American Subcultures

The united states is a nation unlike any other for a variety of the reasons, the largest difference is the fact that the United States is actually many nations (not just states) united as one.

With this definition in mind, it is best to look at the USA as a series of subcultures or nations with a single overall government. Each state is largely independent compared to other countries which tend to have a more centralized power and throughout each state there exists various nations. The United Sates has more in common with the European Union (EU) then it does with any countries government.

The concept of place and region and large part of geography and viewing humanity as a whole. Place is simple enough as people make up a place and this helps to define a people and therefore a place. Region is more complicated but trying to apply region to an often more homogenous view of the USA is important to better under standing these "Americans".

Looking at the global north, the USA is quite prominent and in many ways (especially to Americans) viewed as a one people. This is attempt to show how divided and different the United States of America really is and show how the identity of simply "American" is as flawed as viewing someone as simply "European". America is not simply one culture. As I saw an anonymous source phrase it online "America is many countries wearing a trench coat pretending to just be one bigger country"

1. What are the different ways that the USA can be divided into different nations from a cultural perspective?
2. People will often categorize themselves separately from an outsiders perspective. how do people in various regions view themselves? Do states accurately represent these nations?
3. How much of the subculture and nation of various in regions is defined by the group that founded it, should this be the main determination of the USA nations?

Woodard, Colin. (2012) American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. 2nd ed., ‎ Penguin Publishing Group.

My first look into the topic of USA subcultures brought me the book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard. This proved to be an excellent starting point as it already had a general theory about not only what made a USA subculture but even had an example, 11 in fact. Alongside these 11 Nations was a break down explaining each one. This version also has a foreword talking about how much of the responses to covid 19 followed these regional trends.

This book is the main source of research I have talking about what defines these various regions. I learned there is an lot of things that makeup each of the listed cultures and to a degree some parts of the definitions are arbitrary with some counties being mostly guesses and assumptions (not surprising due to scope). Colin also gave an in-depth interview that I will be discussing along with a tour of these "American Nations"

Conzen, Michael P. (1993 ), Culture Regions, Homelands, and Ethnic Archipelagos in the United States: Methodological Considerations*, Journal of Cultural Geography, 13:2, 13-29.  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08873639309478386 

This is a research article I found talking about the different homeland ethnic groups in the united states. This article defines some regions differently then the source above and is in some ways more accurate, but it puts an even greater weight on ethnic group over local cultures causing a bit of an odd split in some places.

This was a great accredited source that gives some other views on the topic. This article is also being used a the big part of my counter argument to my other sources, showing that some places (like Texas for example) may be misclassified in the Woodard map. This article also has some focus on smaller ethnic groups not talked about in the other research.

   Mark Abadi , (10-5-2018)"Even the US government can't agree on how to divide up the states into regions" Businessinsider.Com,     https://www.businessinsider.com/regions-of-united-states-2018-5 

This is an article talking about the various ways the United States Government divides the United States into regions for administrative purposes. Some divisions shown include The Standard Federal Regions, The US Federal Court system, and the The Federal Reserve all of which are shown above. The article is largely humorous in nature showing how odd the way the nation is divided is.

In general this article is a great example of arbitrary most of the administrative division is in the United States and how this stretches well beyond states. Some of the regions shown here have location in common and nothing else. Also of note is the apparent age of some of these divisions as they seem outdated. For example New York having the same prominence as the entire west coast is does not make sense in the current day.

Gopnik, Adam , Robinson, Edgar Eugene , Wallace, Willard M. , Flaum, Thea K. , Lewis, Peirce F. , O'Neill, William L. , Zelinsky, Wilbur , Schmidt, Karl Patterson , Winther, Oscar O. , Handlin, Oscar , Pole, J.R. , Beeman, Richard R. , Oehser, Paul H. , Freidel, Frank , Link, Arthur S. , Pessen, Edward , Harris, James T. , Weisberger, Bernard A. , Naisbitt, John , Bradley, Harold Whitman , Unit, Economist Intelligence , Rollins, Reed C. , Hassler, Warren W. , Owen, Wilfred and Donald, David Herbert. "United States". Encyclopedia Britannica, 21 Aug. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States.

In short this publication has a full breakdown of the USA geographic region by geographic region. It goes into considerable depth regarding each geographic region and serves as a good overview of the USA and it's physical regions. It also provide a lot of United States history and how it relates to the different parts of the USA.

This article is a in many ways a catch all for all the more physical information I need about the different regions. This is also a major source for making the map (being a tour of the united states) feel much more alive. Also a good source for some context on the politics of some regions and how they should be defined from a academic perspective.

 Mark Abadi , (3-5-2018)"Why no one can agree where the South really is" Businessinsider.Com,   https://www.businessinsider.com/south-states-usa-2018-5  

This article is about how no one can seem to define exactly where the "South" is. Every government agency seems to define the South a little differently. People have even odder definitions from food to geography to confederate area politics, The entire classification of the south is almost so broad as to be meaningless.

This article actually represents a big problem I ran into with my research regarding how regions are identified. No matter how you identify a region it will never truly be fully inclusive and often times it is inaccurate to focus on either fully human factors or fully geographic ones. What defines a regions is somewhere in-between.

 U.S. Census Bureau. (2011, December). Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010. Census 2010 Briefs.   https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2011/dec/c2010br-02.html 

This is the in-depth overview of all racial and ethnic makeup in the united states. There is a lot of data here but in this case we are focusing specifically on country of origin. Futhermore we are looking only at europe

I like this map a lot as it shows Europe as something more akin to the United States. The states relation to European countries just how alike the United Sates and the European Union are. Note there are some odd relations due to low data and the nature of averages (Rhode Island).

 Andy Kiersz  and  Marguerite Ward , (2020) "This Map Shows How the US Really Has 11 Separate 'nations' with Entirely Different Cultures" Businessinsider.Com, www.businessinsider.com/the-11-nations-of-the-united-states-2015-7

This article consists of an interview with Colin Woodard about his book "American Nations". Colin goes in depth about what both inspired his book and the nations themselves. He also goes in-depth about the political ramifications of these nations.

This article gives a more approachable explanation and breakdown by region. I will be using the information in this article as important part of the overview of each region. This map is also a very good explanation of the concept and will be featured in the final story map. The descriptions and pictures for each nation from the article are used in the map tour above. The map was also based on the one provided in the article. The article does not include information on the Spanish Caribbean, choosing instead to focus on first Peoples in Canada so I wrote that section myself.

The main thing I've learned is that the cultures of the USA are vastly more complex then they are given credit for. There is really no fully correct way to split up the regions although I still think the method used for the map above is the most accurate. I've also learned a lot about specific areas in the USA and subcultures.

Researching this has given me a new and very complicated understanding of the concept of Region. going into this I was unaware of just how difficult it is to really define a region and even what a region really meant. I think I understand a lot better the more "art then science" approach that is necessary when it comes to talking about region

After all this, I can say that no country is a simple or homogenous as it seems and regions are as diverse and complicated as people are. The way regions and even borders are defined is largely arbitrary and I think a lot of people would get along a lot better if they stopped viewing themselves as simply "American". People are much more then simply the country they were born in.