The important role of the Temperance movement throughout American history is analyzed as clashes and conflicts between rival social systems, cultures, and status groups. Sometimes the "dry" is winning the classic battle for prestige and political power. Sometimes, as in today's society, he is losing.
This significant contribution to the theory of status conflict also discloses the importance of political acts as symbolic acts and offers a dramatistic theory of status politics, Gusfield provides a useful addition to the economic and psychological modes of analysis current in the study of political and social movements.
 

Joseph R. Gusfield, a longtime member of the sociology department at the University of California at San Diego, is currently a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in California. He is the author of The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking, Driving, and the Symbolic Order and Community: A Critical Response.