Culture

In the broadest sense, includes the practices, objects, beliefs, and values that constitute a way of life for rural people. Culture shapes what people in rural places do, think, feel, and believe. Culture also constrains the options of rural people by inhibiting alternative ways of doing, thinking, or feeling. This overview of American rural culture describes some important cultural variables: settlement patterns, architecture, speechways, foodways, community life and rituals. Regional diversity of rural cultural traits is emphasized.

Introduction

To a traveler, rural communities today are culturally indistinguishable from the suburban communities that ring major cities. In both regions, the visitor finds the same fast-food restaurants, chain stores, gas stations, motels and supermarkets, and similar new housing subdivisions. Disk-jockey patter on rural radio stations is the identical packaged routine heard on the city stations, excepting the noon commodity market reports and schedules of local events. One sees pick-up trucks more frequently on the rural roads, however, and each driver waves, touches a cap or otherwise acknowledges a meeting, unlike the rather anonymous interactions that take place among people in urban or suburban America. Distinctive family, property, and community practices are recognized by rural Americans as unique to their locale and evidence of their ethnic heritage.

Rather than a single culture rural America incorporates a diversity of cultures. Cultural variety emerged as a consequence of who settled in a place, during what historic period, and which unique social and physical environmental factors were encountered in the process. After the original settlement various conjunctions of people, setting, and time occurred sequentially in a specific locale. A distinctive local culture emerged as a result of each conjunction leaving traces in local assumptions about proper behavior. Cultural practices that today are associated with a particular region originated among agrarian settlements spatially dispersed in remote locations. As people left rural places and migrated to nearby cities they carried rural customs for preparing regional foods, for using regional materials domestically, and methods of adapting to regional climates and seasons. Thus, distinctive regional ways of life, patterns of kinship, cuisine, housing, rituals, governance, and language have roots in the cultural practices of indigenous and subsequent rural populations.

Ethnic Origin and Regional Cultural Distinctions

Contemporary rural cultures are best understood by starting with the past. The Northeast, South, Midwest, Plains, Southwest and West were each peopled uniquely, and particular ethnic groups rose to dominance. American Indians, the original rural inhabitants, accounted for the countryside encountered by initial settlers. Whether the aboriginal populations lived in permanent settlements, as along the Mississippi or in the Southeast, or were nomads, as in the High Plains, speeded or slowed the inexorable spread of immigrants. European Americans’ adaptation to the local ecology involved adoption of many American Indian cultural traits: names for places and species, indigenous foods, native medicinal plants, crops, transportation methods, and farming practices.

Diverse groups settled and interacted with the indigenous American Indians and the local ecology to produce distinctive regional rural cultures. From the early seventeenth until the mid-eighteenth century four different waves of English-speaking settlers to the Atlantic coast brought ways of life that shaped distinctive regional cultures: Puritans from eastern England in Massachusetts; Royalist elite and indentured servants from southern England in Virginia; a largely Quaker movement from the North English and Welsh Midlands in the Delaware Valley; and from the border areas of north Britain and northern Ireland in the Appalachian highlands. Migrants fanned out from these settlement cores to the south and west. Racial minorities were used early in the South and far West to develop the local economy (African Americans as slaves or Chinese and Japanese as low-paid laborers) when labor was in short supply. In just 50 years during the mid-nineteenth century, the Midwest was settled through one of the most extraordinary transfers of land and people the world has known. While the settlers were White and had Christianity, farming, and Northern and Western European peasant backgrounds in common, their cultural variety led to the Midwest labeled an ethnic mosaic. German and Czech migration to Texas produced distinctive settlements in the central Hill Country and the new music form Tejano, a blend of the Polka and Mariachi and other traditional Mexican styles and dependent on the accordion. As a result of the Mexican- American war, Mexicans living in what is now the Southwest were granted citizenship. Their cultures interacted with those of Pueblos and other tribes to form a unique Southwest culture. In the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century rural areas across the nation became increasingly diversified by Hispanics and Eastern Europeans and others associated with industrial production and processing in the dairy, chicken, beef and pork commodities.

Settlement Patterns and Architecture

Community formation began when a rural region constituted the nation’s frontier, moving from east to west. Transportation difficulties, geographic dispersion related to terrain or government mandates, as for example the Midwestern checkerboard settlement pattern, contributed to early rural communities maintaining a distinctive ethnic identity. In the northeast farmers traveled out to their land from villages. Town meetings became the basis of local government. Midwestern homesteaders lived on widely dispersed farms to assure their land-claim. Midwestern village-plans today reveal origins as central market places. The governance of Midwestern towns shows an historic dependence on volunteers for functions such as fire-fighting. In the interior plains, railroad companies platted trade-center towns to capture population and freight, but now many are ghost towns. Other settlement patterns, such as the plantations of the south and the great farms of the west and southwest, were based on an agricultural system controlled by landed families that employed large numbers of enslaved or disenfranchised minorities as laborers. County-level government emerged, controlled by the elite. A singular settlement pattern the French longfarm along the Mississippi, extending perpendicularly, rather than parallel to the river. The form is exceedingly democratic by providing river frontage to all, unlike river settlements elsewhere.

Enduring indicators of rural culture are built structures, called vernacular architecture. From the fieldstone barns, fences, and farmhouses of the mid-Atlantic and central Texas regions to the sod, woodenframe or brick houses and barns of the Midwest, rural peoples adapted building traits from their cultures of origin to native materials. For example, the shotgun house is a modest, popular domestic structure common along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Although built by both blacks and whites shotgun houses originated in the West Indies from a meshing of Caribbean Indian and African house forms with French structural components. Thus, the African-American shotgun house emerged from mixing ingredients from multiple cultures. Similarly, the balloon farmhouse is unique to the rural Midwest. The small town main street with imposing wooden facades hiding rather modest buildings was widely reproduced in American movies of the Western frontier. These connecting businesses that parallel a main road with perpendicular side streets on each side containing residences are common in the Midwest and West. Newer rural subdivisions do not follow the rectangular grid (derived from surveying of the Northwest ordinance), but use the cul de sac characteristic of suburban America to maximize privacy or the ambience of nature—both core ideals for suburbanization populations.

Community Ways

Rural and small town people possess a distinctive conception of place. Americans living in these places consistently believe that their small communities provide a supportive, quiet, neighborly, friendly, family-oriented, slow-paced, relatively egalitarian, and safe place to live. Rural peoples believe they share communities that provide an incomparable way of life that provide them control over their lives.

Everyone “knows everyone else” in small towns. Life there revolves around a core of social institutions: family, community, school, and church. Kin, neighbors, and friends meet one another at work, at church, on Main Street, at school, or at leisure activities such as high school basketball games. Daily life, thus, takes place among a cast of familiars whose social networks are overlapping rather than segregated. Children are considered to belong to the whole community. If a child misbehaves a neighbor will have notified a parent with the news before he or she reaches home. High school sporting events are occasions when the entire community turns out. Everyone is related to or knows someone on the team, in the band, or on the cheerleading squad. In addition to traditional football and basketball games, girls’ volleyball and basketball now draw enthusiastic community support.

Rural traditions of cooperation, watchfulness, selfsufficiency, and volunteerism were originally forged on the frontier to sustain relatively isolated families, farms and communities. Today rural men and women maintain self-sufficiency. They learn to fix equipment, have a familiarity with guns, use home remedies, and produce crafts to avoid travel or purchasing such services. Rural self-sufficiency carries over to valuing cooperative endeavors whether to build the school, to repair the church roof, or to deal with a village’s economic decline. Similarly, rural communities support their own when natural or domestic crises strike. If a farmer dies before harvesting his fields, a child contracts leukemia and the family cannot pay its bills, or a home burns down, communities rally to raise funds or help families.

Communal traditions endure despite the diminished economic dominance of agriculture and the population changes that are transforming rural society with suburbanization. Whether reduced in size by outmigration or enlarged by newcomers, rural community mobilization occurs in times of crisis. Although the mass media superficially levels rural and urban differences the well-documented preference of rural people for rural life indicates a distinctive identity.

Speechways

Despite the potential homogenizing effects of television and radio, rural speechways vary distinctly. Rural dialects reveal the immigration history of a region. German, Dutch, and Scandinavian farmer-settlers of the Midwest in the nineteenth century evolved a dialect known by linguists as “Midlands” speech. Expressions such as “how’s come” and “I want to go with,” and the dropping of “to be” as in “the car needs washed” are Midlands traits. North-South distinctions are also clear; Southern Illinois speakers sound different from speakers in Northern Illinois. Northerners say “faucet” and Southerners say “spigot,” a fruit’s “pit” in the North is a “stone” in the South, and groceries that are “bagged” in the North are “sacked” in the South. Rural Southerners answer “yes, ma’am,” or “no, sir” and consider the plain answers of Northerners to be rude. Rural peoples have mastered commenting about behavior or events without committing themselves or offending neighbors, who must be faced on a daily basis. “He’s real different,” is a non-committal phrase for a difficult or eccentric personality. Rural speechways resist homogenization because rural populations tend to be less mobile, less likely to obtain higher educations, but moreover to value their distinctive speech patterns.

Foodways

Like language regional cuisine resists homogenization and shows rural sources. Fowl, animals, fish, herbs, spices, vegetables, and fruits used by indigenous peoples were combined with ethnic foodways of immigrant populations to produce distinctive regional cuisines. Boiled and baked foods characterize New England, while fried, roasting, and grilled foods characterize Southern and Western cooking. Southern areas of the nation have spicier foods, the influence of indigenous peoples that originated in the Southwest, and of course crops of various chili-peppers. More general in distribution are two groups of foods: “mush” a cornmeal porridge and fruit pies. Mush, usually a breakfast food eaten either fluid with milk or molasses or fried in a solidified state, was historically widespread from throughout the South to New England. Although the corn-base was borrowed from Indian cultures, mush is an American adaptation of the porridge dishes staple to European peasant cuisine. Today mush is typically served as hominy or grits in the South. The round fruit pie, a national favorite that led to phrase, “as American as apple pie,” represents a borrowing by early Pennsylvania German settlers from British Isles neighbors, that was carried west by pioneers. The form was easily adapted to local berries and other products. Breads were a staple of traditional American diets incorporating local or introduced grains. Distinctive breads associated with different regions were products of outdoor ovens among rural Pennsylvania Germans, French Canadians, Louisiana “Cajuns,” and southwestern Indian tribes. Cities absorbed rural migrants and their cuisines as the nation urbanized. Boston baked beans, New England clam chowder, the crawfish dishes of New Orleans, grits and ham of Southerners, and the Thanksgiving menu all originated with rural cuisines.

Food is consumed distinctively in rural places. Rural people, particularly farmers, eat their largest meal at mid-day, called “dinner,” and in the evening eat a lighter meal called “supper.” Food for winter was traditionally preserved by canning or smoking produce and meats. Rural households today typically use a freezer to store produce from the ubiquitous kitchengarden, and by law use the local meat-locker to process home-raised meats. Garden produce and meats raised or hunted commonly are shared with kin or neighbors today as in the past.

Rituals

The American national holiday, Thanksgiving, originated in rural New England as a harvest celebration. Rural peoples’ celebration of other national holidays use customs that reinforce a local community identity. Fourth of July parades, for example, typically include the high school band, elementary children on bikes, and service groups. A high school parade-queen is crowned in honor of a local agricultural product such as sweet corn, hogs, rutabagas, peaches, chilies, or cotton. The oldest man or woman, mothers of soldiers lost in national wars, and politicians wave from a local car dealer’s convertible. Bystanders can personally greet most parade participants. Midwestern rural communities also celebrate annual “homecomings.” Homecomings are organized by a community service group to induce return-visits by out-migrants and simultaneously to raise money for projects such as refurbishing a ballfield or remodeling the town hall. Church woman make salads and pies, men barbecue chicken, catfish, or steaks, and softball is played. Auctions are a common ritual to liquidate household goods, farm equipment, animals, houses, or farm land from estate settlements or farm-retirements. Auctions of donated household or farm items also are held to raise community funds.

Rural people have rich social lives amongst kin and community. Attitudes toward leisure reflect traditions of self-sufficiency. “We make our own” entertainment, they say. Saturday nights or Sunday afternoons teenagers gather at landmarks to have bridge parties, road parties or cornfield parties. A bonfire is lit, cars hoods are sat on, and beer may be drunk. Small town teenagers, whether in Midwestern four-by-four pickup trucks or in Southwestern Hispanic “low-rider” cars spend weekend evenings driving around to see and be seen “dragging main.” Their parents and grandparents use card groups, such as euchre in the Midwest, as an excuse to socialize with friends or kin at home. Adult social gatherings typically are segregated by sex with men and women clustering in different rooms at home or at church. Similarly, sexual segregation occurs in the weekly gatherings of women’s quilting groups and the male-volunteer fireman’s card groups at the fire-station.

In the Southern highlands of Kentucky or Tennessee, social get-togethers are likely to be accompanied by singing and the playing of fiddles, banjos, or dulcimers. People may not read music, but pass words and tunes pass from one generation to the next in an oral tradition. Among African Americans in the rural South, the blues and gospel music emerged from similar folk traditions. Rural music, crafts, and story-telling greatly influenced both popular and classical culture in America. Country music, traces roots to the folk-music traditions of British Isles immigrants, and the waltzes and polkas of Northern and Eastern Europeans in Southern Texas. Country music celebrates rural life, home place, the road, loneliness, family, loves, and friends in deceptively simple lyrics and tunes. Square dancing, clog dancing, the two-step, and other rural dance forms uniquely American, are performed to renditions of original ethnic tunes continually recast by country musicians.

Rites of passages are excuses for community celebrations in rural areas. The entire community attends weddings, funerals, or graduations in part because everyone is related in some way to the main actors. Marriages are particularly important rituals. The community custom of shivaree is widely practiced in the rural Midwest. Friends or relatives of the newly-weds (on ei ther the wedding night or during the honeymoon) devise practical jokes to interfere with conjugal relations. Male friends symbolically attempt to restore the newly married male to the fraternity of single men and, failing that make difficult the young couple’s homecoming. Cow bells on the bed springs, a short-sheeted bed, or a kidnapping of the groom are associated with shivaree. Couples may find doorknobs greased, labels removed from cans, or plastic wrap covering the toilet on return from their honeymoon. These rituals typically are associated with loud noise-making and are the grist of community gossip for weeks after at the local coffee house or at church services. — Sonya Salamon See also African Americans; American Indians; Arts; Asian Pacific Americans; Cemeteries; Churches; Community Celebrations; Ethnicity; Folklore; Latinos; Music; Religion; Settlement Patterns; Values of Residents References Brown, Linda Keller, and Kay Mussell, eds. Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1984. Cassidy, Frederic G., ed. The Dictionary of American Regional English, Volume I A-C. (Also Frederic G. Cassidy and Joan Houston Hall, eds. Volume II D-H and Volume III I-O; Joan Houston Hall, ed. Volume IV P-Sk.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985, 1991, 1996, 2000. Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989, 2nd ed. 1991. Lavenda, Robert H. Corn Fests and Water Carnivals: Celebrating Community in Minnesota. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. Salamon, Sonya. Newcomers to Old Towns: Suburbanization of the Heartland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Salamon, Sonya. “The Rural Household as a Consumption Site.” Pp 330-343 in Handbook of Rural Studies. Edited by Paul Cloke, Terry Marsden, and Patrick Mooney. London: Sage Publications, 2006. Shortridge, Barbara G. and James R. Shortridge. The Taste of American Place: A Reader on Regional and Ethnic Foods. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. Tichi, Cecelia. High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Yoder, Don. Discovering American Folklife: Essays on Folk Culture and the Pennsylvania Dutch. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001. ther the wedding night or during the honeymoon) devise practical jokes to interfere with conjugal relations. Male friends symbolically attempt to restore the newly married male to the fraternity of single men and, failing that make difficult the young couple’s homecoming. Cow bells on the bed springs, a short-sheeted bed, or a kidnapping of the groom are associated with shivaree. Couples may find doorknobs greased, labels removed from cans, or plastic wrap covering the toilet on return from their honeymoon. These rituals typically are associated with loud noise-making and are the grist of community gossip for weeks after at the local coffee house or at church services.

— Sonya Salamon

See also

• African Americans; American Indians; Arts; Asian Pacific Americans; Cemeteries; Churches; Community Celebrations; Ethnicity; Folklore; Latinos; Music; Religion; Settlement Patterns; Values of Residents

References

• Brown, Linda Keller, and Kay Mussell, eds. Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1984.
• Cassidy, Frederic G., ed. The Dictionary of American Regional English, Volume I A-C. (Also Frederic G. Cassidy and Joan Houston Hall, eds. Volume II D-H and Volume III I-O; Joan Houston Hall, ed. Volume IV P-Sk.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985, 1991, 1996, 2000.
• Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989, 2nd ed. 1991.
• Lavenda, Robert H. Corn Fests and Water Carnivals: Celebrating Community in Minnesota. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.
• Salamon, Sonya. Newcomers to Old Towns: Suburbanization of the Heartland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• Salamon, Sonya. “The Rural Household as a Consumption Site.” Pp 330-343 in Handbook of Rural Studies. Edited by Paul Cloke, Terry Marsden, and Patrick Mooney. London: Sage Publications, 2006.
• Shortridge, Barbara G. and James R. Shortridge. The Taste of American Place: A Reader on Regional and Ethnic Foods. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.
• Tichi, Cecelia. High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
• Yoder, Don. Discovering American Folklife: Essays on Folk Culture and the Pennsylvania Dutch. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001.