Read in close sequence with each other, the essays gain force and precision, and taken together they provide a tight synthesis for any student or scholar who has not followed these issues during the past several decades. Accordingly, a lucid introduction surveys dominant and alternative interpretative paradigms, and sketches the debates among scholars over the merits of competing theoretical models. The book is a major and welcome contribution toward all of these ends. Appalachia in the Making's thirteen essays treat a wide range of topics, from Cherokee accommodation and persistence to deforestation and the transformation of agriculture in West Virginia. Challenging received interpretations, authors necessarily balance between bringing readers up to date on the state of scholarship and pushing toward fresh analysis.
Full notes accompany each essay, but there is, unfortunately, no composite list of references.
John Finger's opening essay on the Cherokees deftly rehearses the well-known dialectic of Cherokee accommodation and traditionalism. In a graceful pr cis of his earlier work, he explores the paradoxical uses of acculturation as a tool for maintaining tribal autonomy, the emergence of syncretic cultural forms, and the Cherokees' skill in exploiting the ambiguities of overlapping state and federal jurisdiction. Several of the essays challenge broadly shared and pertinacious myths about Appalachia. There were slaves in every Appalachian county before 1860, and a new influx of blacks came into cities after the Civil War. Several trenchant essays focus on land ownership in the region, and especially its relationship to class formation.