A few years ago I suggested a research project to study how Americans define themselves in terms of regional identity. For example, if you grew up in South Dakota but live in Washington, D.C., do you you call yourself a midwesterner, a westerner, a southerner, or what? The analogy is to the paper by Michael Hout on “How 4 million Irish immigrants became 40 million Irish Americans.” Contrary to expectations, it wasn’t about prolific breeding, it was about how people of mixed background choose to classify themselves.
Look here http://commoncensus.org/
Not about U.S. regional differences but possibly applicable if someone wants to do that study, Veronica Benet-Martinez has done some interesting work on whether and how biculturals integrate their multiple identities. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15958143
I’ve been working on derived identity rather than explicitly- and self-assigned identity. The data source is the IRS migration tables [http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats—Free-Migration-Data-Downloads] with an assumption that people are more likely to move within a region with which they closely identify.
I’ve spent a good deal of time in South Dakota, and I can safely say that East River folks (those who live or grew up east of the Missouri River) will likely call themselves Midwesterners, and West River folks will feel Western. I suppose someone who has spent many years in Washington, DC, would also say Mid-Atlantic (or other appropriate name), but “South Dakotan” and “Mid / Western” at heart.
This sounds like a really cool idea. I’m guessing there are also differences in preferences for reporting state as opposed to regional affiliation — it’d be really cool if preferences for state identity predicted conservatism.
I believe there has been some research on this in the sports literature (team identification). However, I’m not sure much of it is high quality with respect to relocated fans. At the very least, it may be an interesting corollary to your interests. Unfortunately, I can’t cite anything off the top of my head, as it’s somewhat out of my area.
I think the data might be somewhere in the WVS dataset, but I’m not sure…
Interesting issue. I’ve lived in New York for more than twenty years, but still identify with Pittsburgh and its teams. Lots of Steelers fans all over.
For better or worse, Texans are always Texans, no matter where they might live.
I could not find a link for the paper: anyone? thanks!
The English contribution to American DNA is vastly understated when the Census Bureau asks Americans to identify their “nationality.”
For the record, the paper Andrew referenced was by me and Josh Goldstein, not a solo effort. In fact, Josh did the critical stable-pop modeling and generalized the results from the Irish in the title to several other European-origin groups. -Mike
The Boundary areas are often the most interesting. I am from Baltimore, but working in Canada. Though born south of the Mason-Dixon, I would never call myself a Southerner. I am under the impression that nobody north of the line wants to let Maryland into their grouping. My accent is a mix of southern and northern, so I say to people here that I am from Maryland. Mostly I get blank stares until I mention the Wire and/or proximity to Washington D.C.
As a fellow Baltimorean, I also find Maryland an exceptional place. When I moved to Atlanta and divulged my heritage, one person quipped “At least you’re not a Yankee.”
Maybe I should say Baltimorean instead of Marylander as Mongolia seems as distant from Baltimore as Prince George’s county. I think my dad is still bitter about the time he picked me up from Dulles (ten years ago).
It has been done in terms of southern identity
Patrick R. Miller. Southern Identity as Social Identity: How Much Does “Southerness” Matter to Politics?. Citadel Symposium on Southern Politics, Charleston, SC. 03-2012.
Bart Bronnenberg has a study in which he shows that people who grow up in an area where Hellman’s mayonaise is bigger than Kraft mayonaise keep that preference when they move to an area where Kraft is larger (and vice versa, and there are other products studied). By “preference” here we mean actual purchases. This effect decays over time, but seems to last up to 40 years.
Here’s one data-point. I “grew up in South Dakota but live in Washington, D.C.” and call myself a South Dakotan. If I am forced to identify a regional affiliation it is usually Midwesterner. That being said, if somebody challenges me that the Midwest actually refers to what is geographically the mid-east I relent and call myself a Plainsman or something like that.
Some years ago (probably 35 or so), someone did a study of the geographic identities claimed by persons filling out warranty cards on a nationally distributed product. Among the choices were “South” and “East.” An interesting result was that respondents from Virginia and South Carolina used “South,” but respondents from North Carolina used “East.”