Preface and acknowledgments

SOME THIRTY YEARS AGO, SVEND RANULF BRILLIANTLY developed the thesis that the middle-classes have a near monopoly on moral indignation. Max Weber and Max Scheler had earlier offered similar propositions, but Ranulf
was the first to systematically turn full attention to the thesis and develop it both theoretically and empirically. In his work, Ranulf traced the sources of the "disinterested tendency" of the middle-class to share in the punishment of the "immoral." The following passage is excerpted from his analysis of the ideological foundations of the Calvinistic middle-classes. Witness traces and themes in ideas held by members of the contemporary middle-class:

Calvin condemned indiscriminate almsgiving ... and urged that the ecclesiastical authorities should regularly visit every family to ascertain whether its members were idle, or drunken, or otherwise undesirable. ... In the plan of the reorganization of the poor of Zurich, which was drafted by Zwingli in 1525, all mendicancy was strictly forbidden; no inhabitant was able to be entitled for relief who wore ornaments or luxurious clothes, who failed to attend church, or who played cards or was otherwise disreputable.... The Puritans of the seventeenth century were equally severe: That the greatest of evils is idleness, that the poor are victims, not of circumstances, but of their own "idle, irregular, and wicked courses," that the truest charity is not to ennervate them by relief, but so to reform their characters so that relief is unnecessary.*

Ranulf went on to show how Calvinism has always found the bulk of its adherents among the middle-classes.

While Weber demonstrated that the geographical expansion of Protestantism in the sixteenth century corresponded with the geographic-developmental expansion of capitalism, Ranulf's thesis was about the middle-class and its version of the world, not about Calvinism per se. Accordingly, he looked at the Catholic and Jewish bourgeoisie, and found them equally zealous in their attempts to bind other members of the community in a "moral" straight jacket.

Before the Reformation, there was a small merchant and trade class in Western Europe. It was from this small but increasingly influential stratum that laws and punishments emanated to punish "crimes" that up until that time no one had thought of as criminal. Gambling and the purchase and indulgence in "wasteful luxuries" were among them. Moreover, up until this period, an important element in punishment was whether the aggrieved party would himself pursue the case. Gradually, the middle-classes succeeded in establishing the principle that the general and anonymous community had its own interests in the prosecution of criminals. Obtaining a confession from the accused became crucial, "an endeavor which led to the inquisitorial trial and to the rack," the relevance of which I hope to draw for problems discussed in this book. My purpose is to take the exemplary case of addiction to drugs and show the social conditions under which the accusatory finger is dipped in moralistic indignation, and the dramatic social difference it makes whether that finger is pointed by or at the middle-class.

In this particular work I have benefited from the advice, support, and counsel of many. However, I would like to begin by acknowledging early and long range intellectual debts. W. S. Robinson and Harold Garfinkel, from quite different perspectives, contributed inestimably to my earliest experiences in trying to proceed with the research and analysis of social issues. Each conveyed a picture of the tenuousness of social order and the extraordinary yet sometimes subtle barriers to knowing.

Raymond Mack has always provided me with support and stimulation, as teacher and colleague, and has been the strongest of consciences for lucidity. For many reasons I am grateful to Aaron Cicourel. His criticism, diligent and determined, has been a considerable contribution to this work, even though I have been unable to incorporate some of his critique that I honor.

Among those who helped me to clarify some ideas on broader issues touched upon in the book were Egon Bittner, Gerard Brandmeyer, Thelton Henderson, John Kitsuse, Peter McHugh, Terry Lunsford, Gerald Platt, Kenneth Polk, and Henry Tschappat. I would also like to thank John Kitsuse for permission to use materials he collected on a project of common-sense interpretations of deviance.

For a critical reading of the manuscript, in total and in parts, I would like to thank Richard Bass, Howard Becker, Allan Blum, John Doyle, Donald Duster, Ernest Landauer, Barry Munitz, Jerome Skolnick, and Arthur Stinchcombe.

The section on the California Rehabilitation Center is a result of my research there while a consultant to the Research Division. I am indebted to the following persons for their cooperation; Roland Wood, Superintendent, Harold Bradley, then Program Director, E. C. Gaulden, then Chief of Research, Robert Cushman, and Virginia Carlson.

Excellent bibliographical and research assistance was provided by Andrea Fare, Alice Moses, Susan Wedow, and Eleanor Lyon.
For permission to quote from published materials, I would like to thank Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, and the Bobbs-Merrill publishing houses.

I would also like to express my appreciation to Leland Medsker, Director of the Center for Research and Development in Higher Education for support during the last stages. Finally, for gracious assistance in the preparation of the manuscript, my thanks to Joan Bajsarowicz, Lydian Clapp, Julie Hurst, Lynn Pokrant and Ann Sherman.

Berkeley April, 1969
T. D.

* Svend Ranulf, Moral Indignation a,ral Middle Class Psychology, New York: Schocken Books, 1964, p. 14.

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