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An organic system is like a fountain balanced upon a pyramid of fountains.

— William Foote Whyte

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More quotes by William Foote Whyte

Instead of getting a cross-sectional picture of the community at a particular point in time, I was dealing with a time sequence of interpersonal events.

We didn't rally them there. We never went looking for trouble. We only rallied on our own street, but we always won there.

They [social workers] were always calling police stations telling them. 'There is a riot in the Northon street settlement. Send the riot squad right away.' A couple of cops would come down and joke with the boys [Native Whites], because they were good friends.

[The Hawthorne studies was] perhaps the first major social science experiment... and we feel that continued efforts in this direction will yield rich returns in the development of the social sciences.

William Foote Whyte (1946)

Full-time participant observation over an extended period of time tends to be an age-graded phenomenon. Such studies are most likely to be done by young people, in our student years. When we are established professionals, with teaching or other professional responsibilities, we are unlikely to have the time and the motivation to make such a full commitment.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Foote Whyte (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.