American Subcultural Continua as Exemplified by the Mormons and Texans*

Abstract

THE anthropological contributions to the study of American culture have been repeatedly criticized (from both inside and outside the discipline) for the tendency we have had (a) to make one or more community studies and then leap to unwarranted conclusions about American culture, or (b) to make speculative interpretations of the patterns of our culture as a whole based upon our experience of living in America, in much the same way that we derive knowledge of small nonliterate cultures from participant observation. It is frequently held that in both types of approach the anthropologists tend to ignore basic variations within the large mass society of the United States. Some of this criticism has been justified, much of it has been extreme. But as a result of this stream of criticism, anthropologists with research interests in American culture are by now thoroughly sensitized (if they were not before) to the problem of variation within our complex society. Many of the lines of variation within our culture are fairly clear-cut and have, in fact, long been recognized by anthropologists. Differentiation in terms of age, sex, region, ethnicity, social class, religion, rural or urban residence, and occupational type are of evident importance, and research by several disciplines is rapidly providing more complete data on these variations. It is the thesis of this paper that there is an additional type of variation in American culture which has not been given sufficient attention to date. I shall call this type a historically derived subcultural continuum. This unit has only partial relationships to geographical region, ethnic and religious affiliation, social class, rural-urban residence, occupational type, and the other kinds of differentiation that are well recognized-a partial relationship in the sense that, while all these factors may operate (in various combinations) to produce the unit, the most important facts about the unit are that it was derived from a chain of historical circumstances and that it tends to maintain special pat-