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I wonder if this could be connected to Colin Woodard's argument in his book American Nations (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670022969/ https://www.amazon.c
by smacktoward 7y ago
I wonder if this could be connected to Colin Woodard's argument in his book American Nations (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670022969/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670022969/) that there are eleven basic regional cultures in North America. According to his map (https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/55b273a2371d2211008b9793-960-654.jpg https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/55b273a2371d2211008b9...), North Carolina sits right at the intersection of three of them -- Tidewater in the north, Deep South in the south, and Greater Appalachia in the west. You'd expect to see lots of linguistic diversity in a place where different cultures are rubbing up against each other.
Interestingly, Woodard's book echoes an earlier work, Joel Garreau's 1981 The Nine Nations of North America (https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Nations-North-America/dp/0380578859 https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Nations-North-America/dp/0380578...). Garreau, however, put all of NC inside his "Dixie" nation, the analogue to Woodard's "Deep South." I wonder how much of this can be chalked up to differences in methodology, and how much to demographic shifts in the three decades separating Woodard's work from Garreau's.
- LyndsySimon 7y agoThanks for linking these - I'd seen them before, but hadn't caught the name of the book. I'll be picking it up :) For what it's worth, my own experience says that the area for "Greater Appalachia" is pretty much 100% correct. The borders aren't quite sharp, and interesting things definitely happen where two or more "nations" meet. I also know that West Virginia and middle Tennessee feel like "home" to me, and I'm from the Arkansas Ozarks.
- sudosteph 7y agoI haven't read either of them, but from a glance I definitely agree with Woodard separating Appalachia into it's own region. Western NC has a very distinct culture and history. I don't think there's been any point in the last 100 years where natives of that region wouldn't view people from Raleigh as "outsiders".