SOC 222: Sociology of Appalachian Culture

1
SOC 222 Sociology of Appalachian Culture

• Our Appalachia Part II
• Social Institutions in Industrial Society

2
The Economy Work

• More specialized
• Not everyone farmersmost do have gardens
• Coal mining logging
• Dominated in central App
• Coal fuels industrialization of nation
• Factories also established
• Southern, central App textile mills, sewing,
  others
• Northern App variety

3
The Economy Work

• Change in transportation required to
  industrialize
• Accessibility an issue in 20th C
• Railroads necessary to get timber coal out
• Later roads built for autos but gradually
• Most mountainous, esp in central App remains
  isolated until end of 20th C

4
The Economy Work

• Gradually changed from barter to money-based
  economy
• Barter/exchange still used when cash is scarce
  (poor, unemployed, etc)
• Script used in coal camps
• Coal camps paternalistic
• Created dependency with script

5
The Economy Work

• Exploitation common
• Land mineral rights
• owned mostly by outsiders
• Those who lived on land, farmed often ignorant of
  their rights stripped of their rights
• Smaller communities tend to be one-industry base
• Boom bust economy

6
The Economy Work

• Exploitation common (cont)
• Work in mines, factories dangerous
• Injuries
• Black, brown lung
• Union organizing UMW

7
The Economy Work

• Conditions led to poverty
• Welfare benefits dependency more common in
  1960s to present
• Migration to get better jobs
• Family to other coal camp
• Family to nearby city
• Families to northern cities
• Father to city

8
The Economy Work

• Conditions led to
• poverty (cont)
• Experimented w/economic development programs
• Federal/regional TVA, ARC, OEO (War on Poverty)
• Local Grass roots nonprofits emerge

9
Family Kinship

• Still fundamentally patriarchal
• Coal camps division of labor
• Husband/father breadwinner gives him economic
  power
• Wife/mother domestic manager
• Dominates day-to-day care-giving since husband
  rarely at home
• But less economic productivity and power
• Children more leisure time
• Farms similar to preindustrial gender roles

10
Family Kinship

• Patriarchal (cont)
• Towns cities
• Factories, businesses, service jobs, professions
• Wife more likely have job more democratic
  especially in last ½ of 20th C

11
Family Kinship

• Nuclear family smaller
• Needs to be more mobile to work coal or factories
• Death rate lower
• Birth rate lower
• Extended family less important
• Often still lives nearby
• But may not be as physically close

12
Religion Church

• Denominations Variety
• Fundamentalist, traditional in rural
• Mainline in town, city
• Missionaries from outside App
• Save the poor, ignorant
• Settlement schools

13
Schools Education

• Informal education at home
• Still gender specific
• Formal education more important
• Industrial jobs required more
• Reading, writing, arithmetic, conformity
• Consolidation
• By 1970s one-room school a memory
• Larger schools but more options
• Live in hollers school farther from home
• Higher dropout rate than nation

14
Politics Government

• Federal government became more important
• Welfare
• TVA, etc.