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The American Nations regions across North America
- sampton 1y agoThose left coast elites.
- wagwang 1y agoWhys PEI under new france lol, this map feels like engagement bait.
- tokai 1y agoIt seems so. Greenland as First Nation is straight up chauvinism.
- Apocryphon 1y agoGreenland is mostly populated by Inuits
- tokai 1y agoPrecisely «First Nations (French: Premières Nations) is a term used to identify Indigenous peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis.» If you can make space for New Netherland, it doesn't make any sense to collapse all northern native cultures together, when they are just as or even more diverse than the US east cost.
- cgh 1y agoWas just about to type this comment. Allegedly, the guy who came up with the term “First Nations” was from a group (Athabaskan? I don’t remember) who were historically at war with the Inuit, so he left them out. Pretty ridiculous. I’m pretty sure everyone involved would be annoyed at getting grouped together into the same “nation”.
- ojbyrne 1y agoLook again, it's under Yankeedom. Anticosti and the Magdelenes are nearby and under New France.
- wagwang 1y agoOh yea ur right.
- throaway1988 1y ago[dead]
- rayiner 1y agoA better way to understand the cultural differences in the U.S. https://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-cultural/dp/0195069056 https://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-cultura...
- righthand 1y agoNon-Amazon link for Albion’s Seed: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/01bed638-8991-4afe-a530-07e60f368062 https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/01bed638-8991-4afe-a530-...
- rayiner 1y agoThanks. It’s not an affiliate link it’s just the first one that popped up.
- righthand 1y agoNo worries, I don’t look down on people for posting links I disagree with :P. Instead I want to demonstrate there are other sources.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoI'd love to support non-amazon book sellers, but it's very hard when the paperback from Amazon is $19 and the paperback from two of the sellers listed in your link are $40 and $47.
- burntsushi 1y agoAND I would love to use something other than goodreads for book reviews, but storygraph doesn't let you sort or filter reviews. And you can't even see the date that the review was published. Oof.
- dublinben 1y agoHere's a non-Amazon metasearch site for independent book sellers. There's copies starting as low as $11. https://www.alibris.com/booksearch?mtype=B&keyword=Albion%27s+Seed%3A+Four+British+Folkways+in+America+&hs.x=0&hs.y=0 https://www.alibris.com/booksearch?mtype=B&keyword=Albion%27...
- righthand 1y agoThe “Far West” (terrible name) seems to be just a lazy grouping of most of the area west of the Mississippi. Definitely has a very costal biased view of the world.
- bitwize 1y agoI'm reminded of the children's book Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport, the first half of which is some kid's stereotypes of what life is like "Out West" (including the title). Then his family completes the move "Out West", and finds that things are quite a bit different from how he expects. Marrying a woman from Louisiana has been similarly instructive to me as regards "the South".
- Apocryphon 1y agoSame as it ever was. The "Empty Quarter" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_Amer...
- Lammy 1y agoReally weird to not list Deseret as its own thing honestly (all of Utah, Colorado west of the Divide, Idaho up to Rexburg, most of Nevada that isn't Tahoe/Reno/Vegas)
- madcaptenor 1y agoI've seen this called the "Mormon corridor" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_corridor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_corridor) but Deseret is a catchier name. Sometimes that includes Vegas, though - Vegas is historically Mormon.
- Lammy 1y agoGOOD point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Las_Vegas_Mormon_Fort_State_Historic_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Las_Vegas_Mormon_Fort_Stat...
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
- Mistletoe 1y agoI knew there was a reason I loved New Orleans. I love to go there and imagine what America could have been with French food, culture, and taste, instead of what actually happened. British food, no culture, no taste, Crocs and pajama pants at McDonald's.
- nkozyra 1y agoThere are, uh, plenty of crocs and pajama pants at the many New Orleans McDonald's locations. I also don't think the US ended up absorbing much British cuisine, certainly native food(s) and immigrant waves have contributed much more than England.
- Mistletoe 1y agoSounds like American culture is leaking back across the waves to France.
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- snickerbockers 1y agoCulinary traditions are far more recent than Europeans pretend they are. Anything with corn, potatoes or tomatoes is necessarily less than 500 years old.
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- throaway1988 1y ago[dead]
- chasing 1y agoAnyone who thinks Austin is more culturally aligned with Indianapolis than San Antonio is a maniac.
- dehrmann 1y agoSame for Minneapolis, Boston, and Des Moines.
- PaulHoule 1y agoI noticed that recent research showed that South Dakota has a high level of dark triad characteristics: https://www.newsweek.com/psychology-psychopaths-dark-triad-map-usa-states-2086652 https://www.newsweek.com/psychology-psychopaths-dark-triad-m... and my first though is "What's different about South Dakota and North Dakota" and got told by a friend who's a geography nerd that much of South Dakota is really weird and isolated and different from other states.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- righthand 1y agoAgreed. What the western parts of this map avoids is that the cultures are a mix of mostly descendent European cultures (Norwegian, Irish, German, etc.) and Hispanic cultures especially in the south differs strongly once you go north of Colorado.
- Lammy 1y agobrb, showing Sureños a map that calls them El Norte
- thecosas 1y agoGot me with this one.
- mooreds 1y agoThis reminds me of an old SF book, Ecotopia, where the west coast of the USA secedes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotopia Wow, hadn't thought about that book in years (the action takes place in 1999!).
- aarestad 1y agonotable nitpick: calling DC a “federal entity” is mixing up the concepts of nation and state. (It’s also major erasure of the culture of people - mostly Black - who actually live there!)
- stryan 1y agoThe whole section around DC is..questionable. PG, Fairfax, and Loudoun counties are all in the Tidewater group that extends down to the NC triangle. Meanwhile Montgomery County, which is right over the Potomoc from Fairfax/Loudoun, is in a separate group that's shared with Philadelphia and Ohio? MoCo, Fairfax, and Loudoun are all incredibly similar both culturally and economically (i.e. wealthy DC suburbanites) and should either all be in the Tidewater category or in some separate "Capital Area" nation.
- BetaDeltaAlpha 1y agoFederal entity should extend to the Rappahanock River
- stryan 1y agoI'm not sure I'd extend it that far, but personally I could see at least to Woodbridge. Another comment mentions this is based at least partially off original settlement/immigration patterns so I'm willing to be more leniant now, but at the very least inside the Beltway should be Federal entity/Capital area.
- strict9 1y agoAm I reading this correctly in that Chicago is the only section with dashes indicating a blend of regions? Seems accurate but interesting this is the only area with crossover.
- HankStallone 1y agoI'd imagine all the borders are fuzzy, but maybe that's the only spot where a broad enough area was that way to note it. I live pretty much on the border between two regions on the map, and you can definitely see a difference just driving one county north or south. But of course you also see exceptions on both sides, in both individual homes or small towns that seem more suited for the other side of the border.
- mixdup 1y agoYeah, this weirdly splits the Atlanta metro area in half between two regions based on the counties, and while north Atlanta and south Atlanta metro have decidedly differing cultures (along mostly but not entirely racial lines) the split is completely arbitrary on county lines with Fulton County, GA jutting upwards as if the 10 miles across that county don't represent anything on either side of it
- madcaptenor 1y agoFulton County is a weird shape for historical reasons - it absorbed the counties to its north and south during the Depression - and historically the northern part of Fulton County (everything north of the Chattahoochee River) was Milton County. If Milton County still existed it would probably end up in Woodard's "Greater Appalachia" over "Deep South". We can ignore current settlement patterns because Woodard does. In a recent paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S003306202500043X?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00330...) he does explain the methodology, although I don't have access - but from the snippets I can see it appears that he's essentially trying to work out who the first European settlers in each area were. So it doesn't matter that north Fulton County is full of carpetbaggers from up North and immigrants. (I write this as I sit in an office in north Fulton County; I am a carpetbagger from up North and many of my co-workers are immigrants.) It makes sense for the split to be along county lines just because a lot of data will be available at the county level, but it occasionally produces absurd results. I occasionally have mocked these splits as "I drive to Appalachia for ramen", because I used to live in DeKalb County about a mile from the DeKalb-Gwinnett county line - according to Woodard's map, DeKalb is "Deep South" and Gwinnett is "Appalachia" - and I liked a ramen place just over the county line. (Since then both I and the ramen place have moved.)
- roughly 1y agoSome additional context: Colin Woodard wrote American Nations (https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-nations-a-history-of-the-eleven-rival-regional-cultures-of-north-america-colin-woodard/d22b78d494e56a55 https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-nations-a-history-of-t...) a bit over a decade ago, which goes into much more detail on these groupings. By and large, he’s drawing lines by immigration patterns - which areas were originally settled by which peoples, and how did that affect the cultures of those regions. It’s an interesting book and an interesting lens - you can nitpick on the sub-district level, but I think the overall thesis has some explanatory power.
- snapetom 1y agoSecond American Nations. I take issue with, in parts of it he has an elitist, typical Yankee patronizing tone against the South, but overall it’s well done work. As far as I know, it is the most comprehensive work in highlighting the diversity in culture and history of the US, and why we appear to be so divisive. If you read news and opinion articles from the early 1900’s you’ll find that many authors are saying the same thing as people say today. In context of American Nations, the answer is “we’ve always been like that.”
- catlover76 1y ago> I take issue with, in parts of it he has an elitist, typical Yankee patronizing tone against the South, but overall it’s well done work I'm not sure why anyone should expect the South to escape criticism for defining itself on racialized chattel slavery; fighting a war largely to preserve that system; having Jim Crow, lynching, etc.; continuing into the modern day to wish to rename things in favor of treasonous Confederates; being literal economic deadweight that benefits from an influx of tax dollars from Blue states (Yankee states, and "Left Coast", in this nations model) via the Federal government, even while voting against "s0cIALism" and constantly denigrating Yankee and Left Coast cities and states.
- esseph 1y agoRenaming things in favor of Confederates is actually being pushed from the guy from NY, to be fair.
- lot3oo 1y agoThe red part of Canada should be "Loyalists" - british decendents + various elite / slave owners that moved north after American independance. Very much not the same as US "midlands" in my opinion.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThe criteria is dominant ancestry source. Loyalists generally came from the red area and dark green areas of the US, but that'd be confusing recursion if Canadian regions were defined as where in the US people came from vs US regions being defined by where in Europe they came from.
- 827a 1y agoTbh, I can't speak to a lot of the regions on here, but the grouping of "Greater Appalachia" is so wild. The idea that mid-Indiana, west-Texas, and eastern Tennessee have anything in common, from a cultural, immigration, quality of life, anything perspective, has to have been an idea proposed by someone who has only read books about those regions.
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- uncletaco 1y agoI can see the similarities between Amarillo and Knoxville. Every city on I-40 feels similar to me until Albuquerque, having spent time in a number of Tennessee cities and having to visit wife's hometown in Texas. Low key writing this has made me realize how much of my life has just been migrating up and down I-40.
- retlehs 1y agoWhat shared traits do you see between Amarillo and Knoxville? Having visited both, Amarillo is distinctly High Plains/Western while Knoxville is Appalachian. Different cultures, geography, everything.
- uncletaco 1y agoFamily goes to a non-denominational evangelical church in Knoxville, family goes to a non-denominational evangelical church in Amarillo. Both would probably be the same denomination but its unpopular to claim a denomination these days. After church its dinner that's a meat + 2 vegetables and cornbread. There's a big ford in each driveway that hasn't hauled more than dogs and kids since the day it came home. Maybe its just my biases but I just did not have any culture shock outside of how long it takes to drive anywhere out west.
- retlehs 1y ago> There's a big ford in each driveway that hasn't hauled more than dogs and kids since the day it came home I can't speak on Knoxville because I've only spent a day there, but I've spent a good bit of time around Amarillo mostly from driving between CO and TX over a hundred times, although not really in the suburbs. Saw a lot of beat up trucks that looked like they were owned by blue collar folks and used for truck things. But of course there's also plenty of brodozers, which I'm assuming are also fairly common in Knoxville.
- _9ptr 1y ago> "El Norte" > All the way in the south
- poisonarena 1y ago..north of mexico
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- stackedinserter 1y agoLooks like one of these maps where people visit Toronto and paint the whole country as "visited".
- panarchy 1y ago"There's a Canada outside of Toronto?" - Torontonians (all in good jest)
- madcaptenor 1y agoOn a population basis, though, not really - most Canadians live near the border, in one of the various regions that span the border on this map.
- anentropic 1y agoInteresting map, but it doesn't seem to be explained at all? (Except, I guess, in the book?)
- euroderf 1y agoThe Tri-State area (NY-NJ-Conn.) as New Netherland, I like it. It isn't NYS and it isn't south Jersey. I'd say create it tomorrow in a tri-state compact.
- giardini 1y agoSPAM ALERT! Colin Woodard's new book will be published in a few days (November 4, 2025). Be sure to buy a copy!8-))
- abeppu 1y agoDid I miss it or is there no methodology description justifying how they reached this? If there was some good standard survey on cultural views, you could compare geo regions on the summary stats of their responses, and cluster them. But you'd need a _huge_ number of responses to get good county-level data. And then I think we'd expect to see lots of county-to-county differences reflecting the urban-rural contours, immigration differences tied to industry, etc, rather than these big, uninterrupted regions. E.g. I would think King County, WA and Alameda County, CA have a lot more in common with each other than either does with Del Norte County, CA.
- acegopher 1y agoNo, it's not in the text at the original link, however, yes, there is a link to the full article in the blurb with the how: https://www.nationhoodlab.org/the-american-nations-regions-across-north-america/ https://www.nationhoodlab.org/the-american-nations-regions-a...
- abeppu 1y agoNo, I saw that page and it doesn't say anything meaningful about how they arrived at this. It says _that_ they expanded the model, and various notes about resolution, they use to communicate the labeling they arrived at -- but nothing meaningful about the input data used, any statistical methodology, etc. > my Motivf colleagues and I refined the ad hoc models and produced what you might call the “official” American Nations Model spreadsheets for the United States, mapping the regional cultures at county-level resolution. > This summer, we’ve expanded the analytical model to the rest of North America covered in American Nations.
- jghn 1y agoThere's an entire book from the author on this topic [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures/dp/0143122029 https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cul...
- madcaptenor 1y ago
- jmclnx 1y agoSite down, from the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20250922163253/https://colinwoodard.com/new-map-the-american-nations-regions-across-north-america/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250922163253/https://colinwood...
- davidw 1y agoThese are always kind of fun to contemplate - in part because everyone immediately jumps in with ways that they are wrong. For instance where I live in Deschutes County, Oregon... physically, yeah, we are in that 'far west' region, but have a lot of cultural and economic ties to Oregon and even California west of the mountains.
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoAny cultural grouping that claims Humboldt and Tahoe aren't more closely related to each other than either are to the central valley is quite wrong. California pretty cleanly splits into 4 cultural regions: SoCal, The Bay, The Central Valley, and the Mountain Folk. If you posterize enough to get to a map this course, then you'd have "The Left Coast" running down the Sierras, with parts of Klamath and Cascade Ranges (notably excepting the Shasta corner, which is more closely related to the Klan country side of Oregon). This can be somewhat justified, if one argues that the difference between the cultural ideas of the Bay Area are just urban versions of those that occupy the mountains (oddly harmonious mix of hippies and libertarians vs. the Bay's coexistence of corporate libertarians and progressives).
- chasing 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_Stat... This seems like a much saner breakdown of the US into mega-regions. Feels much more intuitive and doesn't involve wacky stuff like grouping Philadelphia; the Oklahoma panhandle; and Mooseknuckle, Ontario together.
- tracerbulletx 1y agoThere's obviously never going to be one right answer to any kind of spatial taxonomy of cultures, but if the methodology is thoughtful and makes you think about the shared or differing cultural properties, it can be interesting.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- alephnerd 1y agoThe fact that German and Scandinavian heavy Minnesota and Wisconsin are Yankeedom and much more culturally aligned with Massachusetts instead of much of the Dakotas rubs me the wrong way. And the "Far West" is an absolute cop-out, and calling Central Texas culturally "central Appalachia" is completely ridiculous.
- badc0ffee 1y agoThis is silly. Louisiana and Quebec have so little in common.
- z3ugma 1y agoI really wish that authors of such projects would use a population-weighted cartogram instead of a land-area map. Some of the most-populous and culturally relevant "nations" would jump out on such a map instead of being tiny. My favorite mapbuilder of this sort is using https://pitchinteractiveinc.github.io/tilegrams/ https://pitchinteractiveinc.github.io/tilegrams/
- esseph 1y agoThis is not correct at all for Alaska. It is very much: Left Coast, First Nation, Texas, in that order. At least for other places in the US I've been, this map seems to hold up! Curious what others think of it.
- chkaloon 1y agoI would extend Yankeedom to the Mat-Su Valley of Alaska. Wisconsin, Minnesota colonists in the 1930s and more recent western Michigan transplants.