Two Worlds in the Tennessee Mountains: Exploring the Origins of Appalachian Stereotypes (review)

120Southeastern Geographer REVIEW Two Worlds in the Tennessee Mountains: Exploring the Origins of Appalachian Stereotypes. David C. Hsiung. The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington , 1997. xv + 256 pp., maps, tables, photos, figs, bibliography, index. $32.95 cloth (ISBN: 0-8131-2001-2). Tyrel G. Moore Perhaps the most accurate written description of Appalachia is that it is one of America's least-understood regions. That assessment draws attention to a regional geographic diversity that has been recognized only infrequently. For a century and a half, stereotypes rooted in observations drawn from small areas have been extended to represent Appalachia, its development, and its people. The production and persistence of these stereotypes have relied almost exclusively on geographic isolation to explain and depict Appalachia's cultural and economic geography. This generalizing framework did little to advance an understanding ofthe region and its complexity. Impressionistic evaluations and debates of Appalachian stereotypes have claimed a substantial niche in the body of literature in Appalachian studies. They have done little, however, to dispel the persistence of stereotypical views over time. In several instances, a lack of empiricism or an emphasis on locality studies that lacked any comparative structure probably has reinforced the exceptional ism so widely accepted as characteristic ofthe region. As one of a small but growing number ofAppalachian scholars pursuing new directions, historian David Hsiung makes a solid contribution toward rethinking and understanding the region. Two Worlds in the Tennessee Mountains won the 1996 Appalachian Studies Award. In achieving that recognition, Hsiung has built upon the work ofthe late dean of Appalachian studies, Cratis Williams, to take issue with the concept of isolation. He operationalizes his research in an interdisciplinary context to construct theoretical links among community, society, and isolation and arrives at the notion that isolation is relative. David treats isolation as "connectedness," not as a twist of semantics, but to give closer meaning to the internal and external social and economic spatial relations that shaped different parts of antebellum upper East Tennessee. He identifies differences in these relations in an inherently geographic approach by changing scales to illustrate local, regional, and external connections across this corner ofAppalachia. Hsiung's choice ofa study area, and especially his focus on Washington County, seem open to criticism at first glance. That impression fades, though, as one reads on. He examines the study area in a larger spatial context of economic and social relaDr . Moore is Associate Professor ofGeography and Earth Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223. Internet: tgmoore@email. unce. edu. VOL. XXXIX, No. 1 121 tions that reach well beyond local borders. His demonstration of connectedness in upper East Tennessee unfolds in six chapters: Perceptions and Self-perceptions in the Revolutionary Era; the Early Roads; Internal and External Economic Connections; Population Persistence in Washington County; Railroads in East Tennessee; and the Creation ofPopular Appalachian Images. The organization chronicles the area's formative spatial relationships from the time ofthe Revolutionary War through the antebellum period. Each chapter is thoroughly documented, employing an array of archived family papers and county government records, newspaper and trade-journal items, travelers' accounts, local and regional histories, maps and census data. The planning and funding ofrailroads linking Tennessee and Virginia via upper East Tennessee is identified as a pivotal event in the origin of different views of connectedness for the area. Such an event would not be unusual if it simply served to open the area to the outside. Hsiung pieces together an historical record that reveals instead a contrast between inward-looking local citizens who opposed funding for railroads and local promoters who envisioned the area's connection with the outside world. He argues that supporters associated detractors with the backwardness of isolation and conveyed that view to outsiders. In that process, the clash between modernization and the preservation of cultural traditions produced diverging images of the area. Hsiung concludes that stereotypes of the region and its people were shaped in the antebellum period as an internal characterization that later was adopted as an external view of Appalachia. That view was assumed by local color writers as early as the 1850s. Popular images of Appalachia reached a broad readership elsewhere in...