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ELSEVIER Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
POETICS
Soldiers, mothers, tramps and others: Discourse roles in the 1907 New York City charity directory
John W. Mohr *
Department of Sociology, Unioersity of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA
Abstract
The meaning of various categories of poverty during the Progressive Era is analyzed by looking at the ways in which relief organizations in New York City described and treated their clientele. Data come from categorical descriptions of types of eligible clients which were listed in the 1907 edition of the New York City Charity Directory by relief organiza- tions operating in that city. The meaningfulness of different social identities is assessed by looking at similarities in the patterns of treatments that each identity was subjected to. The concept of discourse roles is suggested as a way of analyzing the location of these identities in the moral order. Blockmodel analyses of the data are used to assess the utility of this conceptual approach.
1. Introduction
All systems of social welfare rely on some mode of classifying clients according to eligibility, levels of benefits and the types of services that are to be provided. This, by itself, is not very interesting. What is interesting is how alternative principles of classification are created, how they operate and how they are transformed.
For scholars who study the history of American social welfare institutions, two features of early twentieth-century classification principles are especially striking. First, the recipients of social services in large urban centers such as New York City were classified according to an enormously complex set of moral distinctions. This was not merely a matter of differentiating among the worthy and the unworthy
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328 .I. W. Mohr/Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
poor. At stake were various shades and degrees and kinds of worthiness, each of which had a corresponding set of implications for treatment. Second, the primitive elements in this classification system tended to be a particular sort of gendered social identity. Welfare organizations classified their clients as mothers, unmarried mothers, abandoned mothers, widows, working men, working women, working boys, working girls, male and female tramps, male and female immigrants, soldiers, seamen and so on. The proliferation of this complicated array of gendered social identities highlights the fact that the classificatory principles that served to orga- nize social welfare practices during this period of American history differed in fundamental ways from those that we would have expected to find had this been a welfare system founded on principles of class, citizenship or occupational rights (see, for example, Flora and Heidenheimer, 1981; Friedman, 1981; Esping-Ander- son, 1990).
2. Soldiers, mothers and social policies
The most visible demonstration of this argument can be found in the recent publication of Theda Skocpol’s book, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. In this ambitious project, Skocpol has offered a strikingly new analysis of the origins of the American welfare state. As the title of the book conveys, Skocpol’s interpreta- tions differ from more traditional histories in two significant respects. First, in contrast to the long-standing tradition of regarding the American state as a ‘welfare laggard’ (because of its failure to develop a broader array of social benefits programs before the New Deal Era), Skocpol argues that the American federal government should actually be seen as something of a ‘precocious’ welfare state because of the size and generosity of the late nineteenth century federal pension programs that provided assistance to (northern) civil war veterans and their dependents. ’ Second, Skocpol argues that after the turn of the century a number of other state programs were created to protect and provide for mothers and their children (e.g., mothers pensions, protective labor legislation for women and children, a national Children’s Bureau, etc.). These developments formed the basis of what Skocpol refers to as a distinctly ‘maternalist’ welfare state, a term that she uses to distinguish the American case from the ‘paternalist’ emphases of most European social programs which were intended to address the needs of working class males. In essence, Skocpol has suggested that these features of the American welfare state have tended to be overlooked or slighted by scholars because they didn’t conform to the kinds of classificatory principles for identifying clients that characterize most European welfare systems.
’ This is an argument that has actually been worked out by Skocpol and her co-authors in a number of
articles over the course of the last decade. See, for example, Skocpol and Finegold (19821, Skocpol and Ikenberry (1983), Orloff and Skocpol (1984), Skocpol and Amenta (1986), Weir et al., 1988.
J. W Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 329
These are important allegations because they challenge many conventional orthodoxies about the history of the American welfare state. But Skocpol’s book would be significant even without these specific claims because of the model it provides for understanding political processes. Skocpol identifies her contribution as the working out of a ‘structured polity’ approach to historical explanation. This approach emphasizes the organizational character of the state and the need to understand how the administrative capacities of state organizations influence the kinds of decisions that come to be made about social policies. Thus, she argues that pensions for Civil War soldiers grew into an enormous program of social relief, in part, because the institutional mechanism for administering such a program had been established during the war. She also emphasizes the need to see how the organizational character of various groups in the polity ‘fit’ (or failed to fit) with the operant channels of political influence. For example, she shows that there was a proliferation of locally based but nationally organized women’s voluntary organizations which advocated maternalist social policies throughout this period and she argues that these groups were able to wield remarkable levels of power because that organizational model was better adapted to the demands of the American political process during the Progressive Era than were other sorts of influence associations.
While these are the elements of Skocpol’s model that have drawn the greatest amount of attention, my own interests concern her efforts to specify the ways that these two status identities - soldiers and mothers - emerged as morally valued social categories. For example, part of Skocpol’s argument is that there was something peculiar to the status identity of veterans which made them an unobjec- tionable target of social assistance. Other social identities that might have served as a basis for organizing the kinds of state-funded relief programs that were being assembled in most industrial countries during this period - the unemployed, the aged, the worker - were far more contentious. In part, this was due to the nature of the labor disputes that were being waged during this period of American history. It also had to do with the ways that the long-standing enfranchisement of white males and the complex political structure of the U.S. state tended to prevent the emergence of a working class political consciousness. And, in part, it had to do with the dominance of machine politics and the delegitimation of relief programs in many American cities during this period. The main point, however, is that some identifiable social categories were deemed to be legitimate objects of state relief programs, while others were not.
This theme is also important in Skocpol’s discussion of the emergence of social policies created to assist mothers (and their children). Again, Skocpol emphasizes the fundamental role that the underlying institutional arrangements played in this process. As I noted earlier, she emphasizes the power of the hundreds of different women’s associations and clubs and the fit between the kinds of influence that those organizations were able to wield and the structure of national politics. Also important, however, were the ideas that were widely shared about mothers, women workers and their families and the special claims that these social statuses were
330 J. W. Mohr/Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
thought to imply. ’ The end result of these political processes was that mothers (like soldiers) came to occupy a particular location in the discourse of social relief. Both of these social categories were seen as deserving of assistance and protection by the state in a way that people who were primarily identified as sick, unemployed or aged, were not. In other words, as Skocpol’s work illustrates, an adequate history of the emergence of American social policy during this period demands that we understand something about how various status identities were embedded within (and indeed were constitutive of) a complex moral order in which gender was a fundamental component.
3. Mapping the moral order
The question that I raise here is whether we can learn something about the way that this complex moral order was organized. Knowing, for example, that mothers and soldiers held especially favored positions in this discursive formation raises a great many other questions. What other kinds of status identities were relevant during this period and were some of these also favored? What kinds of social identities were out of favor? Were there some status domains in which gender was irrelevant, or was gender a fundamental organizing dimension of this entire moral order? Focusing on one city and one moment in time (New York City in 1907), my goal in this research is to address these broader sorts of questions that have been raised implicitly by Skocpol’s work.
There are, however, two important cautionary notes to consider. First, we need to ask whether it makes sense to seek a coherently structured moral order in a welfare system that was so complex, fragmentary and decentralized? While we must always be cautious in attempting to attribute any sort of collective under- standing to such a broad and disparate array of social actors, my working hypothesis in this research is that when we study organizational fields-defined by DiMaggio and Powell as “those organizations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life.. . ” (1983: 149) - we can plausibly identify sets of collective assumptions about the core institutional activities that define the field. In other words, 1 expect that participants in an organizational field (and here I mostly mean to refer to practitioners, organizational managers and others who have some sort of formal power within that institutional arena) shared a general (though not unanimous) sense of ‘what was going on’ in that area of social life. Moreover, I anticipate that this sort of agreement was most likely to occur around
‘Actually there are two issues here. On the one hand, there is the question of how mothers and soldiers were generally (or we might say, originally) understood in the broader civic culture. But this is
really more of a baseline interpretation. As Skocpol’s accounts also demonstrate, the meanings of these
social identities were openly contested by various agents within the polity that sought to influence the
outcome of the debate. This suggests that it would be a mistake to suppose that the ‘meaning’ of any given status identity is already formed or widely agreed upon, at least during the early stages of political
contestation.
J. W. Mohr /Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 331
the sorts of fundamental classificatory principles that I’ve been describing here. We should, however, expect that the degree of consensus would be variable and dependent upon the extent to which a given organizational field is ‘institutional- ized’. This means that under conditions of rapid social change we are less likely to find agreement than we are under periods of relative stability. We would also expect to see other kinds of systematic variations as well. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) argue, for example, that the level of structuration in an organizational field (degree of professionalization, resource centralization, etc.) should predict higher or lower levels of field-wide consensus. In general, however, I begin here with the assumption that organizational agents in Progressive Era New York City shared some common sense of a classificatory moral order and that the degree of coherence that we are able to identify will be to some extent a reflection of the degree of institutional stabilization that existed in the organizational field at that time.
The second cautionary note concerns how we should approach an interpretive task such as that of mapping a moral order. It’s quite clear, for example, that although Skocpol herself acknowledges the fundamental importance of the mean- ings that were attached to soldiers and mothers (especially with respect to the role that those sets of ideas played in motivating action by groups in the polity), she is also hesitant to make too much of these meanings in her analyses. One senses that, for Skocpol, these cultural matters are important but less fundamental or, perhaps, less knowable, than the more tangible (e.g., harder) features of institutional life such as states and organizations. I think, however, that this is a misplaced dualism and that the analysis of cultural meanings is, as Jepperson and Swidler argue elsewhere in this issue, no less important and no less amenable to systematic empirical analyses than other aspects of institutional life. I also think, however, that this statement is only true for certain types of interpretative projects.
Specifically, it is true for those analyses that seek to understand what Wuthnow refers to as a “contextual idea of meaning”, a concept that he employs to differentiate this type of cultural analysis from the more phenomenological con- ception of meaning that characterized classical and neo-classical approaches to culture (1987: 55). The essence of Wuthnow’s notion goes back to the structuralist idea that cultural symbols should not be seen as having any substantive meaning in and of themselves but rather they should be viewed as being embedded in relationships with other symboIs. While particular symbols may be arbitrary these relationships are not. It is the relationships among cultural objects - the patterns of similarities and differences between them - that provide the meaningfulness that we attribute to cultural objects.
This is the approach to understanding meanings that I take in this research. I do this by looking at patterns of similarities and differences in the way that various status identities were treated by social welfare organizations. I look, for example, at the types of services that were offered to soldiers, mothers, unwed mothers, male and female tramps, consumptives, widows and nineteen other social cate- gories. When I see that some of these social identities were treated in very similar ways and some were treated very differently, I presume that this mirrors an
332 J. W Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
underlying set of meanings about how those identities were morally regarded. By assessing the overall pattern of similarities and differences, I seek to understand the overall structure of that moral map. My ultimate goal is to learn about the classificatory principles that operated within this moral order.
4. Treatment profiles and discourse roles
In pursuing this goal, I make use of four more specific assumptions. First, though I’m concerned with raising questions about the broader moral order of social relief, my interest is in enacted social practices. What concerns me about this discursive terrain is the fact that it has implications for the ways in which individuals are regarded and acted upon. Consequently I focus on the kinds of moral distinctions that are embedded within organizational practices. 3 This means that when I assess the extent to which two social identities are similar or different to one another, 1 do so by looking at the extent to which they were treated in the same ways by the same kinds of organizations. Did they receive money from the state? Were they put in a state workhouse? Did they receive help finding work by a local church? Were they taught how to be good Americans by a community non-profit organization?
Second, I assume that whatever else this moral order consists of, its principal and effective manifestation is to create social distinctions and to fit various social identities into a more or less organized pattern of associations - e.g., soldiers and mothers are worthy objects of state outdoor relief, the unemployed and the sick are not. In other words, the basis of my analyses are the ways in which individuals are classified as objects of action by the organizations which act upon them. What I do not attend to here are the complex ways in which these actions are justified or legitimated. There are inevitably elaborate and carefully nuanced types of cultural associations made to various status identities (e.g., veteran soldiers are heroes of the republic, mothers are essential to the maintenance of the domestic sphere or sacred because of their association with femininity, fertility and the home, etc.) but what I want to focus on here is the way in which these status identities are organized in relation to one another, not why they are organized as they are.
Third, I assume that it is useful to consider the pattern of associations as a coherent whole and I argue that we can learn the greatest amount about the meaningful nature of this moral order by looking at the way in which associations among status identities are structured as a totality. This assumption is important because it allows us to move beyond the analysis of a set of disconnected, pairwise similarities to a broader and more interpretable system of structural similarities. In the language of structural sociology, this means moving beyond the analysis of relations, to an analysis of the relations of the relations. The best working model
3 This considerably narrows the scope of the interpretive problem involved. It does not, however,
remove the interpretive character of the issue since, like any institutional activity, organizational practices are inherently ‘meaningful’ social activities.
J. W. Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 333
for this type of analytic thinking (in sociology) is the social network. But rather than thinking about how particular individuals are connected to one another by way of specific types of relationships (friendship, kinship, mentorship, etc.), I look here at how particular social identities are connected to one another by virtue of having the same types of social welfare treatments applied to them.
Finally, just as social network analysts try to isolate common patterns of association among individuals in a network (which they designate as social roles) I suggest that we look for common patterns of association in the treatment profiles of various social identities. Doing so allows us to begin to understand the meaningfulness of specific status identities by thinking of them as occupants of particular sorts of discursive roles in the moral order. It seems to me that there is an intuitive appeal to thinking about social identities as occupying particular discursive roles. It seems somehow appropriate, for example, to describe soldiers as holding a kind of central role (or core position) within the discourse of American social policy during this period. Similarly, the central role concept seems useful for thinking about the position held by mothers, though these two discourse roles would also appear to be distinct from one another in crucial ways. The similarity probably derives from their morally sanctioned entitlement to social relief. The difference should perhaps be seen as inhering within the nature of those entitlements.
Here I think it is useful to consider the types of status designations that are implied by these social identities. Soldiers represent a classic example of a kind of achieved entitlement. Their moral qualities come as a direct result of their having gone off and served their country in war. In contrast, in spite of the obvious demands and costs of motherhood, the moral standing of mothers is much more closely linked to a kind of ascribed status logic. 4 It is their unique nature as women and mothers that qualifies them for a morally unambiguous entitlement to social relief. If we think of soldiers and mothers as occupying analogous sorts of core (entitlement) positions - one in the domain of achieved, the other in the domain of ascribed status logic - we could then proceed to identify alternative status identities that occupy the same (or different) sorts of role locations within these two domains.
While this seems to be a promising avenue for conceptualization, the key question becomes how it might be possible to move beyond thinking about discourse roles metaphorically, to analyzing them empirically. Fortunately, Ameri- can sociologists have devoted an extensive amount of energy to studying roles in social networks and this research can provide a fertile jumping off point for the analysis of discourse roles. The classic theorization of role structures in social
4 This may partly explain why the rhetoric of maternal exceptionalism that characterized this period
was far more likely to invoke an essentialist sort of logic emphasizing the ‘natural’ moral superiority (and vulnerability) of mothers. See, for example, Linda Gordon’s (1992) discussion of the emergence of
the doctrine of ‘sacred motherhood’. For a general analysis of the differential coding of gender
identities in relief discourse during this period see Mohr (1992b, 1993).
334 J. W Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
networks was done by Harrison White. 5 Borrowing from Levi-Strauss’s work on kinship algebras, and working in concert with a number of his students at Harvard, White eventually generalized these ideas to the role concept of structural equiva- lence (see White, 1963; Lorrain and White, 1971; Breiger et al., 1975; White et al., 1976; Boorman and White, 1976; Arabie et al., 1978). ’ According to this formula- tion, two individuals are understood to occupy a common role position to the extent that they have a similar pattern of relations to all other individuals within the social structure. The essence and the elegance of this idea is that two individuals need not be directly linked to be occupants of a common role position. Rather, they must have a common relationship to others within the network who are themselves structurally equivalent. ’ Structural equivalence, then, is a measure of common positional locations within a structured system of relations.
The benefits of adopting this framework for thinking about discourse roles are really twofold. On the one hand, the concept of ‘role’ provides us with a kind of analytic engine for organizing and simplifying our consideration of social identities. By finding the common role positions in which social identities are clustered, we can simplify the analytic problem of understanding their meanings. At the same time, we can organize our thinking about the structure of moral discourse by following in the footsteps of sociologists who have sought to understand the structural properties of social networks through construction of a large repertoire of conceptual tools for thinking about the nature of role relationships. Network theorists describe roles according to sets of complementary structural constella- tions such as core-periphery relationships, broker-client structures, hierarchical dominance and a large variety of other types of analytic concepts. Moreover, they do so entirely on the basis of the structural relationships that are found to exist between role positions. One goal of this project then is to bring this type of conceptual apparatus to bear on questions about the nature of Progressive Era
5 Obviously a large number of other references can be cited, including an important literature on
kinship algebras by anthropologists. In this regard, network theorists are especially likely to point to the
work of SF. Nadel (1957).
’ Note, by the way, that the idea of structural equivalence is intimately connected in this literature with
discussions of the CONCOR (Convergence of Iterated Correlations) algorithm, which was constructed
for the purpose of measuring structural equivalence in relational data. CONCOR reads in a raw data
matrix, then proceeds to compute the ordinary product moment correlation for column values. The
output of this (referred to as the ‘first-correlation matrix’) is then iteratively processed in the same
manner until the observations can be divided up into a bipartite blocked form where one subset approaches a correlation of + 1.0 and the second subset approaches a correlation of - 1.0. When that
point is reached, the data is divided into these two sub-groups and each sub-group is then subjected to the same procedure again. Note also that there are other methodological approaches available for
measuring structural equivalence such as those proposed by Ron Burt (Burt and Minor, 1983) and
implemented in his software package (STRUCTURE).
’ Recent work by Borgatti and Everett (1992a,b) has challenged the conceptual (and methodological) applicability of this concept of structural equivalence to such a theory of role structure. Arguing instead
for the power of regular equivalence (as implemented in the REGGE algorithm) Borgatti and Everett have argued that there is a fundamental confusion in much of the blockmodel literature about this issue. The matter is far from resolved, however, and I have followed the more traditional structural
equivalence approach in this paper.
.I. W. Mohr /Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 335
social identities. ’ The other major benefit of thinking in terms of discourse roles is methodological. Empirical methods of role analysis (based on White’s theory of structural equivalence) are easily transferable to data on status identities once we begin to think about the moral order in this manner. All that is required is a dataset which includes a reliable measure of the manner in which organizational practices distinguished among alternative status identities during the Progressive Era.
5. Data and measures
The data used in this project come from a series of Directories that were issued by the New York City Charity Organization Society. These Directories contained a more or less exhaustive listing of all the public and private relief organizations that were involved in providing some form of assistance to residents of the city. The first Directory was published in 1883. The second edition followed in 1887, the third in 1888 and the fourth in 1890. By the time the seventh edition was released (18971, the Directories were being updated on an annual basis.
The directories were initially intended to serve as comprehensive practical guidebooks for practitioners in the field. They listed every organization that was deemed to be relevant to the task of ‘relief work’ along with detailed descriptions of what services these organizations provided and what restrictions existed as to the kinds of applicants that would be accepted. The Directories were intended to serve as a kind of road map to the increasingly complicated world of relief work.
Four of these Directories were coded as data - 1888, 1897, 1907 and 1917. 9 Information was recorded regarding what services each organization performed, the date of founding and size of the organization, and whether it was affiliated with the state or a religious denomination. Information was also collected regard- ing the kinds of people that were described as the objects of relief. These latter descriptions are treated as the units of analysis in this paper, with each separate description constituting a distinct ‘identity’. In total, there are 3,954 coded identi- ties in the 1907 dataset. (For a full description of these datasets and the coding procedures used to create them, see Mohr 1992a.1
A verbatim record of each identity description was entered into the database. In some cases, the identity term consisted of a particular noun that was used to designate the class of individuals referred to. These included terms such as: ‘paupers’, ‘orphans’, ‘widows’, ‘tramps’, ‘ex-prisoners’, ‘idiots’ and ‘lunatics’. In most cases, however, a single noun term was inadequate to accurately designate the class of individuals referred to, and some more complex string of nouns and adjectives was employed in the Directory listing to specify the intended social category.
s The idea of applying blockmodels to the study of an organizational field was originally promoted by DiMaggio (1986), though he restricted his suggestions to the measurement of social interactions.
’ Three other Directories (1892, 1902 and 1912) are currently being prepared.
336 J. W. Mohr /Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
These more complex identity terms included the following sorts of designations: ‘needy stage-dancers’, ‘unmarried women pregnant for the first time’, ‘chronic pauper insane’, ‘truant boys committed by courts between the age of 7 and 16’, ‘distressed merchants who were members of the chamber in good repute in the city of New York and whose misfortunes were not the result of any dishonorable transactions’, ‘blind persons unable to maintain themselves by their own work’, ‘women taken in labor in the street’, ‘those suffering from chronic diseases of a mild type’, ‘destitute Protestant female children of the better class suffering from incurable diseases who are without means or friends able to support them’ and ‘all soldiers of any of the late wars who are unable from wounds received in the line of duty to earn a living by labor’. Excluding basic prepositions, articles and ‘to-be’ verbs, the mean number of words in the identity terms in the 1907 dataset was 3.65, though some identities consist of as many as 25 (non-excluded) words. ‘”
For the purposes of data analysis a series of binary variables were created which indicate whether each of these identities included some specified textual reference. In some cases the program searches each text string for the presence of a single word, in other cases an entire phrase or variants of a phrase were necessary to trigger a binary variable. The biggest problem in implementing the search proce- dure was making sure that words were read in their appropriate semantic context. To minimize semantic ambiguity, a program was written (in SAS) to search for all of the most complex (ll-string) phrases first and then to remove all words contained within those phrases from future search passes. An example of such a phrase is ‘parent is disqualified both mentally and physically to support’. This was a text string that was used to describe children without support. The appropriate binary variables were set for this meaning and then all of these words were prevented from being used in later passes thereby insuring that terms such as ‘parent’, ‘mentally’, and ‘physically’ were not used to incorrectly trigger subse- quent binary variables. The program then re-read the identity term looking for all lo-string phrases, then 9-string and so on until a set of single one-word terms were searched for among the remaining eligible text. This program contains an enor- mous number of text strings (the SAS program contains over 10,000 lines), insuring that the texts are read in an extremely ‘accurate’ manner.
For this paper I selected all observations in the 1907 dataset that contained any reference to the following 15 different status identities: Blind or Deaf persons, Consumptives, the Disabled, Ex-convicts, High-status individuals, Immigrants, Mothers, Seamen, Soldiers, Strangers, Tramps, the Unemployed, Unwed Mothers, Widows, and Working people. In choosing these 15 status identities I tried to operationalize three different criteria for inclusion. First, I sought to identify status identities which (on the basis of recent scholarship on the history of American social policy) were theoretically meaningful. So, for example, soldiers and mothers
I” The database includes all words used in the Directory descriptions (with the exception of words
contained in clauses specifying age ranges which were reduced to a standard numerical form). For the
purposes of these word-counts, however, the following words were excluded: a, an, and, any, are, as, at, be, by, for, from, have, in, is, of, on, or, that, the, they, this, to, too, which, while, who, whom, whose and
with. There are 14,445 non-excluded words in the 1907 database.
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were obvious candidates for inclusion. Second, I tried to restrict the status identities to core areas of the adult community social welfare sector (thereby excluding status identities that were mostly found in prisons, hospitals, orphanages, insane asylums, etc.). Third, I sought to restrict the analysis to status identities that had a high enough frequency of occurrence (across all four of my datasets) so as to yield a usable amount of information for the analyses. l1 Table 1 lists all the text strings (with the exception of a few plural forms) that were used for identifying these status identities. Because of the obvious theoretical importance of gender, I next divided each (applicable) status identity into three groups, those that were masculine, those that were feminine and those that were ungendered. This yielded a set of 38 different status identities. l2
Next, I created a set of 14 binary variables to capture a core set of relief activities that organizations performed with respect to different identities. l3 These included: give social relief, give work for pay, assist in finding a job, give temporary shelter, give asylum (or long term shelter), jail (put in prison or in a reformatory), give job training, give domestic training, give counseling, give religious direction, provide drug or alcohol (temperance) services to, help to suppress or control, give vacation, provide community services. (Table 2 has the full listing of services that were coded for these variables.) I then subdivided these 14 core services according to whether the organization that provided the services was operated under one of six different auspices - a government organization (including city, state or federal), a religious organization which received governmental operating funds, a private non-profit organization which received governmental operating funds, a religious organization (which did not receive governmental funding), a non-profit organiza- tion (which did not receive governmental funding) or a church. l4 This yielded a set of 70 different types of task regimes.
Not all of these combinations occurred in the data however, and all combina- tions that failed to occur in at least one of the 4 datasets were deleted from the analysis. This left a total of 58 separate service combinations. I then deleted all status identities from the analysis which failed to be referenced by at least one of these service combinations in each of the four datasets. This reduced the number of status identities used in the analysis to 26. Table 3 is a matrix consisting of
” This restriction is due to the fact that the analyses conducted here are part of a larger series that I
am working on which include information from all four datasets.
I2 Some status identities were inherently gendered (e.g., mothers, unwed mothers, soldiers, seamen and
widows) and it was therefore obviously not appropriate to split them by gender. l3 In coding the Charity Directories I used a set of 214 ‘task codes’ to register the organization’s
activities with respect to each identity that was referred to. Quite frequently, a single organization
described different sets of services that were directed towards different classes of individuals. In the analyses conducted here I have selected a subset of these tasks that are focused more or less exclusively
on relief and (outdoor) social service work. Two other relatively substantial areas of services that were included in the Directories are excluded from these analyses - health care and (non-direct-service)
organizational activities.
l4 Religious organizations included any organization (other than churches) that were explicitly con- nected to any religious denomination or religious order. Catholic orphanages or Methodist home
missionary societies are examples of this type of organization.
338
Table 1
J. W. Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
Text recognition strings for status identity terms
Blind/deaE
Consumptive: Disabled:
Ex-convict:
Female:
HiStatus:
Immigrant:
Male:
Mothers:
Seamen:
Soldiers:
Stranger:
Tramps:
Unemployed:
Unwed mother:
Widows:
‘Speech is defective’, ‘Defective sight’, Defective hearing’, ‘Speech disorders’, ‘Blind’, ‘Blinded’, ‘Deaf, ‘Deafness’, ‘Deaf-mute’, ‘Deaf-mutes’, ‘Dumb’.
‘Consumption’, ‘Consumptive’, ‘Consumptives’, ‘Tuberculosis’, ‘Tubercular’.
‘Unable from disease contracted in the line of duty’, ‘Unable from wounds received in
the line of duty’, ‘Physical disability’, ‘Physical disabilities’, ‘Semi-paralytic’, ‘Dis-
abled’, ‘Debilitated’, ‘Lame’, ‘Paralytic’, ‘Paralytics’.
‘Convicts after their release’, ‘Served time in penal institutions’, ‘Discharged state
prison convicts’, ‘Under suspended sentences’, ‘Discharged from prison’, ‘Paroled
state prisoners’, ‘Discharged convicts’, ‘Discharged prisoners’, ‘Released prisoners’,
‘Reformed convicts’, ‘With prison records’, ‘On parole’, ‘On probation’, ‘Ex-convict’,
‘Ex-convicts’, ‘Ex-prisoner’, ‘Ex-prisoners’, ‘Parole’, ‘Paroles’, ‘Parolee’, ‘Parolees’,
‘Paroled’, ‘Probation’.
‘Daughter’, ‘Daughters’, ‘Female’, ‘Females’, ‘Gentlewoman’, ‘Gentlewomen’, ‘Girl’,
‘Girls’, ‘Lady’, ‘Ladies’, ‘Mother’, ‘Mothers’, ‘Sister’, ‘Sisters’, ‘Wife’, ‘Wives’, ‘Wo-
man’, ‘Women’, ‘Widow’.
‘Accustomed to the comforts of life’, ‘Not of the ordinary lodger class’, ‘From the middle classes’, ‘Of the better class’, ‘A higher social level’, ‘Business men’, ‘Business
women’, ‘Gentle manner’, ‘Socially acceptable’, ‘Gentleman’, ‘Gentlewoman’, ‘Re- fined’, ‘Refinement’, ‘Rich’, ‘Educated’, ‘Learned’, ‘Property-owning’.
‘In this country less than 1 year’, ‘Foreign born’, ‘New comers’, ‘Alien’, ‘Aliens’,
‘Emigrant’, ‘Emigrants’, ‘Foreigner’, ‘Foreigners’, ‘Foreign-born’, ‘Immigrant’, ‘Im-
migrants’, ‘Immigration’.
‘Boy’, ‘Boys’, ‘Brother’, ‘Brothers’, ‘Gentleman’, ‘Gentlemen’, ‘Male’, ‘Males’, ‘Man’,
‘Men’, ‘Father’, ‘Fathers’, ‘Husband’, ‘Husbands’, ‘Son’, ‘Sons’, ‘Widower’, ‘And
widowers’.
‘Mother’, ‘Mothers’.
‘Officers of vessels’, ‘American seamen’, ‘Boatmen’, ‘Mariners’, ‘Sailor’, ‘Sailors’,
‘Seafaring’, ‘Seamen’.
‘Sailors of the United States who served during any war’, ‘Soldiers of the United
States who served during any war’, ‘Served in the Army of the United States’, ‘Served in the Navy of the United States’, ‘Corps of the United States’, ‘Have served the
United States’, ‘Of the late war’, ‘Campaigns with hostile Indians’, ‘During the late
rebellion’, ‘Ex-United States soldiers’, ‘Ex-United States sailors’, ‘At Army posts’, ‘At
Naval stations’, ‘Honorably discharged’, ‘Soldier’, ‘Ex-soldiers’, ‘Marines’, ‘Veteran’. ‘Stranger’, ‘Strangers’, ‘Unknown’.
‘Rounder’, ‘Rounders’, ‘Tramp’, ‘Tramps’, ‘Vagrant’, ‘Vagrants’. ‘Vagrancy’, ‘Wanderers’, ‘Wandering’. ‘Unable to obtain employment’, ‘Looking for suitable situations’, ‘Are without em-
ployment’, ‘Looking for employment’, ‘Not lawfully employed’, ‘Awaiting permanent
employment’, ‘Seeking permanent employment’, ‘Out of employment’, ‘Out of work’, ‘Who require work’, ‘Want of employment’, ‘Who desire situations’, ‘Desiring jobs’,
‘Seeking employment’, ‘Seeking work’, ‘Without employment’, ‘Unemployed’.
‘Hitherto respectable unmarried girls about to become mothers’, ‘Mothers of illegiti- mate children’. Also coded whenever the text ‘Unmarried’ occurs with any of the
following strings - ‘Mother’, ‘Mothers’, ‘After the birth of their babies’, ‘Before the birth of their babies’, ‘From the maternity hospitals’, ‘In their first confinement’,
‘About to be confined’, ‘During confinement’, ‘In labor’, ‘Childbed’, ‘Child-bed’, ‘Childbirth’, ‘Child-birth’, ‘Confinement’, ‘Lying-in’, ‘Maternity’, ‘Obstetrical’,
‘Puerperium’, ‘Pregnant’.
‘Widow’, ‘Widowed’, ‘Widows’.
J. W Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 339
Table 1 (continued)
Working: ‘Dependent upon their own exertions for a livelihood’, ‘Engaged in trained employ-
ment’, ‘Dependent upon their earnings’, ‘ Employed during the day’, ‘Who obtain a
livelihood’, ‘Earning a livelihood’, ‘Wage earning’, ‘Wage earner’, ‘Who work’,
‘Employees of, ‘Workingmen’, ‘Working-man’, ‘Working-men’, ‘Workingwomen’,
‘Working-women’, ‘Workingwoman’, ‘Working-woman’, ‘Wage-earner’, ‘Wage-
earning’, ‘Working’.
binary measures indicating whether each of the 26 status identities is ever sub- jected to each of the 58 service combinations by any organization in the 1907 dataset.
My assumption underlying this procedure was that, for example, relief services were fundamentally different from asylum services in the conceptions that existed about what types of problems a category of persons were suffering from or the types of assistance that a category of persons deserved to receive. I also assume that ‘general relief that was provided by a government organization was (at least potentially) fundamentally different from the provision of ‘general relief’ by a local church. The ultimate goal here was to assess the extent to which different status identities were similar or different to one another by looking at the distinct constellation of ways in which each status identity was treated by organizations in the New York City organizational field of 1907.
Table 3 can be read then by comparing the service profiles that characterized every status identity. The first column (marked Blind-M) indicates that five different classes of service configurations were directed towards blind men in this year. They were the objects of Asylum services provided by governmentally funded non-profit organizations, and they were given work, job training, domestic training and counseling by (non-state funded) non-profit organizations. My assumption is that any other status identity that was treated to precisely the same profile of services was likely to occupy a common position within the moral order.
6. Results
The discussion of results will be broken into three sections. I begin with a close look at the way that specific social identities are clustered into role positions by the CONCOR algorithm. Next, I look at the structural character of the role system itself. Finally, I assess the effectiveness of this role structure in accounting for the likelihood that specific status identities will be defined in moral terms.
6.1. Structural equivalence and the moral order
As a means of identifying common role positions within this matrix, I processed these data using the CONCOR algorithm. I5 I adopted an 8-block solution because
I5 I used a somewhat modified version of Noah Friedkin’s GAUSS-based SNAPS program to execute the CONCOR algorithm.
340
Table 2
J. W. Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
Categories of relief and social welfare activities
Relief:
Givework:
Findjob:
Shelter:
Asylum:
Jail:
Jobtrain:
Domtrain:
Counsels:
Religious:
Drugalc:
Control:
Vacation:
General relief (goods and services); Gives clothing; Gives food; General relief (money -
including money for rent or other direct payments of money.); Pensions (retirement funds).
Provides work for pay; Provides sewing to do in home.
Employment assistance (finds jobs, assists in finding work, etc.); Employment society or
employment bureau; Provides (employment) positions in families; Provides boarding posi-
tions in families.
Temporary housing or shelter (some explicit reference to the fact that the housing is
provided for only a specified number of days, or if the word temporary is used in describing
the services.); Provides meals (lunches, dinners, breakfasts, etc.).
Long term homes or asylums; Farm colony; Asylum on ‘cottage plan’.
Reformatories (some sort of constraint used in keeping people there. E.g., people who are
serving a criminal sentence, etc. Usually referred to explictly as a reformatory); Prison;
Workhouse.
Vocational school; Industrial training (job related training - any general reference to the
teaching of skills that can be used in obtaining a job); Industrial school (same as above
except designated as a ‘School’); Industrial training - domestic tasks (preparation for work
as a domestic); Industrial training - farm work.
Domestic training (home economic skills - teaching women and girls how to manage their
homes, how to work out a budget, how to prepare nutritious meals, etc.); Sewing classes;
Model flat (or model tenement); Kitchen garden (school garden, etc.); Mothering skills
classes.
Visits and comforts the sick (often bringing them flowers, fruit, delicacies, toys, etc.);
Conducts social investigation (home visiting or investigations about need for relief, or need
for supervision, or other indication that some sort of formal evaluation is made of the home
situation.); Family counseling (information suggesting that marital therapy is conducted,
family disputes are mediated, child-rearing practices are taught, etc.); Probation (parole)
work (for released prisoners. The term probation may be used in some way, or some
reference to trying to reform released prisoners); Legal advice; Advice/orientation/protec-
tion of recently arrived immigrants; Advice (general); Psychotherapy (some explicit state-
ment of the use of psychotherapy or psychoanalytic techniques); Mental hygiene work;
Social work (again, some explicit reference to the notion that ‘social work’ or ‘personal
work’ is provided. Most of what is included in this series would fall under the rubric of social
work, but in the later years these services are provided by professional social workers and
often designated under the inclusive term ‘social work’). Religious education (Bible classes, etc.); Moral instruction or ‘rescue work’ (usually for
young women - often for ‘fallen women’ - often associated with a home. References to
attempts to refurbish their ‘moral character’); Evangelicalicism (home missionary work);
Visiting Bible-readers; Ministerial services; Gospel meetings (any reference to having
religious services or evangelical meetings); Sponsors religious clubs; Distributes tracts and
religious materials. Holds temperance meetings; Is a temperance society; A temperance club; Temperance
house; Drug dependency rehab. work; Distributes temperance pledges; Publishes temper-
ance literature. Deals with non-support cases (forces husbands/fathers to provide support); Help prosecute,
enforce, deter (the task of assisting legal authorities in the task of prosecuting offenders. Frequently applied to parents who abuse their children or fathers who refuse to provide
child support or workplaces that fail to obey child labor or safety regulations). Fresh air excursions; Funds fresh air excursions; Summer (fresh-air) home; Summer camp;
Sponsors retreats; Vacation house; Vacation school; Fresh air classes.
J. W. Mohr/Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 341
Table 2 (continued)
Comunity: Community activities (social evenings, dances, etc.); Settlement (or neighborhood) house;
Mission house; Neighborhood house; Hygiene facilities (public baths, public showers, public
laundry facilities, etc.); Gymnasium or sports facilities; Physical culture classes; Sponsors
clubs; Is a club; Provides entertainment; Motion pictures,
the blocking seemed to provide an adequately detailed portrait of the role structure and to offer substantively interpretable results. l6 The history of the CONCOR partitioning procedure for these data is illustrated in Fig. 1. The first partitioning divided all the status identities in blocks l-4 from all of those in blocks 5-8. Two subsequent partitionings further divided the data into these eight clusters, each of which can be thought of as a specific role position within the moral order.
One way to understand these block positions is to go back and consider what types of service profiles tend to characterize status identities that are clustered together. Consider the first block containing male and female tramps. In this case, both male and female statuses were described as the recipients of state (in this case city) work programs. Moreover, they were the only status identities that were so invoked. They were also both defined as recipients of reformatory activities by public organizations and once again, no other status identities were so defined. Female tramps were also described as being given job training by the state, but no other services were allocated for these categories of identities. The correlation between these two status identities (based on the raw profile scores) was 0.81 and virtually every other correlation was negative. In this case the blocking was especially obvious.
It is important to recognize, however, that according to the theory of structural equivalence (and the partitioning method implemented in CONCOR) status iden- tities that occupy a common block need not have identical profiles of service combinations applied to them. Though the ‘first-correlation matrix’ (presented here as Table 4, permuted according to the block structure) is constructed directly from the raw profile scores (found in Table l), all subsequent iterations are not based on a direct comparison of service profiles. Rather, subsequent iterations are derived from a comparison of the patterning of every status identity’s correlational relationship with every other status identity. r’
So, for example, seamen and widows have a relatively low pairwise correlation (0.21) because they only have 3 service combinations in common - they both receive general relief assistance from non-profit organizations (which receive no government support), asylum from non-profit organizations (which receive no government support) and general relief assistance from churches. Both are much
16 Although some progress has been made in evaluating the goodness of fit of various levels of blocking
in Ron Burt’s method of finding structural equivalence blocks, there is as yet (to my knowledge) no
formal method for determining the best fitting number of blocks in a CONCOR analysis.
” See footnote 6 for more information on the CONCOR algorithm.
342 J. W Mohr /Poefics 22 (I 994) 327-357
J. W. Mohr /Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 343
344 J. W Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
Block-l Block-2 Block-3 Block-4 Block-5 Block-6
Fig. 1. CONCOR partition diagram.
-%4i&e Block-7
more strongly correlated with other status identities (widows, for example, share pairwise correlations of 0.4 or greater with ex-convicts, all three high status identities and consumptives). Why then were they blocked together? The answer is that their overall column vectors of correlation coefficients are quite similar (see Table 4). Why would these vectors be similar even if the specific services that are applied to them differ? Their correlation vectors are similar because the kinds of services that are directed at widows and seamen are similar. Note, however, that the similarity of these services is not linked to the fact that they’re the same sorts of practices in any substantive sense. Rather, the similarity of the services applied to widows and seamen derives from the fact that these services tend to be applied to the same types of (e.g., similarly profiled) status identities. So, for example, non-profit organizations (which receive no government support) try to find jobs for widows but they do not provide this service to seamen. They do, however, provide shelter for seamen. These two sets of services are similar to one another in the profile matrix because they tend to be applied to status identities that share common service profiles. I8
This rather lengthy discussion of seamen and widows is important because it serves to illustrate the fundamental idea of structural equivalence that is being applied here. Seamen and widows are seen as occupants of the same role position in the moral order not merely because the same things are done to them, but because the same ‘kinds of things’ are done to them. And, at the same time, ‘kinds of social services’ are defined as similar not because they involve the same sorts of physical activities, but because they tend to be applied to the same ‘kinds of status identities’. In other words, this method of analysis relies upon an assessment of
Gpe of relationship can be seen even more clearly when considering the blocking together of
unemployed males and unemployed females. These two status identities actually share a very low
pairwise correlation f-0.04) and in fact have no service combinations in common, but CONCOR
assigned them to the same block position because their profiles of similarity to other status identities (e.g., ex-convicts ungendered unemployed and immigrant females, but also see the entire column of
correlation coefficients) were quite similar.
Tab
le 4
P
erm
ute
d co
rrel
atio
n
mat
rix
TF
T
M
SN
D
N
UW
U
F
EN
U
N
UM
IF
IN
W
I S
O
BN
S
E
TF
1.
0 0.
81
TM
0.
81
1.0
SN
-
0.04
-
0.04
D
N
- 0.
04
- 0.
04
uw
-
0.05
-
0.04
UF
-
0.03
-
0.03
E
N
- 0.
07
- 0.
06
UN
-
0.06
-
0.05
U
M
- 0.
07
- 0.
06
IF
- 0.
09
- 0.
07
IN
-0.1
6 -0
.13
WI
- 0.
09
- 0.
08
so
- 0.
09
- 0.
07
BN
-0
.14
-0.1
1 S
E
-0.1
1 -
0.09
HM
-
0.04
-
0.04
H
N
- 0.
04
- 0.
04
HF
-
0.07
-
0.06
CN
-
0.06
-
0.05
W
M
- 0.
03
- 0.
03
Ww
-0
.09
- 0.
07
OM
-0
.11
- 0.
09
WB
-
0.08
-
0.06
W
G
-0.1
1 -0
.09
BF
-
0.09
-
0.07
B
M
- 0.
07
- 0.
06
- 0.
04
- 0.
04
1.0
0.48
0.
38
- 0.
03
- 0.
06
- 0.
05
0.28
-
0.07
0.08
-
0.08
0.
22
0.10
0.
16
- 0.
04
- 0.
04
- 0.
06
- 0.
05
- 0.
03
- 0.
07
- 0.
09
- 0.
06
- 0.
09
- 0.
07
- 0.
06
- 0.
04
- 0.
05
- 0.
03
- 0.
07
- 0.
04
- 0.
04
- 0.
03
- 0.
06
0.48
0.
38
- 0.
03
- 0.
06
1.0
0.38
-
0.03
-
0.06
0.
38
1.0
- 0.
03
- 0.
07
- 0.
03
- 0.
03
1.0
0.43
-
0.06
-
0.07
0.
43
1.0
- 0.
05
- 0.
06
0.49
0.
64
0.28
0.
21
- 0.
04
0.34
-
0.07
-
0.09
0.
36
0.26
0.28
0.
01
0.20
0.
33
0.20
0.
13
0.33
0.
41
0.22
0.
15
0.36
0.
45
0.32
0.
22
- 0.
08
0.10
0.
16
0.10
-
0.06
0.
19
- 0.
04
0.38
-
0.03
-
0.06
-
0.04
0.
38
- 0.
03
- 0.
06
- 0.
06
0.21
0.
43
0.12
- 0.
05
- 0.
06
- 0.
04
0.16
-
0.03
-0
.03
- 0.
02
- 0.
04
- 0.
07
- 0.
09
0.36
0.
07
0.15
-0
.11
- 0.
06
0.01
-
0.06
-
0.08
-
0.04
-0
.10
- 0.
09
0.10
-
0.06
0.
02
- 0.
07
0.15
-
0.05
-0
.11
- 0.
06
- 0.
07
- 0.
04
- 0.
09
- 0.
06
- 0.
05
- 0.
05
- 0.
05
- 0.
06
0.49
0.
64
1.0
0.40
0.
32
0.11
0.
29
0.32
0.
15
0.06
- 0.
05
- 0.
05
0.16
- 0.
07
- 0.
04
0.11
0.
04
- 0.
09
0.06
0.11
0.
16
- 0.
07
- 0.
09
- 0.
06
- 0.
07
0.28
-
0.07
0.
28
- 0.
07
0.21
-
0.09
- 0.
04
0.36
0.
34
0.26
0.
40
0.32
1.
0 0.
45
0.45
1.
0
0.19
0.
21
0.06
0.
16
0.26
0.
19
0.10
0.
02
0.35
-
0.03
- 0.
06
- 0.
07
- 0.
06
- 0.
07
0.12
0.
45
- 0.
08
0.11
-
0.04
-
0.05
-0.1
1 0.
35
0.16
0.
09
-0.1
0 -0
.13
0.02
0.
11
-0.1
1 0.
03
- 0.
09
0.07
-0.1
6 -
0.09
-
0.09
-0
.13
- 0.
08
- 0.
07
0.08
-
0.08
0.
22
0.28
0.
20
0.22
0.
01
0.13
0.
15
0.20
0.
33
0.36
0.
33
0.41
0.
45
0.11
0.
29
0.32
0.
19
0.06
0.
26
0.21
0.
16
0.19
1.0
0.27
0.
44
0.27
1.
0 0.
62
0.44
0.
62
1.0
0.28
0.
45
0.39
0.
48
0.21
0.
39
0.08
0.
47
0.22
0.
08
0.47
0.
22
0.19
0.
41
0.26
0.41
0.
48
0.53
0.
20
0.33
0.
36
0.32
0.
16
0.25
0.
19
0.14
0.
03
0.29
-
0.05
0.09
0.
19
0.01
-0
.12
0.19
-
0.04
0.
05
- 0.
03
-0.1
4 -0
.11
-0.1
4 -0
.11
-0.1
1 -0
.09
0.10
0.
16
0.32
0.
16
0.22
0.
10
- 0.
08
-0.0
6 0.
10
0.19
0.
15
0.06
0.
10
0.35
0.
02
- 0.
03
0.28
0.
48
0.45
0.
21
0.39
0.
39
1.0
0.25
0.
25
1.0
0.10
0.
16
0.10
0.
16
- 0.
04
0.19
0.31
0.
24
0.22
0.
29
0.02
0.
11
0.22
0.
36
0.19
0.
14
- 0.
06
0.15
0.02
-0
.17
0.10
-0
.14
Tab
le 4
(co
nti
nu
ed)
: H
M
HN
H
F
CN
W
M
ww
O
M
WB
W
G
BF
B
M
TF
T
M
- 0.
04
- 0.
04
- 0.
04
- 0.
04
SN
-0
.04
-0.0
4 D
N
- 0.
04
- 0.
04
uw
0.
38
0.38
UF
E
N
UN
U
M
IF
- 0.
03
- 0.
06
- 0.
05
- 0.
06
- 0.
07
- 0.
03
- 0.
06
- 0.
05
- 0.
06
- 0.
07
IN
0.08
0.
08
WI
0.47
0.
47
so
0.22
0.
22
BN
0.
10
0.10
S
E
0.16
0.
16
HM
1.
0 1.
0 H
N
1.0
1.0
HF
0.
62
0.62
CN
0.
32
0.32
W
M
0.70
0.
70
WW
0.
22
0.22
O
M
0.15
0.
15
WB
0.
25
0.25
W
G
0.16
0.
16
BF
B
M
0.22
-
0.06
0.
22
- 0.
06
- 0.
07
- 0.
06
- 0.
03
- 0.
09
0.06
-
0.05
-
0.03
-
0.07
- 0.
06
0.05
-
0.03
-
0.07
-
0.06
0.
05
- 0.
03
- 0.
07
0.21
-
0.06
-
0.03
-
0.09
0.43
-
0.04
-
0.02
0.
36
0.12
0.
16
- 0.
04
0.07
0.
16
- 0.
07
- 0.
04
0.11
0.
12
- 0.
08
- 0.
04
-0.1
1 0.
45
0.11
-
0.05
0.
35
0.19
0.
41
0.20
0.
32
0.41
0.
48
0.33
0.
16
0.26
0.
53
0.36
0.
19
- 0.
04
0.31
0.
22
0.02
0.
19
0.24
0.
29
0.11
0.62
0.
32
0.70
0.
22
0.62
0.
32
0.70
0.
22
1.0
0.16
0.
43
0.45
0.16
1.
0 0.
49
0.32
0.
43
0.49
1.
0 0.
36
0.4s
0.
32
0.36
1.
0 0.
32
0.04
0.
27
0.50
0.10
0.
13
0.39
0.
57
0.19
-0
.12
- 0.
06
0.39
0.07
0.
11
- 0.
05
0.19
-
0.09
0.
16
- 0.
04
0.26
-0.1
1 -0
.08
-0.1
1 -
0.09
-
0.07
-
0.09
-
0.06
-
0.09
-
0.07
-
0.06
-0.0
9 -
0.06
-
0.09
-
0.07
-
0.06
0.
15
- 0.
06
- 0.
09
-0.0
7 -
0.06
-0
.11
-0.0
8 0.
10
0.15
-
0.07
-0.0
6 ~
0.0
4 -
0.06
-
0.05
0.
01
-0.1
0 0.
02
-0.1
1 0.
04
- 0.
09
0.06
0.
11
0.16
-0
.10
0.02
-0
.11
0.09
-0
.13
0.1
0.03
0.25
0.
14
0.29
0.
09
0.19
0.
03
- 0.
05
0.01
-
0.04
0.
05
- 0.
03
-0.1
4 0.
22
0.19
-
0.06
0.
02
0.36
0.
14
0.15
-0
.17
0.15
0.
25
0.16
0.
22
0.15
0.
25
0.16
0.
22
0.32
0.
10
0.19
0.
07
0.04
0.
13
-0.1
2 0.
11
0.27
0.
39
-0.0
6 -0
.05
- 0.
04
- 0.
09
0.16
- 0.
09
2 0.
07
%
%
0.19
;
-0.1
2 2
-0.1
1 g.
0.
10
2
-0.1
4 2 2
- 0.
06
%
- 0.
06
&
- 0.
09
k ;”
0.16
5
0.04
0.50
0.
57
0.39
0.
19
0.26
1.
0 0.
56
0.36
-
0.04
0.
01
0.56
1.
0 0.
29
0.05
0.
10
0.36
0.
29
1.0
0.11
0.
02
- 0.
04
0.05
0.
11
1.0
0.83
0.01
0.
10
0.02
0.
83
1.0
J. W. Mohr/Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 347
Table 5 Density (image) matrix
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0.90 - 0.04 - 0.06 - 0.04 0.61 0.01 - 0.06 0.01 0.49 -0.11 0.15 0.19 - 0.05 0.08 0.05 - 0.04 - 0.04 -0.01 - 0.09 - 0.05 0.03 - 0.07 - 0.03 -0.01
-0.11 0.15 0.19 0.50 0.21 0.34 0.13
- 0.03
- 0.05 - 0.04 - 0.09 - 0.07 0.08 - 0.04 -0.05 - 0.03 0.05 - 0.01 0.03 -0.01 0.21 0.34 0.13 - 0.03 0.83 0.44 0.22 0.05 0.44 0.74 0.17 0.04 0.22 0.17 0.58 0.09 0.05 0.04 0.09 0.91
equivalances which are not substantively defined. Rather, they are structurally defined by their common positioning within a system of relationships.
6.2. The structure of roles within the moral order
Identifying structurally equivalent status identities serves to simplify the prob- lem of understanding the moral order by reducing the 26 independent status identities to a more manageable set of 8 common role positions. The real power of this approach, however, occurs through the assessment of how the role system is structured. Network analysts conventionally address this problem by means of a blockmodel. A blockmodel is a representation of the structural organization of the role system which is accomplished by means of an image matrix. An image matrix simply illustrates how closely related the blocks are to one another. Table 5 is an image matrix of the block structure derived earlier. Cell entries are simply the average of the correlations between all of the members of each pair of blocks. So, for example, the image matrix entry for the relationship between block 1 and itself is simply (1.0 + 0.81 + 0.81 + LO)/4 = 0.905.
It is easier to interpret an image matrix if the relationships are dichotomized. In this case, I have followed the conventional practice of dichotomizing cell entries at the mean. Table 6 contains these values. This matrix shows the underlying structure of associations among the 8 blocks. It suggests that block 4 is the most
Table 6 Dichotimized image matrix - cutoff at mean (0.1375)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
348 J. W. Mohr / Poetics 22 (I 994) 327-357
Dcpcndent htermediary
Fig. 2. Structure diagram.
central role set, sharing higher than average correlations with the status identities in blocks 2, 3, 5 and 6. This matrix also demonstrates that blocks 1 and 8 are isolates which are correlated with no blocks other than themselves. It may be easier to see the overall set of structural properties in the role set by representing these relations as undirected graphs. Fig. 2 contains this graph.
It is now possible to see more clearly that (from a purely structural perspective) this analysis suggests that there are five different types of roles in this moral order. I have labeled these according to their structural position within the graph (as determined by their number of ties to other nodes) as ‘core’, ‘core-dependent’, ‘core-intermediary’, ‘autonomous intermediary’, and ‘isolates’. While we are hard pressed at this point to say very much about the character of these different role types, it is clear that the two isolate blocks are relatively distinct from all other role types and that the role type that I have labeled as ‘core’ represents a kind of generalized template for various other types of roles.
At this point it is useful to go back and reconsider the block clusters from a
more interpretive perspective. The clues now are to be found in the specificity of the combinations of status identities that have been linked together by CONCOR. Notice, for example, that soldiers are located in core block 4 and that mothers are located in autonomous intermediary block 7. Recalling the earlier discussion about the intuitive appeal of thinking about the roles that mothers and soldiers play in the moral order, it is interesting to see here that they are both positioned in centrally located and structurally singular blocks. They are centrally located in the sense that they have two or more ties to other blocks (note that blocks 1, 2, 3 and 8 have fewer than two ties). And, they are structurally singular in the sense that they are located in the only two blocks that have no duplicate in the structure (soldiers in the only core block, mothers in the only autonomous intermediary block). If we further recall that CONCOR’s first partition separated blocks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from blocks 5, 6, 7 and 8, we can speculate about whether this was (in some crude fashion perhaps) a partitioning of the status identities into the two hypothesized status domains - ascribed and achieved.
J. K Mohr /Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 349
Achieved Status Domain
Complement
Ascribed Status Domain
Moderate Moral Ambiguity
0 Low Moral Ambiguity
Fig. 3. Moral order diagram.
This then raises the question of whether this role structure is really more properly understood as two parallel role structures - one located in a ‘pre- dominately ascribed’ status domain, the other in a ‘predominately achieved’ status domain. When viewed from this perspective, the role structure can be seen as comprising 4 (roughly equivalent) types of role positions. In Fig. 3 I have labeled these as ‘core’, ‘complement’, ‘ideal-type’, and ‘liminal’.
My thinking here runs something like this. The majority of the status identities in block 4 can be seen as having ‘earned’ their right to relief. Soldiers are entitled because of the sacrifices they made. Seamen are entitled because of their occupa- tion. Widows are entitled because of their having been legitimately married. The ungendered immigrants and blind are harder to understand and 1’11 leave them aside for the moment.
In contrast, block 7, which I’m referring to as the core of the ‘predominately ascribed’ status domain, contains mothers, working boys, working girls and working women. We might think of all of these status identities as being tightly coupled (in some way) to the domestic sphere. For mothers such a designation seems clear. For working boys, working girls and working women the assignment is somewhat more ambiguous. At the same time, however, it is worthwhile recalling that the policy disputes during this period were dominated by questions about child labor and the role of women (especially mothers) in the workforce. The location of these status identities in the ‘domestic’ sphere rather than in the block containing working men may well be an accurate reflection of the fact that even though these classes of people were in the workforce, it was still their relationship to the domestic sphere which took precedence. All of this again calls to mind the earlier discussion about the emergent ‘sacred’ (and unquestioned) character of mothers’ entitlements to social relief.
350 J. W. Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
Consider now the isolate blocks, or what I’ve labeled in Fig. 3, the ‘ideal-type’ blocks. In the ascribed status domain are deaf and blind men and women. Surely here are two status identities that are equally in some sense both ‘sacred’ and entitled to relief. Moreover, we might well suppose that they would fit into the ascribed status domain, since their blindness or deafness would surely not be seen as having been ‘earned’.
On the other end of the spectrum are male and female tramps. Not only is there a very clear moral inversion from one ideal-type to the other, there is also an important shift toward a kind of ‘achieved status’. Though largely identified as a category of moral degenerates, tramps were also quite clearly viewed as having achieved their station in life through their profligate ways.
To carry this analogy further then, I have labeled blocks 2 and 6 as ‘comple- ment’ role positions because the status identities in these blocks seem both less central to the two domains, but also in a sense complementary to the core positions. In block 2, unwed mothers have certainly achieved their station in life through their own moral failings. Strangers are surely no less dangerous in this regard, while the disabled are another possible puzzle. In any case, this is a role position which is complementary to the core (in block 4) in its somehow inverted moral achievements. In block 6, working men are natural analogues to mothers. Working men need to be supported so that mothers (to whom they are clearly tied) can continue to be preserved. At the same time, however, it would seem to be inappropriate to designate the status of working men as an ascribed status designation. This ambiguity is represented in the model by the close association of block 6 with core block 4, an association that suggests that the status domain boundary is somewhat loosely structured at the margins.
Perhaps the most interesting role positions, however, are those I have labeled as liminal blocks. Block 5, for example, consists entirely of high status identities who are in the extremely contradictory position of finding themselves impoverished. They are liminal in the sense that they are perfect examples of status identities which are in a kind of ambiguous and transitory position (see Turner, 1974). Their presence in the ‘predominately ascribed’ status domain is a reflection of the fact that they were generally seen as being the unlucky victims of some manner of ‘misfortune’. (At the same time, their structural proximity to block 4 suggests that they, like working men, were surely never too far away from being viewed as responsible for whatever fate assigns them.) On the other side, look at the status identities which occupy block 3. There can hardly be a more liminal figure than the ex-convict whose very title implies a kind of transitional status. The same could be said of the unemployed. Recall that there was no general sense of the entitlement of the unemployed to social relief during the early years of Progressive Era America. ” On the contrary, their status was highly suspect. They were in a kind
~&r’s (1986) discussion of the ongoing battle for legitimacy that the unemployed were forced to wage in Massachusetts during this period.
J.W. Mohr/Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 351
of downward spiral, on the border between the legitimate working class and the wholly illegitimate status of paupers. ”
6.3. A simple test of this interpretation of the moral order
I could continue to suggest various and elaborate interpretations of these findings, trying in the process to make sense of the few anomalies that appeared there. A far more useful project, however, is to assess whether or not this interpretive framework will bear some weight. Because of the centrality of issues concerning the moral order in this discussion, it seems appropriate to test whether or not this accounting of the structure of morally organized role statuses has any relationship to the ways in which these status identities were morally regarded. The problem is not entirely straightforward, however, because of the very intercon- nection of these social categories and moral discourse. As I have suggested throughout, these status identities were themselves essentially moral designations. They conveyed within the very status designation itself, an acutely moral interpre- tation. Hence, we would not expect to find that these organizations employed additional moral vocabularies in describing individuals whom they have identified as ‘tramps’. The sense of moral condemnation is implicit in the very designation. Similarly, status identities that were deemed to be inherently worthy would be unlikely to be described with additional moral terminology. Instead we would expect to find these organizations feeling the need to qualify the status designa- tions that they invoked in precisely those situations where the moral station of the individual was most ambiguous.
Consequently we would expect to see the most complex system of moral designations applied to those status identities that were closest to some moral boundary (Wuthnow, 1987). This would clearly exclude the status identities located in the ‘ideal-type’ role blocks since, by definition, they occupy morally unambigu- ous positions. It would also just as surely include those status identities located in the liminal blocks because they are, also by definition, located in boundary spanning positions. It is somewhat harder to know what to predict for the status identities located in the other four blocks. With respect to the ‘core’ blocks, for example, we might anticipate that they would be morally unambiguous because they (like the identities in the ideal type blocks) are more or less representative of a particular kind of entitlement. On the other hand, it may well be that it is precisely because they occupy such a core position that these status identities would be treated as if they were sitting astride a significant moral boundary.
One test of this interpretive framework then can be achieved by looking at the way that these various status identities were coded with additional moral specifica- tions. I created a new variable which searches for terms of this sort. (See Table 7
z---- In the words of one of the more astute commentators on the dilemmas of Progressive Era poverty discourse (who was nonetheless committed to debunking these ideas), Edward Devine noted that it was
commonly thought during this period that “unemployment is the first step toward vagrancy” (Devine,
1909: 8).
352 J. W. Mohr /Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
Table 7
Text recognition strings for moral terms
Good moral qualities:
Bad moral
qualities:
Moral qualities in transition:
‘Have not lived vicious lives’, ‘Unexceptionable reference as to character’, ‘Not
hardened in vice’, ‘Not yet hardened’, ‘Fair character’, ‘Less hardened’, ‘Abstain from the use of hard drink, tobbacco and profane’, ‘Not the result of or attended
by any dishonorable’, ‘Pledged to abstain from drink, smoking and profanity’,
‘Good character’, ‘Testimonials as to character’, ‘Whose deportment justifies it’,
‘References regarding character’, ‘Good moral character’, ‘In good repute’, ‘Of
good conduct’, ‘Who attend church’, ‘Moral character’, ‘Deserving’, ‘Innocent’,
‘Respectable’, ‘Worthy’, ‘Ambitious’, ‘Commendable’, ‘Industrious’, ‘Meritori- ous’, ‘Moral’, ‘Purity’, ‘Reverence’, ‘Trustworthy’, ‘Self-respecting’, ‘Virtue’, ‘Virtues’, ‘Virtuous’, ‘Well-behaved’.
‘Moral development may have been hindered’, ‘Without employment, character
or necessary recommendations’, ‘Having lived a bad life’, ‘Tempted married
women’, ‘Lives of sin’, ‘Moral disorders’, ‘Not respectable’, ‘Immoral’, ‘Fallen’,
‘Wayward’, ‘Bad’, ‘Degraded’, ‘Depraved’, ‘Dishonorable’, ‘Erred’, ‘Erring’, ‘Idle’, ‘Menace’, ‘Misstep’, ‘Obscene’, ‘Profligate’, ‘Sin’, ‘Unfaithful’, ‘Unworthy’,
‘Vice’, ‘Imperiled’, ‘Imperilled’, ‘Exposed’, ‘Risk, ‘Temptation’, ‘Temptations’, ‘Tempted’.
‘Have begun on the downward path’, ‘In danger of becoming morally depraved’,
‘In danger of being led astray’, ‘Drifting towards a life of crime’, ‘From
dangerous and demoralizing surroundings’, ‘Exposed to the temptations’, ‘falling
into criminal ways’, ‘In danger of falling’, ‘From vicious surroundings’, ‘Who
wish to reform’, ‘Anxious to make the most of themselves’, ‘Feeling the need of
reformation and protection’, ‘Desiring to lead better lives’, ‘Deserting the haunts
of vice’, ‘Who desire to reform’, ‘Anxious to reform’.
for the text strings that were searched on this pass.) Table 8 shows the distribution of these sorts of moral codings by block membership. I have placed a 1 in the column titled ‘Any Moral’ if any observation in each role position was described in moral terms. I have placed a 1 in the column titled ‘15% + Moral’ if more than
Table 8
Occurrence of explictly moral references by block
N N
moral
%
moral Any moral
15% + moral
Block 1 11
Block 2 19
Block 3 39
Block 4 216
Block 5 25
Block 6 58 Block 7 156 Block 8 11
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0
12 30.8 1 1
10 4.6 1 0
6 24.0 1 I
0 0 0 0
I 4.5 1 0
0 0 0 0
.I. W. Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 353
15% of the status identities in a given block were described in these sorts of terms. As hypothesized, the great majority of these status identities (e.g., 92%) were not deemed to be in need of further moral qualification. It is interesting to see, however, that only the 2 liminal blocks were in fact relatively likely to be described in moral terms. It is also interesting to note that the only other role positions that had any moral codings were the two core blocks.
At this point we must ask why it is the case that some (though small amount) of moral differentiation occurs in the core role positions and not, for example, in the complement blocks. My suspicion is that it is really in the core role statuses that a kind of ongoing differentiation of moral boundaries continues to be required. Soldiers and widows and seamen are all core statuses in the achieved entitlement domain, but surely there is also something of an ongoing dispute about the legitimacy of that ordering and so we might expect to see a kind of moral jostling occur here at the core. This seems even more apparent in block 7. We already have clear evidence (in the case of the unwed mothers who were relegated to the complement block in the achieved domain) that these moral boundaries must be actively policed. And so, one would think, it would be necessary to patrol the moral distinctions that divide working women, working boys and working girls from, for example, the complementary role status of working men.
7. Discussion
I began this article by asserting that what was most interesting about welfare classification systems were the ways in which they are created, the ways in which they operate and ways in which they are transformed. While the work of scholars such as Theda Skocpol has helped us to understand more about how these forms of classification are created and transformed, my goal has been to understand something about how the welfare classification system operated in New York City during the Progressive Era. I have sought to do this by looking at the ways in which different types of social categories were treated and by arguing that the patterns of similarities and differences that occurred in these activities reveal how these social identities were organized into a structured moral order. Key to this endeavor is the concept of a discourse role. By identifying common role positions and then assessing the patterns of connectivity among those positions I have sought to provide some measure of the structured character of moral discourse.
In general, I think that the structural model that has been identified here fits our broader understanding of the nature of Progressive Era social welfare prac- tices pretty well. The overall model of role positions, with soldiers anchoring the core position in an achieved status domain, and mothers occupying the core position in an ascribed domain, seems to capture the essence of the moral order that Skocpol and others have described in different ways. Moreover, it does so in a way that provides new and interesting information. It is especially interesting to discover, for example, which other social identities were clustered within the same discourse roles as mothers and soldiers. It is also fascinating to see how the
354 J. W. Mohr /Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357
unemployed, ex-convicts and female immigrants occupied a common role position and to understand the way that this cluster of status identities mirrored (in a structural sense) the status identities of the impoverished middle class. And, finally, the efficiency with which this role structure accounts for the likelihood that a given status identity would be designated in moral terms seems quite striking.
The fit, however, may not be perfect. There are a number of questions raised by these analyses that may stimulate us to explore these matters further. Why, for example, would ungendered immigrants be located in a different discourse role than female immigrants? Though I cannot say for certain, I suspect that the answer to this question has something to do with the issue of who makes the distinction. Relief organizations that were operated by ethnic communities were less likely to invoke gendered distinctions and more likely to emphasize ethnicity. In contrast, nativist organizations were more likely to invoke a gendered distinc- tion when referring to immigrants, perhaps because they saw a greater need to guard against the dangerous moral implications of female immigrants. This may have led them to treat immigrant women differently than immigrant men, a hypothesis that is supported here by evidence that a wide array of Americanization and household training programs were directed toward immigrant women. This is a topic that may merit further investigation.
There are other questions here as well. Why are the disabled clustered in block 2 and what does this suggest to us about the struggles over workmen’s compensa- tion laws that were just beginning to be fought? How is it that consumptives came to be equated with working men? This, again, is a highly provocative idea and one that deserves further expioration. And, perhaps most curiously, why is it that the ungendered deaf and blind are so very differently positioned in the moral order from the male and female versions of this status identity? Here again, I have no readily available explanation. I can, at the moment, only point to the data and note that gender distinctions among the blind and deaf were only invoked by private non-profit organizations and that this clearly influenced the way these status identities were positioned in this structural model. I will also point out, however, that whatever the answer to this last question might be, it is entirely consistent with these analyses that blind and deaf men and women were never described in moral terms, while 28% of all ungendered references to the blind were so
designated. The point that I’ve tried to make here is that it is not something intrinsic in the nature of the status character (e.g., blindness) which explains whether a given identity is morally regarded, but rather it is something intrinsic in the nature of the role position that a given status identity occupies in the moral order.
Most importantly, however, I have hoped to show with these analyses the utility of thinking about moral discourse in a structural fashion. The use of CONCOR and the theory of structural equivalence was a crucial tool in this process because this approach is based entirely upon the measurement of patterns of association. This meant that the ‘meaning’ of various status identities did not need to be ‘interpreted’, they could merely be ‘followed’. In the example discussed earlier regarding the similarities of seamen and widows, there was no need to try and
J. W. Mohr / Poetics 22 (1994) 327-357 355
evaluate (in some substantive sense) whether the kinds of services that were being applied to these two status categories were ‘the same’. Rather I was able to rely on the fact that the services were themselves similar in the sense that they were applied to structurally equivalent kinds of actors. This is not a quantification of meaning in a conventional sense. It is rather a way of using arithmetic properties of relationships (what Harrison White would refer to as ‘the relations of the relations’) to identify patterns of cultural interconnections. This is also the same sort of methodological program that underlies Levi-Strauss’s (1963) approach to interpreting myths. In the current case, however, the myths being examined are those that provided the foundational assumptions for the creation of a newly emergent organizational field.
Finally, the analyses conducted here have a more limited and concrete utility in that they help us to understand something more about the way in which gendered status identities were constructed by relief agencies during the Progressive Era. While this form of analysis cannot possibly displace the sort of detailed and wide-ranging scholarship that has been conducted by Theda Skocpol and her colleagues, it does have potential as a useful adjunct to that form of research, especially as a means of both testing and generating research hypotheses. In these analyses, for example, it was interesting to see how gender fared as a means of explaining the role position of various status identities.
The fact that both block 1 and block 8 consisted of pairs of gendered identities which were otherwise singular suggests that these status conditions (being a tramp and being blind) tended to override whatever other differences might accrue because of gender. This interpretation is bolstered by the isolation of these identities from all other statuses considered here, suggesting that both of these are relatively distinctive role identities within the field. Block 5 was also constituted by a single status and once again, this suggests that high status people were treated differently enough from other categories of people within this organizational field so as to effectively be seen as occupying a distinctive sort of role position regardless of their gender. In contrast, other gender pairs (working men and working women, immigrant females and non-gendered immigrant identities) were treated in ways that were substantively different. Indeed, they were treated so differently that they can be seen as occupants of distinct role positions in the discursive field.
Future research will be directed to comparing these role positions to those occurring at other moments in time. The question to be asked in this regard will be whether the changes in poverty discourse can be effectively tracked by the shifting character of the role structure and whether these analyses can shed more light on the nature of the cultural logic that served to organize the allocation of needy individuals to different fates within this institutional system.
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