The boundaries of class in preindustrial Appalachia

Abstract

This article recovers social bases of preindustrial Appalachian regional development during the nineteenth century and specifically middle class formation within the predominantly subsistence economy. Because of Appalachia's social and economic isolation from the emergent US capitalist economy, the preindustrial era is traditionally conceived in terms of arrested development. Relatedly, the absence of commercialization is taken to imply stunted social differentiation. This article attempts to move beyond notions of arrested development by explicating the particular dynamics of localized subsistence social reproduction. Three southeast Kentucky counties are case studies. A descriptive model defines social relations governing differentiation within Southeast Kentucky and between the mountains and the larger political economy. Both internal and external relations were constitutive of the region's development path. Evidence on two common indicators of social differentiation, property ownership and occupational stratification, manifest certain patterns and provide a tentative roll call of local elite membership, but do not represent a class map from which to read historical process. The extended historical geographical analysis shows how property ownership and middle class professional occupation came to intersect socially and geographically within certain family lineages and county seat towns. Lineages of the middle class are traced to settlement, land acquisition and county political practice. Middle class formation was supported by the twin pillars of longevity and kinship and was shored up by Kentucky's internal political geography.