Southern Distinctiveness over Time, 1972-2000
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2374-7781.2002.23.0.193-220Abstract
Scholars have long been interested in the cultural differences between the southern United States and the rest of the nation. In this study we update and extend earlier work in this area by comparing and tracking the responses of southerners and non-southerners to over 75 questions from the 1972-2000 cumulative General Social Surveys. The analyses generate four conclusions. First, the attitudes and behaviors of southerners are more conservative than those of non-southerners in many areas, including race, gender, religion, sex, social capital, and tolerance. Second, the magnitude of these regional differences remains about the same regardless of whether we compare all southerners and non-southerners or just white southerners and non-southerners. This suggests that Southern culture is not just a “white” southern culture as many scholars have argued in the past. Third, the differences between southerners and non-southerners persist, although often to a lesser degree, after controlling for structural variables such as education, income, and urbanity. The implication is that southern distinctiveness is a product of both deep-seeded cultural differences and structural differences between regions. Fourth, there is very little evidence that regional differences have declined over the past quarter century, challenging those who contend that southern culture is in retreat.References
Abrahamson, Mark, and Valerie J. Carter. 1986. Tolerance, Urbanism, and Region. American Sociological Review 51:287-294. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2095522
Applebome, Peter. 1996. Dixie Rising. New York: Times Books.
Baker, Tod A., Robert P. Steed, and Laurence W. Moreland, eds. 1983. Religion and Politics in the South. New York: Praeger.
Baron, L., and Murray A. Strauss. 1988. Cultural and Economic Sources of Homicide in the United States. Sociological Quarterly 29:371-390. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1988.tb01259.x
Black, Earl, and Merle Black. 1987. Politics and Society in the South. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Boles, Jacqueline, and Maxine P. Atkinson. 1986. Ladies: South by Northwest. Socio-logical Spectrum 6:63-81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02732173.1986.9981774
Cobb, James C. 1999. Redefining Southern Culture: Mind and Identity in the Modern South. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Cohen, D., B.F. Bowdle, R.E. Nisbett, N. Schwarz. 1996. Insult, Aggression, and the Southern Culture of Honor: An ?Experimental Ethnography.? Journal of Personal-ity and Social Psychology 70:945-960. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.5.945
Ellison, Christopher G. 1991. An Eye for an Eye? A Note on the Southern Subculture of Violence Thesis. Social Forces 69:1223-1239. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/69.4.1223 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2579310
Ellison, Christopher G., and Marc A. Music. 1993. Southern Intolerance: A Fundamental-ist Effect? Social Forces 72:379-398. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/72.2.379 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2579853
Feign, Douglas G. 1990. Dimensions of Southern Public Opinion on Prayer in Schools. In The Disappearing South?, ed. Robert P. Steed, Laurence W. Moreland, and Tod A. Baker. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Ferree, Myra Marx. 1974. A Woman for President? Changing Responses: 1958-1972. Public Opinion Quarterly 38:390-399. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/268175
Glenn, N. D., and J. L. Simmons. 1967. Are Regional Cultural Differences Diminishing? Public Opinion Quarterly 31:176-193. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/267512
Holloway, H., and T. Robinson. 1981. The Abiding South: White Attitudes and Regional-ism Reexamined. In Perspectives on the American South, ed. Merle Black and John Shelton Reed. New York: Gordon and Breach.
Huff-Corzine, Lin, Jay Corzine, and David C. Moore. 1991. Deadly Connections: Cul-ture, Poverty, and the Direction of Lethal Violence. Social Forces 69:715-732. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/69.3.715 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2579472
Hurlbert, Jeanne S. 1989. The Southern Region: A Test of the Hypothesis of Cultural Distinctiveness. Sociological Quarterly 30:245-266. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1989.tb01521.x
Kanagy, C.L., G. Firebaugh, and H.M. Nelsen. 1994. The Narrowing Regional Gap in Church Attendance in the United States. Rural Sociology 59:515-524. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1549-0831.1994.tb00545.x
Kellstedt, Lyman A. 1990. Evangelical Religion and Support for Social Issue Policies: An Examination of Regional Variation. In The Disappearing South?, ed. Robert P. Steed, Laurence W. Moreland, and Tod A. Baker. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala-bama Press.
Kuklinski, James H., Michael D. Cobb, and Martin Gilens. 1997. Racial Attitudes in the New South. The Journal of Politics 21:135-144. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2110452
Ladd, Everett Carll. 1998. States and Regions in the US: How Similar? Where Different? The Public Perspective 9:10-31.
Mayer, William G. 1992. The Changing American Mind. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
McCardell, John. 1979. The Idea of a Southern Nation. New York: W.W. Norton.
Messer, Steven F. 1983. Regional and Race Effects on the Urban Homicide Rate: The Subculture of Violence Revisited. American Journal of Sociology 88:997-1007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/227767
Middleton-Keirn, Susan. 1986. Magnolias and Microchips: Regional Subcultural Con-structions of Femininity. Sociological Spectrum 6:83-107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02732173.1986.9981775
Nisbett, Richard E., and Dov Cohen. 1996. Culture of Violence: The Psychology of Vio-lence in the South. Boulder: Westview.
Odum, Howard W. 1930. An American Epoch: Southern Portraiture in the National Pic-ture. New York: Henry Holt.
Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Putnam, Robert D. 1995. Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America. Political Science and Politics 28:664-683. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/420517 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1049096500058856
Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone. New York: Simon & Schuster. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/358916.361990
Redfield, H.V. 1880. Homicide North and South. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
Reed, John Shelton. 1974. The Enduring South: Subcultural Persistence in Mass Society. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Reed, John Shelton. 1982. One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Reed, John Shelton. 1983. Southerners: The Social Psychology of Sectionalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Reed, John Shelton. 1993. Surveying the South: Studies in Regional Sociology. Colum-bia: University of Missouri Press.
Rice, Tom W., and Carolyn R. Goldman. 1994. Another Look at the Subculture of Vio-lence Thesis: Who Murders Whom and under What Circumstances? Sociological Spectrum 14:371-384.
Rice, Tom W., and Diane L. Coates. 1995. Gender Role Attitudes in the Southern United States. Gender & Society 9:744-756. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/089124395009006007
Rice, Tom W., and Meredith L. Pepper. 1997. Region, Migration, and Attitudes in the United States. Social Science Quarterly 78:83-95.
Rice, Tom W., and Marshall Arnett. 2001. Civic Culture and Socioeconomic Develop-ment in the United States: A View from the States. Social Science Journal 38:39-51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0362-3319(00)00110-5
Rubin, Louis D., Jr. 1988. Changing, Enduring, Forever Still the South. Pp. 224-229 in The Prevailing South, ed. Dudley Clendinen. Atlanta, GA: Longstreet Press.
Sherif, M., and C. Sherif. 1953. Groups in Harmony and Tension. New York: Harper.
Schuman, Howard, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo, and Maria Krysan. 1997. Racial Attitudes in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Scott, Anne F. 1970. The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics: 1830-1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Steed, Robert P., Laurence W. Moreland, and Tod A. Baker. 1990. Searching for the Mind of the South in the Second Reconstruction. In The Disappearing South?, ed. Robert P. Steed, Laurence W. Moreland, and Tod A. Baker. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Tajfel, Henri. 1970. Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination. Scientific American (November):96-102. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1170-96
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with American Review of Politics agree to the following terms:
The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
Attribution: other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
Non-Commercial: the materials may not be used for commercial purposes;
Share Alike: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a pre-publication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
The Author represents and warrants that:
the Work is the Author’s original work;
the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
the Work has not previously been published;
the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
