create one scale from the two sets of questions failed to meet the ·05 criterion level. Thus the third scale, affect, was created by averaging the respondents' scores on the disapproval and pessimism scales. The data were grouped for presentation in the tables by calling low or negative scale values of 1·0 to 2·49; moderate or neutral, 2·50 to 3·49; and high or positive, 3·50 to 5·00.
11 See, for example, Middleton, Russell, ‘Alienation, Race, and Education’, American Sociological Review, XXVIII (1963), pp. 973–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In this study, using six measures of alienation (powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, cultural estrangement, social estrangement, and estrangement from work) the author discovered that, for both whites and blacks, those with less than twelve years of formal education were more highly alienated on each of the measures than those with more than twelve years, p. 976. Cf. Agger, et al. , ‘Political Cynicism’, p. 488Google Scholar; Litt, , ‘Political Cynicism and Political Futility’, pp. 320–3.Google Scholar
12 On this aspect of the problem, see Dennis, Jack, ‘Trends in Public Support for the American Party System’, British Journal of Political Science, V (1975), 187–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar