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Throughout his distinguished career, Herbert Gutman has displayed a rare genius for dredging up the most gloriously obscure historical evidence and deriving from it new perspectives on the largest themes. The Black Family is another triumph of this kind: my awe of Professor Gutman's energy and insight is enhanced by this volume. At the same time, Gutman makes clear that the volume is not demographic in its intent. Since my commentary is to be from a demographic perspective, I will take particular pains to direct this perspective to the purposes Gutman sets forth in The Black Family. These are identified by the author as discerning "what sustained common slave beliefs and behavior," rather than merely documenting "regularities in behavior," the latter being Gutman's characterization of the results of the application of quantitative methods (1976). My task, then, is to examine the links that Gutman establishes between demographic argument and explanation, in his sense, and to assess their adequacy. No demographer, I suspect, would have undertaken the kind of investigation Gutman assays; but demographic skills would have served Gutman's intentions. I will here try to be severe with this imposing volume, recognizing the importance and aptness of its central thesis, and the audacity of its author's empirical reach, but questioning the adequacy of his demography to his own ends.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

From 1956 to 1971 a group of conflict resolution researchers centered at the University of Michigan attempted to develop a comprehensive scientific theory of human conflict and to establish a new profession that would be available to advise national policymakers. The movement's pioneers founded the Journal of Conflict Resolution and an interdisciplinary research center and took part in the 1960s expansion of peace studies and activism. The promised theoretical developments failed to materialize, and financial, institutional, and political problems led to the movement's dissolution. The present study analyzes the movement as a profession and employs quantitative studies of the movement's participants, their published materials, and their citation networks to document its development and dissolution.

World War II represented a substantial mobilization of American resources, including human resources. Despite the obvious hindrances it posed to marriage, nuptiality on the whole did not slow down during the war. Among the reasons it did not do so was a government policy designed to conserve the already-formed families of soldiers, which also made marriage an economically attractive option to young women. For citizen soldiers, wartime marriage was not simply economically feasible. It was as well an action that connected them with the civilian life that they had reluctantly left. Marriage, moreover, was an action congruent with and promoted by success in the unusual occupational context of the armed services Even after the war, wartime military service proved to be congruent with marriage, veterans being more prone—after a brief lag—to marry. Often portrayed as a war in defense of the American family, World War II seems to have produced patterns that included surprising degrees of continuity with family formation.

World War II represented a substantial mobilization of American resources, including human resources. Despite the obvious hindrances it posed to marriage, nuptiality on the whole did not slow down during the war. Among the reasons it did not do so was a government policy designed to conserve the already-formed families of soldiers, which also made marriage an economically attractive option to young women. For citizen soldiers, wartime marriage was not simply economically feasible. It was as well an action that connected them with the civilian life that they had reluctantly left. Marriage, moreover, was an action congruent with and promoted by success in the unusual occupational context of the armed services. Even after the war, wartime military service proved to be congruent with marriage, veterans being more prone—after a brief lag—to marry. Often portrayed as a war in defense of the American family, World War II seems to have produced patterns that included surprising degrees of continuity with family formation.