The Intellectual Subsociety Hypothesis: an Empirical Test

Abstract

IN A RECENT book on ethnic communality in America, Milton Gordon outlined an intellectual subsociety hypothesis in which it was argued that in the United States do not fit the contours of the sociological mold cast by the forces of race, religion, and national origin in contemporary group life. It was contended that intellectuals in the United States interact in such patterned ways as to form at least the elementary structure of a subsociety of their own, and ... this subsociety is the only one in American life in which people of different ethnic backgrounds interact in primary group relations with considerable frequency and with relative comfort and ease.1 Stated otherwise, often find life within the ethnic fold unsatisfactory and transcend the boundaries of their respective ethnic groups to form a collectively transethnic subsociety.2 Thus, it is hypothesized that there is emerging in this country a social stratum of intellectuals, a stratum within which ethnic backgrounds are superseded and in which, consequently, no marked ethnic divisions (unlike other strata with their ethnic subgroups) are revealed. This ethnically neutral subsociety may not, of course, embrace all intellectuals. Some may prefer ethnic solidarity, albeit with other of a similar ethnic background. The impetus for an ethnically undivided substructure of is provided by shared interests of such intensity as to overcome background variables: . . in the situation of men and women coming together, because of an overriding common interest in ideas, the creative arts, and mutual professional concerns, we find the classic sociological enemy of ethnic parochialism.3 Involvement in the realm of ideas becomes the pivot of commonality rather than ancestry or socioreligious heritage.