Homelands

A Geography of Culture and Place across America

Richard L. Nostrand, Lawrence E. Estaville

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9780801876608
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

What does it mean to be from somewhere? If most people in the United States are "from some place else" what is an American homeland? In answering these questions, the contributors to Homelands: A Geography of Culture and Place across America offer a geographical vision of territory and the formation of discrete communities in the U.S. today. Homelands discusses groups such as the Yankees in New England, Old Order Amish in Ohio, African Americans in the plantation South, Navajos in the Southwest, Russians in California, and several other peoples and places.

Homelands explores the connection of people and place by showing how aspects of several different North American groups found their niche and created a homeland. A collection of fifteen essays, Homelands is an innovative look at geographical concepts in community settings. It is also an exploration of the academic work taking place about homelands and their people, of how factors such as culture, settlement, and cartographic concepts come together in American sociology. There is much not only to study but also to celebrate about American homelands. As the editors state, "Underlying today's pluralistic society are homelands—large and small, strong and weak—that endure in some way. The mosaic of homelands to which people bonded in greater or lesser degrees, affirms in a holistic way America's diversity, its pluralistic society."

The authors depict the cultural effects of immigrant settlement. The conviction that people need to participate in the life of the homeland to achieve their own self realization, within the traditions and comforts of that community. Homelands gives us a new map of the United States, a map drawn with people's lives and the land that is their home.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Free Land, Dry Land, Homeland
• One The New England Yankee Homeland
• Two The Pennsylvanian Homeland
• Three Old Order Amish Homelands
• Four Blacks in the Plantation South: Unique Homelands
• Five The Creole Coast: Homeland to Substrate
• Six Nouvelle Acadie: The Cajun Homeland
• Seven La Tierra Tejana: A South Texas Homeland
• Eight The Anglo-Texan Homeland
• Nine The Kiowa Homeland in Oklahoma
• Ten The Highland-Hispano Homeland
• Eleven The Navajo Homeland
• Twelve Mormondom’s Deseret Homeland
• Thirteen California’s Emerging Russian Homeland
• Fourteen Montana’s Emerging Montane Homeland
• Fifteen American Homelands: A Dissenting View
• References
• Contributors
• Index