ABSTRACT
As an observer of the world and an informant, Thomas Coolidge told us much about Pruitt-Igoe, about the patterns and processes of social life in a particular community. For the people in many communities like Pruitt-Igoe the accumulating experiences of growing up progressively attenuate their belief in the possibility of the good life; the individual is left with only a hope against hope. People in Pruitt-Igoe have very negative impressions of children, especially of teenagers. The Pruitt-Igoean builds his life on the assumption of unstable and replaceable relationships, whether with friends, mating or marital partners, or others. Pruitt-Igoeans believe that marriages in the community are highly unstable. The typical experiences up to the point of marriage seem to demonstrate the tenuousness and instability of respectable desires on the part of young men and women and validate the basic distrust marital partners have of each other and of the potential seducers around them.
