ABSTRACT
LYND, HELEN MERRELL (1894-1982) Sociologist. Lynd and her partner husband were the fi rst to apply the methods of cultural anthropology to the study of urban life. During the 1920s, Helen M. and Robert S. Lynd examined the social makeup and traditions of Muncie, Indiana. As part of their survey, they looked at the changing roles of women and men in marriage and family life. They reported that all of the social classes they studied believed that romantic love was the only basis for marriage, but that after marriage husbands and wives typically had few interests in common and were as emotionally distant as married couples of the 1800s. The
Lynds wrote about their Muncie research in Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (1929)—what they called an examination of “ pure” American life “ unpolluted” by racial and religious minorities. Later, they studied the social changes that took place as a result of the GREAT DEPRESSION of the 1930s and the advent of the automobile in Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Confl icts (1937). These books became classics.
