Notes on Southern Culture Patterns

T HIS is a preliminary notation on a succession of field studies in the modern culture of the South, begun in 1946, and organized as a series of ethnological field investigations of five "typical" exhibits of Southern living. Each community was chosen, in the light of previous social science research concerning the South, as being representative of a "subculture." Our objective was to determine if possible, not only the "general cultural framework" of the South, but also to attain some precision as regards the constituent subcultures or subregional variations of culture. Field parties were sent to the communities in question and maintained there for from nine months to a year. Their job in each case was to cover the whole culture in the usual manner of social anthropology, using techniques of participant observation, interview, questionnaire, etc. The materials gathered are now in course of publication as a series of monographs. In this article we propose merely to set out a tabulation of patterns showing some of the "content" of these several subcultures. First, a few words about the materials. The five communities taken as representatives of their respective Southern subcultures were: (1) A plantation community in the Black Belt of Alabama (labelled "Plantation" in accompanying table); (2) A Piedmont community in South Carolina: three different studies were made here-(a) upper class "old aristocracy" ("Piedmont Town"), (b) white cotton textile mill workers ("Piedmont Mill"), (c) the Negro neighborhoods of the community ("Piedmont Negro"); (3) A Piney Woods community in southern Alabama ("Pinebelt"); (4) A mountain community in western North Carolina ("Mountains"); (5) A fishing community on the coast of North Carolina ("Coastal"). It is not supposed that these five communities exhaust all the culture patterns of the South, but on the basis of previous work in social science and the humanities in this region, we believe that they are fairly typical exhibits of five subcultural configurations. The field parties kept notes on 4 x 6-inch sheets of paper which were filed according to the principal categories of the Yale Outline of Cultural Materials, plus certain other categories which developed out of the field work itself. We have gone through the notes and compiled the outstanding patterns and complexes as revealed in this material, which is herewith offered in preliminary form as a check list which may be of value to others working in this field. The chiefs of field parties were all advanced graduate students in social anthropology and sociology. They are as follows: Plantation, Morton Rubin; Piedmont Town, Ralph C. Patrick, Jr.; Piedmont Negro, Hylan Lewis; Piedmont Mill, John Kenneth Morland; Pinebelt, Charles Peavy; Mountains, Vladimir Hartman. John Gillin, who directed the total study, also served as chief of field party for the study of the Coastal community. In presenting the following tabulation, several points must be underlined. First, this is not an analysis of North American culture in general, and, in fact, no such total study of the civilization of the United States has yet been made. In the absence of such data it is impossible to say what is "distinctively Southern" with any degree of finality. Second, however, we have tried to pick out and tabulate herewith those traits which seem, on the basis of general knowledge, to be especially characteristic of the South, or which are given special emphasis there. This means that the present tabulation is not complete, after the manner of an encyclopedic listing of all traits encountered. Many traits which seem to be common to most of North American culture are not included in the present table. Obvious examples may be thought of in technology, the use of money, general financial and credit systems, much content of formal education, general patterns of dress, and the like. Comments from readers who have a special knowledge of Southern culture are invited. When these cautions are noted, it will be seen, however, that the present material indicates a considerable degree of difference between certain of the subcultures so far as content is concerned. Mountains and Coastal Fringe are quite unlike each other in many respects and in turn differ from the Plantation, the Piedmont and the Piney Woods subcultures. In other words. when viewed in terms of content, the area of the South is not culturally homogeneous. And this is as we should expect,