Four Sources of Regional Culture

This page is provided mainly for use of students in HIST 431/631, North American Plains, at North Dakota State University. It explains a model for the discussion and understanding of regional culture presented at the beginning of the course and applied throughout. Students in the course should be able to explain each of the points in the model in their own words and provide examples from the cultural history of the plains.

Scholars of the plains have been inclined to explain their subject in determinisms, attributing too much to one or another cause without recognizing the influence of others. The assumption here, however, is that regional culture is formed by many influences, which I have grouped into four main categories and called "Four Sources of Regional Culture." Others might group the influences differently and come up with different categories just as good, but these work.

Source	Explanation	Examples
1. Cultural Heritage	This is the cultural baggage that people bring with them when they come to the region. It includes things material, technical, biological, intellectual, and psychological. Most people are conservative by nature and will hang on to what they have as long as it works. Whereas Canadian scholars long have considered multi-culturalism a defining characteristic of regional life, Americans have come more lately to this realization.	Pedro Lopez Mole Paste, Luther's Small Catechism, the one-room country school
2. Environmental Adaptation	Arriving in a new place, people find that they have to adapt their ways to the physical environment--in this case a level, semiarid, prairie environment. In some matters--especially economic ones--people adapt readily, whereas in others they resist change. American scholars traditionally have emphasized environmental adaptation in shaping the culture of the plains, whereas Canadian scholars have not.	Sod houses, custom harvesting, eight-man football
3. Technological Innovation	Certain technologies have the power to recast regional culture. Some are introduced, while others are devised within the region.	The combined harvester, the center pivot, the automobile
4. The Metropolis	Centers of capital, population, and influence lying to the east and west of the plains have great effect on regional culture. They exercise this influence via government, trade, the media, and other means. Whereas certain American historians (Earl Pomeroy long ago, William Cronon recently) have recognized this, Canadian historians have made the metropolitian thesis their chief interpretive lens for viewing plains history.	The Conservation Reserve Program, the Canadian Pacific Railway, Gunsmoke