Appalachia and America: autonomy and regional dependence

APPALACHIA AND

AMERICA AUTONOMY AND REGIONAL DEPENDENCE

ALLEN BATIEAU, EDITOR

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

Copyright© 1983 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Oub, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0024 Ubrary of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title:

Appalachia and America. 1. Appalachian Region-Social conditions-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Batteau, Allen, 1946-82-40462 HN79.A13A75 1983 306' .0974 ISBN 0-8131-1480-2

CoNTENTS

vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Allen Batteau

INTRODUCTION: lHE lRANSFORMATION OF DEPENDENCY with Phillip Obennille r DECORATING THE APPALACHIAN HOUSE

1

Charles E. Martin

14

FAMILY GROUP ORGANIZATION IN A CUMBERLAND MOUNTAIN NEIGHBORHOOD F. Carlene Bryant

28

STUDYING RELIGIOUS BELIEF SYSTEMS IN lHEIR SOCIAL HISTORICAL CONTEXT Melanie L. Sovine

48

RELIGION AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS IN lHE KANAWHA COUNTY SCHOOL TEXTBOOK CONTROVERSY Dwight B. Billings & Robert Goldman

68

THE IMAGE OF APPALACHIAN POVER'IY

86

Walter Precourt

lHE PLACE OF CULTURE AND lHE PROBLEM OF IDENTITY Henry D. Shapiro RITUALS OF DEPENDENCE IN APPALACHIAN KENTUCKY APPALACHIAN INNOVATION IN HEALTH CARE HEALlH CARE: lHE CITY VERSUS lHE MIGRANT

111

Allen Batteau

Richard A. Couto John Friedl

142 168

189

LOWER PRICE HILL'S CHILDREN: FAMILY, SCHOOL, AND NEIGHBORHOOD 210 Kathryn M. Borman with Elaine Mueninghoff EXPERIENCES OF IN-MIGRANfS IN APPALACHIA

Mary Anglin

227

FRONTIER CULTURE, GOVERNMENT AGENTS, AND CITY FOLKS James Willia m Jordan

239

PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH ON LAND OWNERSHIP IN RURAL APPALACHIA Patricia D. Beaver

252

CONFLICT, CONFRONTATION, AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN lHE REGIONAL SETTING Thomas Plaut

267

CONTRIBUTORS

285

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

TI-lls book originated in a symposium on Appalachian Studies that was

held at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Associa­ tion in February 1979 in Memphis, Tennessee . At the conclusion of the symposium the participants decided to seek publication of the papers . Over the next two years several of the papers were substantially revised, and several new papers were added to complete the volume . I would like to express my appreciation to my fellow contributors for their patience in seeing the project through to completion. ALLEN BATTEAU

INTRODUCTION: THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEPENDENCY ALLEN BA TTEAU WITH PHILLIP OBERMILLER

IN the hundred years since Appalachia was discovered by the Amer­ ican public as a distinctive entity, the question that has recurrently presented itself is that of the identity of Appalachia and the explana­ tion of a regional culture that was "in but not of" America . In every discovery and rediscovery of Appalachia, the currently fashionable social theories are invoked for the purpose of explaining this identity: Theories of degeneration, "retarded frontiers, " racial devolution, en­ vironmental determinism, exploitation, cultures of poverty, and inter­ nal colonialism have all been used as the "basic" cause of Appalachian "otherness . " In some publications one finds an insistence on identify­ ing authors as " 1 00 percent Appalachian, " even as other articles ac­ knowledge the difficulty of deciding just what the boundaries of Appa­ lachia are . Seminars and workshops discuss what it "means" to be Appalachian, and controversies in scholarly circles continue over which factions more authentically "speak for Appalachia. " Behind these questions o f the identity o f Appalachia one hears questions of the identity of America . The paradox of Appalachia is that it has always combined opposed images of America's self-definition: The Appalachia of William G. Frost combined Anglo-Saxon pioneer ancestry with devolution and degradation; the Appalachia of the poverty warriors in the 1960s combined the romantic appeal of bucolic self-sufficiency with the indignity of welfare dependence . Every suc­ ceeding statement of the identity of Appalachia has posed a challenge for the identity of America: A land of progress containing an entire region of backwardness and poverty, a metropolitan society of rapid mobility and footloose individualism, accommodating a subculture that insists on maintaining strong family ties and a sense of com­ munity. The fourteen articles gathered together in this volume examine the latest transformation of this paradox, in the creation of an Appalachia

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ALLEN BATIEAU & PHILLIP OBERMILLER

that is increasingly defined in terms of its "need" for educational, health, and social services . They examine the interplay between com­ munity values and structure, the focus of attention on the region by outside groups, and the conflicts and antagonistic relationships that derive from the professionalized efforts to "help Appalachians." Sovine, Bryant, and Martin examine certain core aspects of the local culture of Appalachia, with some interesting notes on how that local culture itself is informed by its relationship to dominant cultural forms in America. Shapiro and Precourt examine two important aspects of the profes­ sional definition of Appalachia: The region as a thing-in-itself, and the region as a poverty area . The bulk of the articles examine the conflicts between local and outside groups and values in several domains, and at several levels of experience ranging from a child's search for identity to policy decisions in national councils . The concluding articles, by Pat Beaver and Tom Plaut, while taking note of the conflicts between local and outside, offer an appreciation that the "outside society" is itself differentiated and that Appalachian people can build alliances with outside groups for the purpose of securing local goals. This focus on local values, professional definition, and above all on the conflictual relationships thus resulting, enables us to locate Appa­ lachia within certain prevailing forms of differentiation in America . It enables us to see that the paradox of Appalachia and America is no paradox at all, for in every succeeding epoch Appalachia has presented itself as an exemplar and a critique of the salient forms of political differentiation within American society, a presentation that is para­ doxical only to those who insist on seeing America in undifferentiated terms. To understand the historical and political context of this defini­ tion, it would do well to examine first the succeeding forms of dif­ ferentiation that in years past have defined Appalachia, and then to consider briefly the ideology and values of the culture of professional­ ism which now defines it. In the nineteenth century, when the division between commercial metropoles and agrarian hinterlands was an important issue, the southern interior, particularly the upcountry districts, were hinter­ lands par excellence . As such, they were the object of considerable land speculation. Lawyers, politicians, and large landholders constituted the dominant class of the region. In the industrial society of the turn of the century, Appalachia was first and foremost an industrial outback, supplying raw material for the fortunes of Morgan and Rockefeller. The images of the region then combined the lack of progress and the ravages of progress. As exemplar, Appalachia contained vivid cases of the dis privileged classes: the most isolated ruralites, the most exploited

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEPENDENCY

3

proletariat; as critique, Appalachia furnished images for an indictment of the powerful and the urbane, images that range from Sut Lovingood to Mother Jones. These forms of domination have received ample recognition in the scholarly literature of Appalachia . Beginning with the first settlement in the eighteenth century and going through the devastation of the Civil War and the development of timber and mining industries, the political and economic domination by metropolitan elites and the ex­ ternal control of the region's resources have been well documented . This metropolitan domination continues today, in the form of external ownership of land . 1 Previous studies have examined the use of this ownership to support environmental destruction, 2 and the predatory labor relationships existing within the coal industry. 3 Drawing on analogies from areas colonized by European powers in the nineteenth century, many scholars have concluded that these relationships of ownership and industrial control justify characterizing Appalachia as an internal colony or the internal periphery of a capitalist world­ system. 4 In the years since World War II America has emerged out of the classical model of industrial society and into what various authors characterise as a post-industrial society or a late capitalistic society . For our purposes here it is less important how this society is labeled than to recognize some of its dominant characteristics, characteristics agreed upon by conservative and liberal commentators alike . In the industrial society of the nineteenth century one of the major divisions of society was between the owners of industrial enterprises and those who worked in them. In the post-industrial society of today, it is the posses­ sion of managerial and professional expertise, rather than ownership of property per se, that entitles one to a commanding position . In the industrial society of the nineteenth century, the middle class was poorly developed and for the most part outside the industrial system; contemporarily, the middle stratum of society is broad, differentiated, and at the heart of the economy . In the late nineteenth century, political power was concentrated in a smaller number of captains of industry, who purchased senators and governors as carefully as they purchased railroads . Today, such captains of industry have faded into the background, and at national and international levels there is a plurality of centers of power. For scholars and activists working within the region, it is essential to recognize that as these forms of stratification in American society change, so too does the identity of Appalachia . In previous years the subordination of Appalachia was related to its abundant land and later

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ALLEN BATIEAU & PHILLIP OBERMILLER

to its abundant industrial resources; the prevailing images embraced these facts, even as the prevailing modes of domination exploited them. However, in the late twentieth century, land speculation and industrial predation assume an increasingly archaic quality: The gruff­ mannered coal barons of the 1920s have been replaced by smooth­ talking human resource managers and well-tailored community relations experts, working for national and multinational energy corporations, whose polished approach signals the firm and uncon­ tested grip they have on the region' s mineral wealth . As the older forms of industrial stratification become firmly entrenched, newer forms quietly emerge, appropriating a new set of human activities and human needs into the national economy. Those who are intent on fighting the battles of fifty years ago often fail to notice this invasion of the latest ascendant class . I n the last twenty years a significant ascendant class in Appalachia has been the professionals who control education, health, and social service bureaucracies, replacing the informal structures of family and community control over socialization and mutual support. As with the invasion of Appalachia by coal barons ninety years ago, this has pro­ duced its own set of conflicts and controversies, in the clashes between newer and older elites, and the creation of new forms of alienation . Although professions such a s the law and medicine are centuries old, the efforts to professionalize a wide variety of occupations, and to secure state protection for professionalization, date back no more than a hundred years . Professionalization is the assertion of a sacred status for an occupational role: It is an effort to remove the rights and obliga­ tions of the role, the rewards and costs of performance, from the polluting competition of the marketplace, and to have them controlled by a body of collegial peers bearing many resemblances to a priest­ hood. This is accomplished through the systems of licensing and certification sanctioned by the state and through elaborate periods of 'training in universities set apart from the mundane world . The auton­ omy so created is legitimized through an ideal of service: The profes­ sional supposedly performs his or her role to serve society and not for personal aggrandizement . However much this ideal of service may be contradicted by the actual behavior of specific professionals, its political sanction and pub­ lic subscription nevertheless permit professionals to maintain their monopoly on competence : to assert that only they are able to heal the sick, interpret the law, or unravel the mysteries of the universe . This monopoly, however, creates an alienating and dependent relationship between the professional and the client: it divests the client of his or her own competence and ability and substitutes that of the professional.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEPENDENCY

5

Three constituent elements of professionalism make up this alienating and dependent relationship: the ideology, the technology, and the system of interpersonal relationships involved in what Bledstein has called the "culture of professionalism . " 5 As an ideology, professionalism includes both a set of skills and a set of attitudes toward those skills . Professionalism denotes extensive education and certification, which in turn convey a certain status and distinct prerogatives. However, these prerogatives are contingent upon popular acceptance and acclaim, routine in the middle class, but not always forthcoming from blue collar communities such as those in Appalachia or those of urban Appalachians. Contemporarily, higher education is not a major goal for many rural and urban Appalachians . The ambivalence that many Appalachians feel toward the values and expectations of well-educated professionals is well documented in the articles in this collection; the antagonism and potential conflicts it implies will become increasingly important with the continuing de­ velopment of professional services in the region . In its technological aspect, professionalism involves the application of various techniques to the solution of personal and social problems . For the professional, technique often becomes an end in itself and is applied in a counterproductive manner. Technique frequently entails adopting a dispassionate stance, as when a nurse gives a child a painful injection . While such objectivity is necessary and has short-term advantages, it builds the image of the unfeeling clinician in the minds of both the professional and the client. Eventually both begin to act out of the expectations built on a stereotype. Stereotyping is a two-way street. Most professionals do not count it important to have among their technical skills the cultural competency to work effectively among different social groups. But those who realize that their work is not carried out in a cultural vacuum are hard put to avoid stereotyping. Even the positive labels found in the litera­ ture on Appalachia which is most accessible to professionals are at best epiphenomenal. 6 Cultural competency in working with Appalachians or similar groups means learning the social, political, and historical contexts in which such groups operate . It is based on solid research rather than the glib assumptions and inaccuracies which unfortunately compose many professionals' working knowledge of the social groups they serve . The third dimension of professionalism is its appreciation and use of bureaucracy . Most professions are closely linked to bureaucratic institutions: scholars to their universities, doctors to their hospitals, lawyers to their courts . These institutions are run by hierarchies and guided by regulation, rather than by collectivities guided by consen-

6

ALLEN BATIEAU &: PHILLIP OBERMILLER

sus. To be professional, therefore, is to be sensitized to a hierarchical mode and to act accordingly by obeying and enforcing regulations . Form takes precedent over result, a n d the written word is more impor­ tant than the spoken. This is alien to working-class groups like Appa­ lachians whose quality of life, if not survival itself, depends on getting results whatever the form, through groups whose cohesion is main­ tained by face-to-face interaction . The result is a conflict between the values and attitudes of profes­ sionals and those of the communities that they serve, a conflict that is built into the very nature of professionalism . Professional groups, whether they be schools, hospitals , or government agencies, have adopted a world view that accepts instrumental rationality as a fun­ damental assumption: they approach human groups as objects for technical manipulation rather than as subjects for social participation. They view the world analytically, in contrast to the holistic world view of rural communities . The professional looks for utility while popular culture seeks meaning. The professional has a highly refined apprecia­ tion for process while the popular culture intuitively values the actual product of the process . In short, the professional attitude, informed by instrumental rationality, often conflicts with the popular ideal; rational technology conflicts with the accumulated wisdom of tradition; formal organizations replace informal networks; and the demands of profes­ sionalized bureaucracies conflict with the functional economy of every­ day life . Within the middle class, this conflict is either suppressed or dis­ placed, because middle-class Americans subscribe to and attempt to participate in the professional values of instrumental rationality. One can see this in the efforts to professionalize the most diverse occupa­ tions (garbage men become sanitary engineers, groundskeepers be­ come turf-management technicians) . One can see this in efforts to professionalize consumption, whether in the connoisseurship of im­ ported wines or in an appreciation of the finer points of CB radios. In all of these efforts there is an attempt to acquire social esteem through an aura of expertise and to assert autonomy through the appropriation of skills, in the face of the dependency relations created by the normal operation of a market society. 7 As a form of social relationship, the two faces of professionalism are autonomy and control, both based on expertise: the protection of one's status against the vicissitudes of the market, and the securing of honor through the creati on of a dependent clientele. In every epoch, the conficts over the prevailing forms of domination have taken on an especially acute form in Appalachia . Because of a local ethos of auton­ omy and independence, and the uneven penetration of the diverse

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEPENDENCY

7

forms of control, efforts to assert control over Appalachian communi­ ties, even when under the banner of "helping" them, entail greater conflicts than similar efforts elsewhere . This was observable in the mine wars of fifty, sixty, and seventy years ago; it was observable in the violence over the Charleston, West Virginia schools in 1974. The local culture was, and continues to be, well entrenched within Appalachia . It is not, however, unique to Appalachia, as the many recent local protests against outside control attest. These articles thus provide several approaches to the study of two critical issues in contemporary American life: the ongoing experience of a region as part of a national polity and international economy, and the interaction of professionals and bureaucratic organizations with a rural people. By elaborating on the rural culture, the professional world view, the interaction and conflict between the two, and finally on possible resolutions to the conflict, these articles present a message that is important both to professionals and to the local communities within which they work. An excellent example of the local culture, and the functional economy of everyday life that it contains, is presented in Chip Martin's article, "Decorating the Appalachian House . " Martin makes the case for a local culture in an activity usually associated with images of poverty and degradation: papering the walls of one's home with newspaper. From extensive interviewing, he draws out a detailed set of protocols for this process, showing the rules, preferences, styles, and proce­ dures involved. These people, he concludes, were able to take a product of "mainstream" America-the catalog, newspa­ per, or magazine-and, following their own traditional framework of always putting an object to new and good use instead of discarding it, utilize it to insulate themselves from the cold, to teach and entertain themselves, to define personal space, to welcome the advent of spring, to beautify their surround­ ings, and to articulate their dreams.

This offers a dramatic contrast with the poverty image that Precourt analyzes: From Depression-era photographs, many Americans associ­ ate newspapered walls with deprivation and poverty; for those moun­ taineers, they represent just the opposite. Yet, in a final ironic turn, presenting "the promises of the consumer-oriented and industrial society," these images, arranged for traditional ends, drew Appa­ lachians into admiration of the mass-produced good life. In similar vein, F . Carlene Bryant, in her article on family group organization, gives a cJassic illustration of how one must understand the indigenous conceptions of ancestry, identity, blood relatedness, and love before one can make sense out of the organization of a

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ALLEN BATIEAU & PHILLIP OBERMILLER

Tennessee h illtop community . Based on extensive field research, her article is convincin g proof of the importance of these indigenous con­ ceptions, a nd hence of a local culture, for understanding the local community . She further illustrates how these meanings are related to relationships involved in religion and neighboring, suggesting the difficulty of separating out kinship, religion, and relationships of pro­ pinquity . For many scholars, religion offers one of the most distinctive areas of Appalachian local culture, although the sectarian groupings of the region often are seen through denominational eyes. Melanie Sovine, in her article on Primitive Baptists, demonstrates that religion is not so much an "institution" as it is a matrix for the totality of social life . For church members, religion is simultaneously a way of being in-the­ world and a way of being apart-from-the-world, an experience un­ familiar to those who see religion as reserved for Sundays . Understanding religion as a patterning element in the local culture enables one to make sense of some of the more distinctive political episodes of the region . When coalminers in the Kanawha Valley struck over the issue of school textbooks in 1974, large numbers of journalists descended on Charleston to observe the newest episode of urban progress versus rural backwardness. Billings' and Goldman's article demonstrates that the key element in this controversy was a working­ class consciousness filtered through Protestant fundamentalism. For Billings and Goldman, this class consciousness is a form of resistance to the efforts at control entailed in corporate liberalism. These forms of control are the various forms of professional domination to which, in the eyes of the coalminers, the school textbooks lent ideological sup­ port (although the miners would not state it in that manner) . The view of culture as a filter, through which perceptions are interpreted, similarly informs Walter Precourt' s examination of the definition of Appalachia as a poverty region . In a critical examination of the idea of "poverty" as a stigma essential to the commodity structure of American society, Precourt demonstrates how a capitalist society needs a poverty population, and how Appalachian "poverty" derives not from the standards of living within the region, but from certain values of the metropolitan society. To get ahead of our argument for a moment, one can generalize from this analysis of the source of "pov­ erty" to the origin of other sorts of "need" for professional help, particularly the lack of health care and educational services . From the perspective o f intellectual history, Henry Shapiro ex­ amines how the idea of Appalachia as a region has shaped perceptions of and attitudes toward it. In a basic departure from his previous work, Appalachia on Our Mind, where he examined the idea of Appalachian

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEPENDENCY

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"otherness," Shapiro here examines the idea of a region as a bounded combination of people, place, and culture . Such an idea is based upon a pluralist image of America which is comprised of similarly bounded regions, an image that "is consistent with certain American ideals of egalitarianism and localism . This impulse (if one may, with psycholog­ ical jargon, suggest its pre-rationality) to isolate and classify is at the heart of instrumental rationality, as many (of which Foucault is but the latest) have demonstrated; it is fundamental to the professional world view . Yet in its construction of cultural regions it often obscures the relationships of domination which are national in scope. These relationships supply the point of departure for Allen Bat­ teau' s examination of dependency relationships in eastern Kentucky . In an effort to link theories of economic dependency with theories of psychological dependency, Batteau sees the lower class of Appalachia as being at the bottom rung of these hierarchies; such relationships, Batteau argues, are implied in the nature of a competitive, centralized economy . As experienced in the lives of those on the bottom, they cultivate feelings of inadequacy and helplessness and impulses of dependency, which some have labeled a "culture of poverty . " Richard Couto's examination of Appalachian innovations i n health care is the first of several case studies in this volume on specific issues in the professional definition of Appalachia . He sees the mal­ distribution of health services as "related to the political economy of the American health care system" and demonstrates with striking clarity the steps that professionals within the system took to maintain their monopoly on competence . It would require a considerable feat of the imagination to see doctors and medical bureaucrats as exploiters in the same mold as the coal barons; nonetheless, Couto suggests, these maintain their position only at the expense of community control of health care . The analyses of Couto, Batteau, Shapiro, and Precourt all rest on an analysis of American society, seeing it as an integrated and dynamic whole (even when the integration is obscured by constructions of regionalism) . For them, America is made up of diverse groups; no one of these groups can be considered "mainstream" except for the fact that it has captured the imagination and control of resources of the society and hence exerts a dominant influence over other groups. For Couto and Batteau, the control of resources in a competitive economy is a prime consideration, although one might conclude from their articles that in a post-industrial society, intangibles such as health and personal identity have become resources, placed on the market, and made into resources for surplus appropriation . For Shapiro and Pre­ court, the ability of journalists, novelists, and scholars to capture the

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ALLEN BATIEAU & PHILLIP OBERMILLER

imagination and control the collective representations of the larger society is crucial . These essays see Appalachian "otherness" less as a matter of peculiarity and more related to the control (or lack thereof) of America's collective representations. This is a crucial distinction for students of Appalachia to make . Taking a more ethnographic viewpoint, John Friedl, in "Health Care: The City versus the Migrant, " and Kathy Borman, in "Lower Price Hill' s Children," demonstrate that the problems of community values clashing with professional imperatives are also played out in urban settings . Friedl examines the problems of providing adequate health care to Appalachian migrants in Columbus, Ohio . He distin­ guishes between the problems that are structural, due to the economic and demographic realities of urban life, and those that are cultural, stemming from the clash between popular and professional cultures. This professional culture stresses an ongoing relationship between the patient and the health care provider, as in programs of prevention and non-crisis intervention; yet the popular culture, resisting such rela­ tionships (as, we would suggest, implying dependence), is largely crisis-oriented in its attitude toward medical services : turning toward physicians when other remedies have failed and overutilizing emergency room facilities . Friedl argues that for professionals to be effective in their professional goals, they must have an appreciation for the popular culture and how it can contribute to or impede the provi­ sion of health care . Borman's examination of children's experience in Cincinna ti, Ohio, shows how the clash between the cultures of family, neighborhood, and professional socialization agencies (such as schools) can be per­ plexing for the child who is trying to integrate these into a coherent identity . These children, and their families, are forced to choose be­ tween the values of family and community which they brought with them from Appalachia on the one hand, and the values of instrumental rationality taught in schools and necessary for success, on the other. Again, consistent with Friedl' s thrust, while some of this dash is structural, much of it stems from differences in popular and profes­ sional orientations. Educators who wish to realize their professional goals of providing knowledge and enlightenment to their urban Appa­ lachian pupils should (as one might conclude from Borman's paper) enlist rather than oppose the popular culture. Mary Anglin, in "Experiences of In-Migrants in Appalachia, " ex­ pands the viewpoint thus far presented to the context of the entire local community. Based on her experiences of living in western North Carolina for five years, she examines the confrontations resulting from the arrival of several streams of migration into western North Carolina:

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEPENDENCY

11

young health care professionals, romantic back-to-the-land home­ steaders, and a somewhat older category of families looking for land to farm . In every case, the problems and difficulties of acceptance into the rural community, whether in its institutions of church, neighboring, politics, or subsistence patterns, create awkward confrontations for local residents and the outsiders alike . Much of the conflict, she sug­ gests, is focused around land as an "emblem of rural life . " While the outsiders diligently work the land, in order to prove themselves as ruralites, for the local residents it is more the attitude toward land that makes for authenticity . In Appalachia, land is a symbol, a matrix for rural life, a resource for re-creation, and a commodity . These conflicting definitions of land provide the bases for the concluding articles by James W. Jordan, Patricia Beaver, and Thomas Plaut. Jordan, in "Frontier Culture, Gov­ ernment Agents, and City Folks, " demonstrates how deeply the loss of control of the land they live on affects the lives and behavior of people in eastern Tennessee . He contrasts the world views of Forest Service personnel (professionals), Coker Creek (a traditional community), and Reliance (a more progressive community), describing the sometimes destructive misunderstandings that result. For Jordan, it is the differ­ ing cultural orientations of these groups that create and exacerbate their conflict. Other scholars, most notably those on the Appalachian Land Own­ ership Task Force, have documented the dramatic degree of outside ownership and control, as well as the economic and political problems that develop at the local level as ownership shifts out of the region . The study produced by this task force has received widespread coverage elsewhere and requires only minimal citation in this volume. 8 How­ ever, an examination of the study as one episode in an emerging social movement embracing a diversity of political actors may suggest that both cultural orientation and legal ownership are important elements in the continuing controversies over land . Patricia Beaver, a member of the task force, in "Participatory Research on Land Ownership, " ex­ amines the events that led up to the commissioning of the study by the Appalachian Regional Commission and the working of a team consist­ ing of local activists and university-based scholars (with Washington bureaucrats hovering nervously in the background) . For those who may be unfamiliar with them, she gives a brief statement of some of the findings of the study; the primary focus of her article, though, is on how different people, with markedly differing interests and orienta­ tions, were able to work together on a common problem. Thomas Plaut's concluding essay is both summarizing and path­ finding. In "Conflict, Confrontation, and Social Change in the Re-

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gional Setting, " Plaut contrasts the differing orientations and interests of "formal organizations" and "communities . " These "formal orga­ nizations" are the institutional setting of the instrumental rationality and professional services that today define Appalachia; the latter are the setting of the "popular" and "folk" cultures that most of the authors in this volume examine . Plaut draws from his experience in a rural clinic, where he was able to mediate between the cultural orienta­ tions of local residents and the recently arrived health care profession­ als . From this, he suggests that an appreciation of organizations and communities as cultural systems, made up of personnel, values and goals, and processes provides a tool "for people seeking a measure of control and self-determination in the processes of planning and change . " "By focusing on value orientations, " he concludes, cultural systems analysis enables one to see significant differences not only between agency and agency or agency and community, but among subgroups within an organization . Who wins how much in the struggles between factions is ultimately a matter of power, but often power can only be amassed and strategies developed in the light of usefully organized and focused data that conceptual frameworks such as cultural systems analysis can provide.

We thus have not only a new form of dependency and control, but also a new critique and a new way out of it; for the same society that creates the culture of professionalism has also created new forms of pluralism and the tools with which communal groups can build a more equitable relationship with their professional caretakers. As many have noted, the most rapidly growing part of the American economy is the human resource sector of health care, education, and social services . 9 This growth, and the professional class it establishes, threaten new forms of dependency not only for Appalachians, but for working class communities generally . The articles in this volume docu­ ment the inherent disservice, misservice, and alienating approach of professionalism when confronting working-class and rural communi­ ties not as the actions of poorly trained practitioners, but as fun­ damental to the very nature of the professions. Contemporarily we are witnessing a reemergence, in varyingly conservative and progressive colorings, of ethnicity and cultural regionalism in America . The Moral Maj ority, La Raza, Black Power, and the American Indian Movement are all groups and slogans of this reemergence. Such phenomena, as the papers in this volume suggest, represent not a recrudescence of tribal sentiments within the working-class and ethnic populations, but rather a use of the tools at hand for resisting newer forms of domina­ tion .

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Such newer forms of class relationship, and the newer forms of resistance, are part of the dynamism of American society . As long as the American economy continues to grow, it will continue to create new dominant groups and new Appalachias--n ew ethnic and regional minorities that will pursue, with whatever means they have, their economic and communal interests . Should any group, whether a pro­ fessional elite or a moralistic minority, succeed in imposing its vision upon America, it will mean not the perfection of the society but the end of its history . NOTES 1. Steve Fisher, ed . , A Landless People in a Rural Region: A Reader on Land Ownership and Property Taxation in Appalachia (New Market, Tenn .: Highlander Center, 1979). John Egerton , Appalachia s Absentee Lan d lo rd s," The Progressive, 45(6) (1981), 42-45. 2. Harry M. Caudill, My Land is Dying (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973). 3. Harry M. Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands (New York : Little Brown, 1963). "

'

4. David Walls, "Internal Colony or Internal Periphery," in Helen M. Lewis, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askin s, Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case ( Boone, N . C . : Appalachian Consortium Press, 1978) . 5. Burton Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism (New York : Norton, 1978). 6. As an example of this, one might note that Jack Weller's Yesterday's People con­ tinues to be required reading for those who are preparing to become caretakers to Appalachian communities. 7. . . . a possessive market s ocie ty necessarily puts in a d ependent position not only the wage-earners but also all those without a substantial (and, by the natural operation of the market, an increasing) amount of capital." C. B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p . 267. 8. See note 1. 9 . Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1976) . "

DEcORATING THE APPALACHIAN HousE CHARLES E. MARTIN

THE desire for decoration in folk architecture is frequently expressed by the inclusion of such decorative devices as Gothic trim, Greek revival returns, decorated cornices, beaded siding, and wainscot. None alter the structural strength of the building but they do help add a sense of visual pleasure to the necessity of providing shelter. In parts of Appa­ lachia, particularly eastern Kentucky, these visual reliefs were rarely present in folk housing, perhaps because the aesthetics of a well­ shaped hewn log, often two feet high, twenty feet long, and carefully thinned with an axe and adz to a uniform six-inch width, may have supplanted the desire to decorate woodwork. Still, the impulse to individualize, to personalize, to decorate was sometimes woven into the unembellished Appalachian structure. One former log builder living today explained that when he built the chimney in his house he rounded the top of the stack (Figure 1 ) from its rectangular base because to him, "It was prettier that way, nicer to look at." 1 Logs, by the 1930s, were sometimes covered with vertical boards and battens (Figure 2) because they could make a log house resemble the more fashionable milled board variety.2 New or freshly painted roof tins were regarded as extremely nice looking by builders who used them.3 Almost all houses had either day lilies, apple rose (usually planted by the well), tulips, or roses growing somewhere close by. But the most far-reaching decorative method, in terms of wide appeal and individualization, was the papering of interior walls from either newspaper, catalogs, magazines, or any combination of the three.4 Papering walls was a practice stretching back in the area for at least eighty years5 and was the norm for at least two reasons-there was little cash for paint (commercial wallpaper only became available in parts of eastern Kentucky in the 1940s and helped replace the older decorative methods) and properly applied paper served as insulation against the weather, which invaded the house through small cracks and openings that formed between the logs and mud chinking or

DECORATING THE APPA LACHlAN HOUSE

Figure I. An aesthetically planned chimney built, as was the attached log house, in the late 1 930s.

15

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CHARLES E . MARTIN

Figure 2. A board and batten house. The spaces between the eleven-inch boards are covered from the elements by the four-inch battens.

between the boards and battens. Although these papered walls are often considered, by the outsider, to symbolize the neglect and dis­ order of Appalachian life, the application and placement of media pages was highly structured, following collectively established pat­ terns but still allowing the possibility for individualized expression. Most important, this practice was base d on the Appalachian custom of transforming nonfunctioning machine-made objects into objects fit for everyday use. Worn-out shoes, for example, became hinges, and empty lard buckets were turned into stools, or cut into strips and used for chimney flashing. 6 A log wall first had to be prepared for papering by applying a heavy paper or cardboard to smooth out uneven surfaces and by filling any large holes with wads of rolled paper or burlap, since the wallpaper would split over any open spaces as the paste dried. Proper application of the paper meant no tears or breaks could appear. Children also had a tendency to want to stick their finger s through such places. A board and batten house had straighter walls and needed only a cardboard undercoating, which served as insulatio n and as a backing for the paper. Paper saved for wallcovering was held on with a paste made from boiled water and flour, which , when mixed to the right consistency, was thin enough to spread evenly but too thick to run down the walls.

17

DECORATING THE APPALACHIAN HOUSE

It was important to remove the lumps either by hand or with a short broom. One former paperer recalled: You take your hand and get all the lumps out of it. Then you stir it and it will be very smooth, the paste is. If it lumps, it's not very good. It's not good to leave it over either. You usually try to use up what paste you make that day or it' s not very good . 7

A paste mixed so that it was smooth and clear would not show through the paper. Red pepper and rat poison were sometimes added to keep the mice from eating it. Sweet anise and arrowroot, which grew along the high ridges and had a licorice taste, were dug up, the roots dried, ground to a fine powder, and added to the paste to give it a sweet aroma. The act of papering itself was thought to give a room a fresh look and smell. The sheets of paper were laid flat on a table and a small brush was used to dab a small amount of paste in the corners, around the edges, and once or twice in the center. It was then applied with the pasted side to the wall, beginning in any corner, either 1 , 5, 1 6, or 20. (Figure 3 represents a papered wall showing the relative positions of the pages. Each page is given a number to show the possible sequences in which it could be pasted.) The next sheet was then applied, with particular attention being paid to keeping the borders straight and overlapping the previous page by about an inch. Straight edges were thought to look correct. If its lines were not uniform, a papered wall could not be

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CHARLES E. MARTIN

considered attractive. Two basic patterns of application, either hori­ zontal or vertical, were followed. If number 1 was the first sheet applied, the rest followed the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or the 1, 6, 1 1 , 16, 2, 7 sequence. Any paper that overlapped the edge of the wall was care­ fully trimmed with scissors or pocketknife. Of the three types of paper used, magazine paper was the favorite because of its heavy weight. It lasted longer and coal dust discolored it more slowly. Newspaper and catalog paper were of the same light weight and needed to be papered over as often as every two weeks because of fading and discoloration. One informant told of her father saying he needed to rush home before the dress styles in the paper pasted to the walls changed again. 8 Newspaper did have its advan­ tages: if sheets were chosen without photographs, it approximated a wall painted white. The white background's domination of the black print was the reason newspaper was used on ceilings. Before electric­ ity, newspaper reflected outside light better and made the room seem brighter. Also, stray pages with photographs were thought to upset the visual uniformity of a wall or ceiling covered only with print. Pages with photos, on the other hand, were sometimes consistently chosen so that the wall was awash with what were considered interesting images. 9 This policy of photo versus non-photo was flexible enough to change, though, by the next papering. With newspaper it was important that the print face right side up. (Occasionally, however, the print was purposely applied upside down, since it was regarded by some as a sin to read anything but the Bible.) The older and more illiterate residents could often only tell which way was up by the inclusion of pages with photos; they spaced the photo pages evenly with the non-photo so that an acceptable mixture of both ran along the wall. If no photo pages were available, it was still necessary to have the edges absolutely straight even though the writing was often upside down. A different practice was to cut the pages square and alternate them so that the newsprint columns in square 1 (see Figure 3) were vertical, those in square 6 were horiz ontal, 11 vertical, 16 horizontal, 2 horizontal, and so forth, so that a checker­ board pattern was formed. Another pattern had the newsprint col­ umns in line 1, 6, 1 1 , and 16 run vertically, and the columns in line 2, 7, 12, and 17 run horizontally so that each column alternated print direc­ tion. These were called "crazy quilt" walls. Usually, if not enough of one type of paper was available to go around a room, then two or more types were used, but none could be mixed on the same wall. Newspaper might be used on three walls but even if there was enough to do half of the fourth, catalog paper was

DECORATING THE APPALACHIAN HOUSE

19

substituted instead. It was thought to be too visually disordered to co mbine the two on one wall. Another use of newsprint was to serve as a bland background for favorite color pictures from magazines which were pasted in the center of a wall or over the fireplace. In this scheme it was important not to use newspaper with photos which could detrac t from the central focal point. The outline of the wall was like a large frame, the newsprint was the mat, and the magazine picture the painting. Sometimes, to ac­ centuate the central picture even more, one of two devices was used: the newspaper to be used along the wall' s edges (boxes 1, 6, 1 1 , 16 , 17, 18, 19, 20, 15, 10 , 5, 4, 3, and 2) was folded in a back-and-forth pattern and notched on one end with scissor s. When unfolded, the ends opened into a symmetrical cut-out design, which was then pasted on with the scalloped e dges nearer the outside perimeter of the wall. The darker colored cardboar d underneath accentuated the scalloped edges. This method was even used without benefit of a central picture (Figure 4). The other fashion was to paper the same outside perimeter with magazine page s held in no particular regard except as a contrast­ ing, colorful border to the white , central background and as an accent to the central picture area. Each wall paperer exercise d personal prefer­ ence in her choice of the middle picture. Preferred pictured subjects

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