This paper revisits The Other Side of Middletown, a collaborative ethnography written by a group of faculty, students, and African Americans living in Muncie, Indiana—the town made famous by Robert and Helen Lynd in their 1929 original study, “Middletown”, and its 1937 follow-up, “Middletown in Transition”. The study “The Other Side of Middletown” addressed the lack of African American history and experience in the Lynds’ works, and used a collaborative approach to research and writing. Here, the author describes the social and relational contexts in which the study first developed; elaborates its connections to the Lynds’ original Middletown studies; summarizes the study’s approach and findings; and offers lessons related to collaborative research that emerged during the project.

Lassiter, L. E. (2012). ‘To fill in the missing piece of the Middletown puzzle’: lessons from re-studying Middletown. The Sociological Review, 60(3), 421-437. Full Text.