Inventory of the Field Studies in the Modern Culture of the South Records, 1945-1957

Collection Number 4214

Manuscripts Department, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Contact Information:

Manuscripts Department

CB#3926, Wilson Library

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890

Phone: 919/962-1345

Fax: 919/962-3594

Email: mss@email.unc.edu

URL: http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/

Processed by

William T. Auman, Tim West

Date Processed

May 1985

Encoded by

Roslyn Holdzkom

Date Encoded

September 2003

Descriptive Summary

Repository

Southern Historical Collection

Creator

Title

Field Studies in the Modern Culture of the South Records, 1945-1957

Call Number

4214

Extent

10,700 items (6.0 linear feet)

Language

English.

Administrative Information

Restrictions to Access

This collection has restrictions to access. Please see details below or contact the Manuscripts Department for more information.

Usage Restrictions

Publication of names of individuals mentioned in the field notes is forbidden until 1 January 2025.

Provenance

Received from Mrs. John Gillin of Chapel Hill, N.C., in 1980. Photographic negatives added by John Reed in April 1992 (Acc. 92053).

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Field Studies in the Modern Culture of the South Records #4214, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Online Catalog Headings

These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.

Anthropology--Research--Alabama.

Anthropology--Research--North Carolina.

Avery County (N.C.)--Social conditions.

Brewton (Ala.)--Social conditions.

Camden (Ala.)--Social conditions.

Community organization--Southern States.

Diet--Southern States.

Folklore--Southern States.

Housing--Southern States.

Labor--Southern States.

Selma (Ala.)--Social conditions.

Southern States--History--20th century.

Southern States--Religion--20th century.

Technology--Social aspects--Southern States.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Institute for Research in Social Science.

York County (S.C.)--Social conditions.

Historical Note

In 1946, the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, received a grant from the Rosenwald Fund to support a series of studies of the contemporary culture of the American South. This project was directed by John Gillin, professor of Anthropology at UNC. The following description of the project is based on Research in Service to Society: The First Fifty Years of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by Guy Benton Johnson and Guion Griffis Johnson (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1980), pages 153-154.

Five communities, representing five different subcultural areas, were chosen for study. One of these, a North Carolina coastal community on Core Sound, was to be studied by Gillin himself. Doctoral candidates were responsible for the field work in the other communities. Vladimir Hartman studied a North Carolina mountain community, Morton Rubin was responsible for the study of a Deep South plantation community in Alabama, while Charles Peavy dealt with a "piney woods" community in southern Alabama. The fifth area was a textile town in Piedmont South Carolina, to which three scholars were assigned. Kenneth Morland studied the mill community, Ralph C. Patrick, Jr., studied the town itself, and Hylan Lewis, a young black sociologist from Atlanta University, observed the ways of the black people of the town. In addition, Gillin planned to write a summary volume on the culture of the modern South.

Although the whole series was not published as planned, the project resulted in a number of excellent dissertations and in several significant publications. Morton Rubin's Plantation County was published in 1951, Hylan Lewis's Blackways of Kent in 1955, and Kenneth Morland's Millways of Kent in 1958. Hartman's work resulted in his 1957 doctoral dissertation, "A Cultural Study of a Mountain Community in Western North Carolina." Ralph Clinton Patrick's disseration, "A Cultural Approach to Social Stratification," (Harvard University, 1954) was also a result of this work. Gillin's heavy involvement in other researches, particularly his studies of Latin American culture, plus his departure for the University of Pittsburgh in 1959, prevented the completion of the projected summary volume on the culture of the South. A paper that he published in 1951 in collaboration with Emmett J. Murphy, entitled "Notes on Southern Culture Patterns," was indicative of what such a volume would have attempted to do. The article presented the results of the field workers' efforts to delineate the content of the southern subcultures. A checklist headed "Some Characteristic Traits in Areas of the South," covering over two hundred items under such categories as technology, housing, food, labor, stratification, and religion, was used to determine the presence or absence of a given trait in each of the five subcultures. The tentative conclusion was that "it is impossible to say what is distinctively Southern with any degree of finality."

Collection Overview

This collection consists almost entirely of notes based on interviews and observations made in the field by six of the seven Modern Culture of the South project researchers. Gillin's own planned field work was never conducted.

Most of the notes apparently were transcribed from recordings made by the researchers at the end of each day's field work. They refer primarily to conversations the researchers had with individuals in the communities being studied. The notes include much detail not included in the works based on them. The actual names of places, institutions, and individuals, for example, are used in the notes but not in the books.

The notes are on 4 x 6 sheets and constitute Series 1 of the collection. Series 2 consists of a travel notes by John Gillin and a few other miscellaneous project-related items. Series 3 consists of 33 photographs made by researchers in York, S.C., and in the area around Selma and Camden, Ala.

Organization of Collection

Series 1. Research Notes
Series 2. Other Papers
Series 3. Volumes
Series 4. Pictures.

Detailed Description of the Collection

10: Basic Data
11: History
12: Total Culture
13: Language
14: Communication
15: Exploitative Activities (farming, etc.)
16: Technology
17: Capital
18: Housing
19: Eating and Food Training: habits; food budget; waste.
20: Drinking: its effects; attitudes toward; aggression and dependency in drinking habit.
21: Dress and Adornment: clothes and sex typing.
22: Routine of Living
23: Labor: working habits; the mill; bossmen; women working; ideas concerning work; children working; division of labor; cliques.
24: Specialization
25: Exchange
26: Finance
27: Transportation
28: Travel
29: Recreation
30: Art: folklore.
31: Numbers and Measures
32: Lore and Learning
33: Reaction to Nature
34: Religion: various types; attitudes toward; ideals; superstitions; afterlife; revivals.
35: Ethics
36: Property and Contract
37: Social Stratification: social status; classes; attitudes toward mill workers; mobility; cultural differences; old-hill-new-hill.
37.1: Recreation: gossip; intra?group antagonisms; money; status of rich; guilt; automobiles; punishments; lying; showers; dreams; aggression.
38: Family: distinct family or individual characterizations.
38.1: Family Activities: routines; responsibilities; cleanliness; quarrels; language; fears; skills.
38.3: Residence: moving of family or children.
38.4: Adoption: attitudes toward; examples of.
38.5: Husband-Wife Relations.
38.7: Parent-Child Relations: discipline.
38.8: Sibling Relations.
39: Kinship: obligations and rivalry.
40: Kin and Local Groups
41: Government
42: Law and Social Control
43: Ingroup Conflict
44: War and Peace
45: Human Organism
46: Sex: attitude toward; education in; language; habits; values; knowledge of.
47: Reproduction: attitude toward having children; illegitimacy; abortions; pregnancies; menstruation; superstitions; taboos; markings; guilt feelings; extramarital sex relations; birth and birth control.
48: Infancy: aggression training; superstitions; infant care; nursing; frightening; crying; birthmarks; sleeping; conception of infancy.
49: Childhood
49.2: Transition from Infancy: weening; oral activity.
49.3: Development of Child: toileting; walking; learning to talk.
49.5: Education: attitudes toward; differentiations in school; beauty contests; rewards and punishments; school officers; techniques; aggression; independence.
49.6: Children's Activities: aggression; quarreling; games; ghost stories; drawing; rivalry; ambitions; dreams; fears; birthday parties; responses and duties.
50: Youth: attitude toward; southern patterns; ideals; responsibilities; sex behavior; recreation; independence.
51: Marriage: boy and girl friends; courtship; marriage; old maids; aggression; engagement; slipping off; sex-typed activities.
52: Adulthood
53: Old Age
54: Sickness: illness; medical care; public health; magical curing; psychosomatic illness; vaccinations; treatment of colds; reaction to injury.
55: Death: funerals; death ceremonies; fatalisms; suicides; attitudes toward death.