Review

Reviewed Work(s): Ethnocentrism: Theories of Conflict, Ethnic Attitudes and Group

Behavior. by Robert A. LeVine and Donald T. Campbell
Review by: Thomas F. Pettigrew
Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 88, No. 3 (Sep., 1973), pp. 488-489
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2149001
Accessed: 31-08-2023 02:44 +00:00

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Political Science Quarterly

This content downloaded from 34.192.2.131 on Thu, 31 Aug 2023 02:44:57 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
488 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

uncertainty about the theme announced in the title. In what sense was
Chicago a "house for all peoples?" From Studs Lonigan to Studs Terkel,
there is little affirmation; and black Americans might reasonably find
the title phantasmagoric. Perhaps Chicago's political leaders-say from
Jake Arvey to Richard Daley-might have consulted, to their benefit,
with Polly Adler about what it takes to make a house a home.

ROBERT D. CROSS
University of Virginia

Ethnocentrism: Theories of Conflict, Ethnic Attitudes and Group

Behavior by Robert A. LeVine and Donald T. Campbell. New
York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1972-310 pp. $10.95.

The scientific study of race relations in the United States has traditionally
been a ghetto itself. Ironically, this field of intellectual inquiry mirrored
its subject: it was an insulated domain within social science, typically
viewed with disdain, granted meager status and research funds, and cut
off from many of the principal trends and advances in both theory and
method.
LeVine and Campbell's Ethnocentrism is therefore an especially wel-
come contribution, for it signals the end of the insulated tradition for
race relations thought. Together with Blalock's earlier volume, Toward
a Theory of Minority-Group Relations, this new book establishes a solid
theoretical base for the field that should be of interest to laymen as well
as specialists.
LeVine, an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, and Campbell,
a social psychologist at Northwestern University, combine their talents
to consider the full spectrum of theoretical perspectives. Individual chap-
ters consider the sweep of both societal theories, including evolutionary
ideas, and sociopsychological theories, including frustration-aggression
and learning ideas. Each chapter is well written, fairly presented, and
organized into specific, testable hypotheses.
But thebook's most valuable contribution is a brief 1g-page summary
chapter on the "concord and discord" among the various theories. For
example, there is agreement from every perspective that groups return
hostility with hostility in both behavior and attitudes, that increasing
scarcity of the resources competed for heightens intergroup conflict, and
that group differences are typically exaggerated in intergroup stereotypes.
Interestingly, all theories concur that there is a positive relationship be-
tween a group's social complexity and its level of ethnocentrism.
There are also wide disagreements between the theories. Is ethnocen-

This content downloaded from 34.192.2.131 on Thu, 31 Aug 2023 02:44:57 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 BOOK REVIEWS I 489

trism affected, for instance, by the outgroup's power, proximity, and

similarity? Theories contradict each other on these points. And research
to date suggests that the answers are complex. Hence, the perceived
relative power of the outgroup, and not its absolute power, may be con-
trolling; the most hated and aggressed-upon outgroups are often at a
medium range of proximity; and similar groups appear to be more liked
when they are close, but dissimilar groups more disliked when they are
close.
Ethnocentrism constitutes, then, a major contribution to our under-
standing of intergroup relations. It can be recommended not only to
specialists but also to non-social scientists who want to learn how the
field is progressing apart from the much-publicized policy debates over
schools and "busing."
THOMAS F. PETTIGREW
Harvard University

Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Examination of the Black

Experience in Religion by Gayraud S. Wilmore. New York,
Doubleday and Company, 1972.-Xiii, 343 pp. $7.95.

This work is at once indebted to the 1964 work Black Religion: The
Negro and Christianity in the United States, and is a revisionist attempt to
correct and update it. As an introductory survey, it is useful; the un-
initiated will find it readable. As a contribution to knowledge, it leaves
off where the specialist wishes it began. There are two fundamental
weaknesses: lack of careful definition respecting such terms as "black
nationalism" or "radicalism" and lack of evidence for the title's theme.
Superficially read the book seems to describe radicalism in the religious
experience of the black American community. As such it reminds readers
that the Afro-American interest in religion is unrestrained affirmation of
spiritual equality in the world to come and a means to increase the will for
human equality in our daily lives. Nevertheless, Mr. Wilmore realLy
wishes readers to equate authentic black religion with radicalism. He goes
beyond his evidence to connect black religion and black power. While
never defining radicalism (black nationalism, black power), the descriptive
use of the term causes the serious reader to infer from all implications
that radicalism means overthrowing American structures and values.
Radicalism for Wilmore means revolution-black ideational and ideo-
logical replacements for Western values and institutions which he hopes
will come through black power as the perfect blend of African and Afro-
American elements. Unfortunately, however laudable his concern, it

This content downloaded from 34.192.2.131 on Thu, 31 Aug 2023 02:44:57 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms