The minds of the West : ethnocultural evolution in the rural Middle West, 1830-1917 / Jon Gjerde.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gjerde, Jon, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Acculturation--Middle West.

Acculturation.

Ethnology--Middle West.

Ethnology.

Immigrants--Middle West--History.

Immigrants.

Middle West--Social conditions.

Middle West.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 426 p. ) ill. ;

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill ; London : The University of North Carolina Press, [1997]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the century preceding World War I, the American Middle West drew thousands of migrants both from Europe and from the northeastern United States. In the American mind, the region represented a place where social differences could be muted and a distinctly American culture created. Many of the European groups, however, viewed the Midwest as an area of opportunity because it allowed them to retain cultural and religious traditions from their homelands. Jon Gjerde examines the cultural patterns, or "minds, " that those settling the Middle West carried with them. He argues that such cultural transplantation could occur because patterns of migration tended to reunite people of similar pasts and because the rural Midwest was a vast region where cultural groups could sequester themselves in tight-knit settlements built around familial and community institutions. Gjerde compares patterns of development and acculturation across immigrant groups, exploring the frictions and fissures experienced within and between communities. Finally, he examines the means by which individual ethnic groups built themselves a representative voice, joining the political and social debate on both a regional and national level.

Contents:

Pt. 1. Region

1. Prospects of the West: A Promise and a Threat

2. Burden of Their Song: Immigrant Encounters with the Republic

Pt. 2. Community

3. We'll Meet on Canaan's Land: Patterns of Migration

4. You Can't Put All Your Horses in One Corral: Conflict and Community

Pt. 3. Family

5. Farming Is a Hard Life: Household and the Agricultural Workplace

6. Tale of Two Households: Patterns of Family

7. Mothers and Siblings among the Corn Rows: The Individual Life Course and Community Development

Pt. 4. Society

8. They Soon Abandoned Their Wooden Shoes: Ethnic Group Formation

9. Teach the Children Domestic Economy: Conceptions of Family, Community, and State

10. So Great Is Now the Spirit of Foreign Nationality: Late-Nineteenth-Century Political Conflict.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9798890868350

9780807861677

0807861677