Southern Communities - by Steven E Nash & Bruce E Stewart (Paperback)

About the Book

"Building upon recent scholarship, this anthology explores the nature of community in the American South during the long nineteenth century. The fourteen essays, written and compiled in honor of historian John C. Inscoe, define community as more than a place or a nostalgic longing for a lost way of life; instead, they view community as a web of social relationships, both voluntary and coercive. Importantly, the contributors recognize that there was never a singular Southern community. A diverse population of Southerners built a multitude of communities across the region. Neither do the contributors romanticize nineteenth-century communities, pointing out that they were often rife with discord and competition. The collected essays analyze Southern communities through identity formation, conflict, and memory. The essays in the first section chronicle the construction of four communities before and during the Civil War: the enslaved, the slaveholding, the Confederate, and the emotional. The second section includes six essays that examine the role that civil war, emancipation, and modernization played in challenging community cohesion, while the final section explores how white southerners often turned to memory and nostalgia to reconstruct communities in ways that preserved the Old South's racial and gender status quo well into the twentieth century. Stephen Berry's afterword highlights the career of John Inscoe"--

Book Synopsis

Community is an evolving and complex concept that historians have applied to localities, counties, and the South as a whole in order to ground larger issues in the day-to-day lives of all segments of society. These social networks sometimes unite and sometimes divide people, they can mirror or transcend political boundaries, and they may exist solely within the cultures of like-minded people.

This volume explores the nature of southern communities during the long nineteenth century. The contributors build on the work of scholars who have allowed us to see community not simply as a place but instead as an idea in a constant state of definition and redefinition. They reaffirm that there never has been a singular southern community. As editors Steven E. Nash and Bruce E. Stewart reveal, southerners have constructed an array of communities across the region and beyond. Nor do the contributors idealize these communities. Far from being places of cooperation and harmony, southern communities were often rife with competition and discord. Indeed, conflict has constituted a vital part of southern communal development. Taken together, the essays in this volume remind us how community-focused studies can bring us closer to answering those questions posed to Quentin Compson in Absalom, Absalom! "Tell [us] about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all."

About the Author

Steven E. Nash (Editor)
STEVEN E. NASH is an associate professor of history at East Tennessee State University and the author of Reconstruction's Ragged Edge: The Politics of Postwar Life in the Southern Mountains.

Bruce E. Stewart (Editor)
BRUCE E. STEWART is an associate professor of history at Appalachian State University and the author or editor of several books, most recently Modern Moonshine: The Revival of White Whiskey in the Twentieth-First Century.