Social Status

Gusfield, Joseph R. (1986). Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

"Social Status and the Temperance Ethic"

This chapter gave great insight to a mechanism of social control that has had a big impact in the United States. Moral entrepreneurism was a major motivating factor in the founding and forming of our country and is still quite relevant in the weaving and tearing of our "social fabric". Gusfeild does a good job of pointing out that although symbolic politics are more covert they are just as important as economic issues. It is these movements that shape the dominant opinions of our vastly diverse country, they define the majority. I use the term majority here in the sense of the dominant group ie the "moral majority" not in the sense of numbers but in the sense of power. The crusades of the moral majority always succeed in creating a divide in the country between the deviant and the surpassers, an othering if you will. It is within these Symbolic Crusades that the group in danger of losing its foothold sets out to demonize those not like him therefore solidifying his respect and position of authority.

The temperance movement in post civil war U.S. was a strategic move by the protestants to maintain their hold as the moral majority. Post civil war America saw a large influx of Eastern European immigrants of the Catholic persuasion. What the Protestants could not fight in numbers they tried to make up for with existing political power. One giant difference in the two groups was that Protestants were sober and Catholics were not. If the Protestant group could solidify in law that drinking alcohol was deviant and therefore illegal US the law would be legitimizing Protestant values while simultaneously demonizing Catholics.

By setting up such a rigid moral dichotomy moral crusaders like those in the temperance movement are also setting the perimeters within which a citizen must live in order to be a valuable member of his/her society. The values of the moral majority become symbols of social status and the deviation from such values become signs of deviance.

New developments in the country, such as changing economic and political climates, finally beat out the moral entrepreneurs of the temperance movement, thank god (no pun intended).

Summarizing Quote- "Temperance has been both a protest against a changing status system and a mechanism for influencing the distribution of prestige. This study is consequently a contribution to the theory of status conflict and its relation to political and social movements" (Gusfield 12, 1986).