Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community - Softcover

-Marienthal is a study of the effects of unemployment on community structure and community life. . . . In February I93o the looms of the textile factory in Marienthal were finally stopped: three-quarters of the 478 families in the village thus became dependent on unemployment benefits for their existence. Subsequently, in the latter part of 1931 a team of psychologists, concerned with the application of psychology to social and economic problems, began an intensive investigation into the consequences of long-term unemployment on the lives of the people of this Austrian village. . . . There cannot be many empirical studies of this nature that merit translation and re-publication forty years after their initial appearance. Marienthal is an exception.- --Gavin Mackenzie, The British Journal of Sociology -Austria in 1930 was gripped by a depression much worse than anything we were ever to know. A sociologically oriented group attached to the Institute of Psychology at the University of Vienna moved at the time to study a closed rural community so as to better understand the various, ill-understood effects of unemployment. . . . [A] compliment: we should not have had to wait 40 years for the writers to finally authorize a translation and seek its publication.- --Arthur Shostak, Social Forces -Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, and Zeise. . . started the study of unemployment just when it was becoming a problem of the whole western industrial world; they moved from little, but sophisticated, Austria at a crucial moment; with singular enterprise and ingenuity they become leaders in the new survey movement of that part of the world which joins the highest level of material consumption of goods and services with some of the world's most stubborn and tragic unemployment and poverty, a kind of ironically affluent unemployment and poverty when compared with that of most of the world's population. . . . Their small book is one of the crucial documents in the career of modern empirical social science (with plenty of implication for the more theoretical as well); also it was a step in three notable personal careers in our field.- --Everett C. Hughes, Contemporary Sociology -What happens to people as personalities, as family members, as friends, as neighbors, etc., while experiencing the increasing pressures of impoverishment? These are questions that are as relevant today for impoverished communities throughout the world as they were in 1931-32 for a small Austrian community.- --Anthony L. Laruffa, American Anthropologist "Marienthal is a study of the effects of unemployment on community structure and community life. . . . In February I93o the looms of the textile factory in Marienthal were finally stopped: three-quarters of the 478 families in the village thus became dependent on unemployment benefits for their existence. Subsequently, in the latter part of 1931 a team of psychologists, concerned with the application of psychology to social and economic problems, began an intensive investigation into the consequences of long-term unemployment on the lives of the people of this Austrian village. . . . There cannot be many empirical studies of this nature that merit translation and re-publication forty years after their initial appearance. Marienthal is an exception." --Gavin Mackenzie, The British Journal of Sociology "Austria in 1930 was gripped by a depression much worse than anything we were ever to know. A sociologically oriented group attached to the Institute of Psychology at the University of Vienna moved at the time to study a closed rural community so as to better understand the various, ill-understood effects of unemployment. . . . [A] compliment: we should not have had to wait 40 years for the writers to finally authorize a translation and seek its publication." --Arthur Shostak, Social Forces "Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, and Zeise. . . started the study of unemployment just when it was becoming a problem of the whole western industrial world; they moved from little, but sophisticated, Austria at a crucial moment; with singular enterprise and ingenuity they become leaders in the new survey movement of that part of the world which joins the highest level of material consumption of goods and services with some of the world's most stubborn and tragic unemployment and poverty, a kind of ironically affluent unemployment and poverty when compared with that of most of the world's population. . . . Their small book is one of the crucial documents in the career of modern empirical social science (with plenty of implication for the more theoretical as well); also it was a step in three notable personal careers in our field." --Everett C. Hughes, Contemporary Sociology "What happens to people as personalities, as family members, as friends, as neighbors, etc., while experiencing the increasing pressures of impoverishment? These are questions that are as relevant today for impoverished communities throughout the world as they were in 1931-32 for a small Austrian community." --Anthony L. Laruffa, American Anthropologist "Marienthal is a study of the effects of unemployment on community structure and community life. . . . In February I93o the looms of the textile factory in Marienthal were finally stopped: three-quarters of the 478 families in the village thus became dependent on unemployment benefits for their existence. Subsequently, in the latter part of 1931 a team of psychologists, concerned with the application of psychology to social and economic problems, began an intensive investigation into the consequences of long-term unemployment on the lives of the people of this Austrian village. . . . There cannot be many empirical studies of this nature that merit translation and re-publication forty years after their initial appearance. Marienthal is an exception." --Gavin Mackenzie, The British Journal of Sociology "Austria in 1930 was gripped by a depression much worse than anything we were ever to know. A sociologically oriented group attached to the Institute of Psychology at the University of Vienna moved at the time to study a closed rural community so as to better understand the various, ill-understood effects of unemployment. . . . [A] compliment: we should not have had to wait 40 years for the writers to finally authorize a translation and seek its publication." --Arthur Shostak, Social Forces "Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, and Zeise. . . started the study of unemployment just when it was becoming a problem of the whole western industrial world; they moved from little, but sophisticated, Austria at a crucial moment; with singular enterprise and ingenuity they become leaders in the new survey movement of that part of the world which joins the highest level of material consumption of goods and services with some of the world's most stubborn and tragic unemployment and poverty, a kind of ironically affluent unemployment and poverty when compared with that of most of the world's population. . . . Their small book is one of the crucial documents in the career of modern empirical social science (with plenty of implication for the more theoretical as well); also it was a step in three notable personal careers in our field." --Everett C. Hughes, Contemporary Sociology "What happens to people as personalities, as family members, as friends, as neighbors, etc., while experiencing the increasing pressures of impoverishment? These are questions that are as relevant today for impoverished communities throughout the world as they were in 1931-32 for a small Austrian community." --Anthony L. Laruffa, American Anthropologist

"One of the main theses of the Marienthal study was that prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them. The vicious cycle between reduced opportunities and reduced level of aspiration has remained the focus of all subsequent discussions." So begin the opening remarks to the English-language edition of what has become a major classic in the literature of social stratification.