Southernization

Not to be confused with the Southern strategy.

In the culture of the United States, the idea of Southernization came from the observation that Southern values and beliefs had become more central to political success, reaching an apogee in the 1990s, with a Democratic President and Vice President from the South and Congressional leaders in both parties being from the South.^[1] Some commentators said that Southern values seemed increasingly important in national elections through the early 21st century. American journalists in the late 2000s used the term "Southernization" to describe the political and cultural effects.^[2]

The mean center of the United States population has moved south since the 1920s.

Description

Values and beliefs often ascribed to the American South include religious conservatism, particularly Protestantism,^[3] culture of honor,^[4] Southern hospitality,^[5] military tradition,^[6][7] agrarian ideals^[8] and American nationalism. Besides the cultural influence, some said that the South had infiltrated the national political stage.^[9]

In 1992, the winning presidential ticket consisted of Bill Clinton, the Governor of Arkansas; and Al Gore, a Senator from Middle Tennessee. From both parties, many leaders in Congress were also from the South. Meanwhile, according to Michael Lind, professor of public affairs at University of Texas at Austin, the Republican Party underwent its own Southernization as more Republican leaders called for policies and principles previously held by conservative or moderate Southern Democrats.^[10] Commentators such as Adam Nossiter and Michael Hirsh suggest that politics reached its apogee of Southernization in the 1990s.^[1]

Southernization of the national politics of the United States can be also noticed in presidential elections. From the Civil War until 1963 there was only one President from the Southern United States, Andrew Johnson, but since then five of the last eleven Presidents have been from the region: Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

Other uses

In World History, the term "Southernization" has been used to describe the influence of South and Southeast Asian Civilizations on the rest of the world. Lynda Shaffer introduced the concept in her 1994 article of the same name, explaining that it is intended to be similar to the use of Westernization for the influence of the West on the rest of the world in the early modern and modern eras.^[11] Her ideas gained popularity with other World Historians and were included in college level textbooks.^[12] Examples of South Asian influence include Hindu–Arabic numerals; the spread of Buddhism; production and overseas trade of sugar, cotton and spices; and the spread of other inventions and discoveries.

The term Southernization has also been used to describe the rise of the Global South, a grouping of most non-Western countries.^[13][14][15]

See also

• United States portal

• Culture of the Southern United States
• Political culture of the United States
• Politics of the Southern United States
• Red states and blue states
• Sun Belt, the growth of the Sun Belt coincided with the process of Southernization
• Flyover country

References

1. Adam Nossiter. "For South, a Waning Hold on Politics". The New York Times. 12 November 2008. Retrieved November 12, 2008.
2. Michael Hirsh (April 25, 2008). "How the South Won (This) Civil War". Newsweek. Retrieved November 22, 2008.
3. Cross, FL, ed. (2005), "Baptists", The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church, New York: Oxford University Press
4. Kenneth S. Greenberg, Honor & Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South (Princeton University Press, 1996)
5. Abbott, Jacob (1835). New England and her Institutions. John Allen. p. 223. ISBN 978-0807859896.
6. Kane, Tim. "Who Bears the Burden? Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Recruits Before and After 9/11". The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved August 30, 2017.
7. Wood, Louise, Amy (2010). The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 19: Violence. Univ of North Carolina Press, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and the Center for the Study of the American South. pp. 112–115. ISBN 9780807872161.
8. Hinson, Ferris, Glenn, William (2010). The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 14: Folklife. Univ of North Carolina Press, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and the Center for the Study of the American South. p. 91. ISBN 978-0807859896.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
9. Michiko Kakutani (March 17, 2006). "Tying Religion and Politics to an Impending U.S. Decline". The New York Times. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
10. Richard Bernstein (July 12, 1996). "Books Of The Times; An Ex-Conservative Indicts the Right". The New York Times. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
11. Shaffer, Lynda (1994). "Southernization". Journal of World History. 5 (1): 1–21. ISSN 1045-6007. JSTOR 20078579.
12. Dunn, Ross E. (2014). Panorama : a world history. Laura Jane Mitchell. New York, NY. ISBN 978-0-07-340704-3. OCLC 861120013.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
13. Mahler, Anne Garland. ""Global South." Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory, ed Eugene O'Brien. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
14. "The South in "Global IR": Worlding Beyond the "Non-West" in the Case of Brazil". Retrieved 2023-11-19.
15. Phillips, Andrew; Sharman, J. C. (2015-04-23). International Order in Diversity: War, Trade and Rule in the Indian Ocean. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-316-29997-5.

Further reading

• Applebome, Peter (1996). Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping American Values, Politics and Culture. New York: Times Books. ISBN 0-8129-2653-6.
• Carter, Dan T. (1996). From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994. Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-19-507680-X.
• Egerton, John (1974). The Americanization of Dixie: the Southernization of America. New York: Harper's Magazine Press. ISBN 0-06-122420-0.
• Perlstein, Rick (2008). Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. New York: Scribner. ISBN 978-0-7432-4302-5.