N directly P but Back to AtD interpretation: "folk society"

[Mark Kohut]

When Vonnegut went to the University of Chicago, it was still famous for its
social sciences departments. He majored in anthropology, after science at Cornell.
He was strongly influenced conceptually by Robert Redfield, who was "full of ideas", who 
wrote a Social Anthropology textbook which was like an updating of Frazer and
other groundbreaking cultural explorers of the 19th Century, it is said.
 
A key concept: "folk society" :a stage in the history of human relations yet "in every
isolated community there is civilization; in every city there is the folk society"
 
"the ideal folk society was small, homogeneous, respectful of sacred rituals, and held
together by strong personal relations. This is not to say, he said, that primitve societies
are Arcadias and big cities are automatically impersonal hells", Redfield cautioned.
 
I am fairly sure Redfield shared this belief with many other scholars, it is not that 
original, I don't think; he arrived at it in studying the modernizing process in Mexico and Central 
America so, once again I am not suggesting any direct TRP influence---we know he can
arrive at insightful truths himself,--- but I do want to suggest that some pattern like this is
 
a major part of TRP's vision, especially in Against the Day, especially in the Olde Europe
sections where we are.