Metropolitan Size and Participation in Religio-Ethnic Communities

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of metropolitan size on participation in Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish subcommunities in the United States. Hypotheses were based on Durkheim's theory of community, the Blau and Schwartz macrostructural theory of group relations, and Fischer's subculture theory. The major hypotheses were: 1) The larger the religio-ethnic subcommunity, the less its members participate formally (e.g., organizational membership); 2) the larger the Jewish or Catholic subcommunity, the more its members will participate informally (e.g., within-group friendship); 3) the smaller the religio-ethnic group, the more its members are affected by community size; and 4) the majority subcommunity will be relatively impervious to the effects of community size. Hypothesis 1, 3, and 4 were supported by data from the 1985-1989 General Social Surveys of the National Opinion Research Center and from the National Jewish Population Survey of 1970-71. Hypothesis 2 could be tested only in the Jewish community and was supported.