The Center for Middletown Studies is working to create a historical record of recent economic changes in "Middletown"—Muncie, Indiana—and their impact on the life of the community.  The goal of this initiative is to provide the raw materials for researchers seeking to explore the social, cultural, and political effects of deindustrialization on what is already one of the most thoroughly studied communities in the United States.  Scholars, journalists and marketers have been coming to the city since the 1920s, when Robert and Helen Lynd published the path breaking Middletown: A Study in American Culture (1929).

The work of the Lynds and their successors provides a baseline from which to compare the social and cultural patterns of a community hard hit by the economic changes of the past four decades.  In 1972 Muncie had more than 17,000 people employed in heavy manufacturing—21% of its population.  By the end of that century, only 5,000 people were engaged in industrial work and they constituted just 7% of the city's population.  The Lynds examined the impact of industrialization on the community's social and cultural life.  The Center seeks to assist scholars attempting to do the same for deindustrialization.  

Currently the Center is completing the "Organized Labor in Muncie" oral history project.  Funded by the Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County, the project staff is completing interviews of the men and women at the forefront of the labor movement in the city from the 1950s to the recent past.  Transcripts and audio files of the interview will be made available online once completed.  Not only will this project generate valuable research material, it will also serve as a unique community resource.

Other potential projects associated with the Documenting Deindustrialization initiative may include a photographic essay that would examine the physical, visual, spatial, and social impact of broad economic changes in Muncie, oral history interviews with businessmen, civic leaders, planners, and local officials, surveys of community attitudes, opinions, and values, the compilation of a statistical database, and ethnographic or sociological research that explores the six major areas identified in the Lynds' original studies.