Hey, it’s been a while! Now that I’ve defended my dissertation and gotten through most of this year’s job applications, I figured I’d dip my toes back into blogging with some book “reviews.” (Like Kino–in fact, inspired by Kino–I listen to a lot of audiobooks when I’m not working, so I “read” a lot.) Note that, for most of these, I am not an expert, so my thoughts should be taken with (at least!) a few grains of salt.
Today’s post is about Colin Woodard’s American Nations and, more generally, the benefits of more subtle distinctions among populations in the U.S. To be extraordinarily brief, Woodard’s thesis is this: the machinations of American politics are better understood not as two nations–the North vs. South distinction inherited from the early 20th century historiography of the Civil War–but rather as many nations, according as their founding cultures (read: foundational w.r.t. the today-dominant culture) play an outsized role in structuring the politics of the region. Here is a map Woodard provides, which gives you a feel for how he draws the lines:
To be sure, not only can these particular lines be contested, but the general power of this many-nations strategy–as opposed to, say, the fashionable distinction between urban and rural areas that runs through “real” (a nod to Kino’s work) psychological differences between the populations–can (and has) been questioned. Nevertheless, I think Woodard’s account provides some value in its power to organize and predict political goings-on. At the very least, I have found it helpful.
On a personal level, I had always found it difficult to place my pre-California experiences into the tidier political distinctions. (Note that I am painting with a broad brush here, I am not an ethnographer, and that my experiences were largely of White America; Ohio is still far more segregated than people seem to realize.) I grew up in Ohio, spending significant time in each major “zone,” and I also spent a lot of time in Michigan and Kentucky. There were a few phenomena that didn’t quite fit with the more standard separations between cultures–North vs. South, or urban vs. rural. A few examples. In rural Northeastern Ohio (say, broader Lordstown area), politics was relatively commonly discussed, and government regulation and a strong social safety net were generally palatable. However, these same folks were often violently anti-Black. This latter element seemed to tail off some as you went north or into the major metro areas of the Western Reserve. In the Columbus suburbs and exburbs (the upper-middle-class-or-lower northern and western ones especially), politics was not something you discussed explicitly, and whenever it did come up, you were morally obligated to preface your remarks by saying “now I’m not a Republican nor a Democrat, but…” before launching into what was typically an anti-federalist rant. In the Appalachian and southern counties, you would see Confederate and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags regularly, and the politics was decidedly anti-government (except, of course, for a veneration of the military). In the broader “Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches” area, you had a weird mix that I still haven’t made much sense of: anti-government sentiments and anti-Blackness, yes, but also communitarianism, professed desires for non-partisan governance, and other one-off features.
These experiences are easier to square with an account like Woodard’s. In Northeastern Ohio, I was living in Yankeedom and, in more rural areas, it was dosed with some Greater Appalachia. In the Columbus area, it was the Midlands. In the Appalachian counties it was, well, Greater Appalachia. In Southeastern Ohio, you had a weird mix of Midlanders, some Greater Appalachians, and some sprinkled-in Yankees. Does this explain everything? Of course not! Are these cultural lines drawn too sharply? Probably! Yet, it has helped me organize my experiences a bit better, and for not a few communities I grew up in, I think the cultures Woodard articulates capture something “real” at their core.
But aside from this personal value, I think it can help us understand the re-sorting that we’re seeing in American politics. In particular, if we assume that the nations Woodard delineates are roughly correct, then we might use data on voter and representative behavior, or even opinion-polling data, as a way of gleaning power-alignments shifts among the various nations. Here we’d be assuming that the struggle for power is primarily Yankeedom and the Left Coast versus the Deep South, with the others being “swing” nations. On this reading, for instance, we would say that El Norte and Tidewater have increasingly thrown their lot in with Yankeedom and the Left Coast in the recent past. (I would guess that this is at least slightly better at accounting for the complexity of, e.g., the Latinx vote than the “demographics is destiny” myth that was hopefully killed off for good in 2020. This is because the nations model can better account for generational changes that seem to occur for Latinx immigrant voters, whereby third-and-on generation immigrants are, by party preference, not readily distinguishable from similar White voters. I think I got this last bit from Ian Haney López, but I can’t find a reference at the moment…Please share a source, if you have one, or correct me in the comments if I’ve gotten this wrong!!!) The power of the nations-talk is that it can then hook up with more qualitative or otherwise targeted analyses.
One crude and noisy thing we might consider is how individual representatives voted on the objection by Rep. Gosar and Sen. Ted Cruz to Arizona’s slate of electors (the most perspicuous presentation of this data I’m aware of is here). Here, a ‘Yea’ vote is a vote to exclude the state’s Electoral College votes from the count to determine the President. (For what it’s worth, Rep. Steve Chabot of the 1st District voted ‘Yea’ and Rep. David Joyce of the 14th did not vote w.r.t. Pennsylvania, which was after the insurrection. I have chosen Arizona on the assumption that the pre-insurrection vote is a cleaner representation of their assessment of the local politics.) If you lay out Republicans on a map of Ohio, for instance, the result isn’t so surprising:
(Before you ask: yes, I did this in MS Paint.)
While the gerrymandered districts make it a bit more difficult to see what’s going on here–I’m looking at you, 4th District–I don’t think it’s wild to see here that representatives of the Appalachian districts voted to sustain the objection, while those for the Yankee and Midlands districts did not. (Note that I am complicating the boundaries Woodard draws a little bit by lumping parts of the 4th, 7th, and 8th District into Greater Appalachia while excluding substantial parts of the 1st, 2nd, 10th, and 15th.) We might reasonably surmise, then, that these votes are a reflection of how easily insurrection and Trump’s general Trumpiness could be accommodated by the nation’s cultures, and we could thus dive into closer examinations of those cultures to gain a better appreciation for the dynamics at play. To note only one consequence, which totally isn’t something I fret about near-constantly (/s): this could better-tailor how you engage with friends and family entrenched in those cultures without having to drill all the way down to a nearly-individual level of tailoring.
Just to say again: I am not an expert here, so not only should these musing be taken lightly, but I am confident that anything correct in them has already been realized by folks who do know what they’re talking about. Nonetheless, this hopefully gives a taste for the sort of changes to how I think about American politics engendered by Woodard’s American Nations. I enjoyed the book, and I recommend it.
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