• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Night As Frontier Author(s): Murray Melbin Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 43, No. 1, (Feb., 1978), pp. 3-22 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2094758 Accessed: 06/05/2008 16:32 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW February 1978 Volume 43 Number 1 NIGHT AS FRONTIER* MURRAY MELBIN Boston University AmericanSociological Review 1978, Vol. 43 (February):3-22 While the settlement of some of the world's land areas was coming to an end, there began an increase in wakeful activity over more of the 24-hour day. This trend of expansion in time is continuing, especially in urban areas. The hypothesis that night has become the new frontier is supported by the premise that time, like space, can be occupied and is treated so by humans. A set of evidence, including results of severalfield experiments, show that nighttime social life in urban areas resembles social life on former land frontiers. The research data refers mainly to contemporary Boston and to the U.S. West a century ago. Humans are showing a trend toward activity. Upon mastering fire, early hu- more and more wakeful activity at all mans used it for cooking and also for hours of day and night. The activities are sociable assemblies that lasted for a few extremely varied. Large numbers of hours after darkness fell. Some bustle people are involved. And the trend is throughout the 24-hour cycle occurred worldwide. A unifying hypothesis to ac- too. Over the centuries there have been count for it is that night is a frontier, that fires tended in military encampments, expansion into the dark hours is a con- prayer vigils in temples, midnight be- tinuation of the geographic migration trothal ceremonies, sentinels on guard across the face of the earth. To support duty at city gates, officer watches on this view, I will document the trend and ships, the curing ceremonies of Ven- then offer a premise about the nature of ezuelan Indiansthat begin at sundownand time and its relationto space. Third, I will end at sunrise, innkeepers serving travel- show that social life in the nighttime has ers at all hours. In the first century A.D., many important characteristics that re- Rome was obligedto relieve its congestion semble social life on land frontiers. by restricting chariot traffic to the night hours (Mumford, 1961:217). Yet around-the-clockactivity used to be THE COURSE OF EXPANSION a small part of the whole until the We were once a diurnal species nineteenth century. Then the pace and boundedby dawn and dusk in our wakeful scope of wakefulness at all hours in- creased smartly. WilliamMurdock devel- oped a feasible method of coal-gas illumi- * I thank the Center for Studies of Metropolitan Problems, National Institute of Mental Health, for nation and, in 1803, arrangedfor the inte- grant MH-22763 through which the research and the rior of the Soho works in Birmingham, preparation of this essay was supported; and Earl England to be lighted that way. Other Mellor of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for provid- mills nearby began to use gas lighting. ing interpretive help and data tables from the 1976 to all Current Population Survey. I also thank my research Methods of distributing coal-gas assistants William 0. Clarke, Ann Getman, Shelley buildingsand street lamps in a town were Leavitt, Lee Parmenter, Alan Rubenstein, Melanie introducedsoon after. In 1820Pall Mall in Wallace, and Marilyn Arsem for field observations at London became the first street to be lit by all hours in rain and bitter cold was well as mild coal-gas. Artificial lighting gave great weather; and my colleagues Paul Hollander and An- thony Harris of the University of Massachusetts at stimulus to the nighttime entertainment Amherst, for serving as recipients in the lost-key industry (Schlesinger, 1933:105). It also test. permitted multiple-shift factory opera- 3 4 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW tions on a broad scale. Indeed by 1867 trial Conference Board (1927) publisheda Karl Marx (1867:chap. 10, sec. 4) was to comprehensive survey with an account of declarethat night work was a new mode of the characteristicsof the off-hours work- exploiting human labor. ers. In the closing decades of the nineteenth The most systematic evidence of stead- century two developments marked the ily increasing24-hour activity in the U.S. changeover from space to time as the is the growth of radio and television realm of human migration in the United broadcasting.Broadcasters authorize sur- States. In 1890 the Bureau of the Census veys to learn about the marketthat can be announced that the land frontier in reached in order to plan programsand to Americahad come to an end, for it was no set advertising rates. The number of sta- longer possible to draw a continuous line tions active at given hours and the spread across the map of the West to define the of those hours around the clock reflects edge of farthest advance settlement. these research estimates of the size of the Meanwhile, the search for an optimum wakeful population-the potential listen- material for lantern lights, capable of ers. Table 1 shows trends in the daily being repeatedly broughtto a white heat, schedule spanning the entire periods of culminatedin 1885 in the invention of the commercial broadcasting for both radio Welsbach mantle-a chemically impreg- and television. Althoughnot shown in the nated cotton mesh. The use of the dark table, television hours in Boston ended at hours increased thereafter, and grew 11:30 p.m. in 1949, and then widened to further with the introduction of electric include the Late Show and then the Late lighting. Late Show in the intervening years until Here and there one may find documen- 1974. Each medium has moved increas- tation of the trend. Duringthe First World ingly to 24-hourprogramming and mirrors War there was selective concern, ex- the growth in nighttime activity. pressed by Brandeisand Goldmark(1918) In the present decade, for the first time, in The Case Against Night Work for the U.S. Bureauof Labor Statistics (1976: Women, about the impact of off-hours Table 1) asked about the times of day that work. A decade later the National Indus- people worked. In 1976, of 75 million in Table 1. Numbers of Radio and Television Stations and Their Hours of Broadcastingin Bostona The Span of CommercialBroadcasting April April April April April April April April April April 1929 1934 1939 1944 1949 1954 1959 1964 1%9 1974 Radio Numberof stations 7 7 8 7 8 14 15 20 26 27 Numberof 24-hour stations 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 8 12 15 Percent of 24-hour stations 7% 20%o 40%o 46% 57% Television Numberof stations 2 4 4 4 5 7 Numberof 24-hour stations 0 0 0 0 0 1 Percent of 24-hour stations 14% a Sources: listings in Boston newspapers-Globe, Herald, Record, and Traveler-and the broadcasters themselves. If the content of a broadcaster'sAM and FM radio programmingor VHF and UHF television programmingdiffers, that broadcastis counted as two stations. NIGHT AS FRONTIER the work force, 12 million reported they niche we label it by the timing of its wake- were on the job mainly after dark and 2.5 fiul life. The terms diurnal and nocturnal millionof those persons worked a full shift refer to the periods the creatures are beginningabout midnight.Since these fig- active. We improve our grasp of the ecol- ures do not include the clientele that used ogy of a region by recognizing the night- such establishmentsas restaurants,hospi- time activity of raccoons, owls and rats, tal emergency wards, gambling rooms, as well as by knowing the spatial disper- and public transportation,these numbers sion of these and other animals. The same are conservative estimates of how many area of a forest or meadow or coral reef is people are up and about at night. used incessantly, with diurnaland noctur- Today more people than ever are active nal creaturestaking their active turns. We outside their homes at all hours engaged in make geographic references to humans in all sorts of activities. There are all-night a similarway. We refer to an island people supermarkets,bowling alleys, department or a desert people, or the people of arctic stores, restaurants, cinemas, auto repair lands as a means of pointing out salient shops, taxi services, bus and airline ter- features of their habitats. minals, radio and television broadcasting, This similartreatment of time and space rent-a-car agencies, gasoline stations.

Load more

  21

Copy Link