One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture.

Abstract

If it can be said that there are many Souths, wrote W. J. Cash in Mind of South, the fact remains that there is also one In informal, engaging essays brought together in One South, John Shelton Reed focuses on South's strong regional identity and on persistence, well into last decades if twentieth century, of Southern cultural distinctiveness. Reed argues that Southerners are similar in much same way that members if an ethnic group are similar. He discusses South's shared cultural values, ranging from serious examinations of Southern violence and regional identity to considerations of Southern humor, country music, and emergence of a new Southern middle class, epitomized by family of former president Jimmy Carter. Reed opens his volume with three essays dealing with discipline of sociology and its relation to South. first essay proposes ways that sociology can contribute to mainstream of regional studies; second traces history of sociological attention to South in our century; and this suggests that sociological way of thinking may be somewhat alien to well-bred Southerners. In next section, Reed looks at question of group identity, arguing in one essay, The Heart of Dixie, that South is best defined by locating Southerners, rather than by isolating a particular geographic region. Reed then turns his attention to minority and fringe groups within South, including, in Shalom, Y'All, Southern Jews. A final section looks at some of particular advantages and disadvantages of life in New South today. Reed's explorations into region's culture reveal that Southerners are identifiable as a group less by obvious background characteristics, education, occupation, rural or urban residence, than by shared attitudes toward family and community, religious beliefs and practices, and violence and private use of force: kind of things that customarily identify ethnic groups. In this way, One South demonstrates how history and heritage of Southernness have for now triumphed over disintegrating forces of geography and economics.