Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and published by the University of North Carolina Press, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture is a twenty-four volume series that is a revised and expanded version of the original Encyclopedia of Southern Culture published as a single volume in 1989. Currently, the first ten volumes of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture are in print. Volume 4, Myths, Manners, and Memory, is a highly relevant and provocative collection that deals with collective attitudes, beliefs, and memories about the fluid and contested region of the South.
At first glance, one might assume that Myths, Manners, and Memory is an unlikely assembly of three unlucky letter “M”s, caught in the categorizational fervor of encyclopedia-making. On the contrary, however, these topics merge quite poignantly in this collection. This volume “examines how representations of the region and its people, their patterns of etiquette and social interaction, and their remembrance of the past have helped make it a region that resonates with people who see its many creative expressions” (xvii). Many scholars recognize that myths about the South have played a role in making the South a distinctive region (xvii), validating beliefs about the South in narratives of a collective consciousness. It is impossible to separate the physical region of the South from the mythic South that is socially constructed, and the overview of these ideas provided in this volume is tantamount to understanding why the South is such an enduring concept.
The notions of historical memory and a mythic South are two that naturally seem fitting to be included in the same volume, and entries on historical memory, such as “Confederate Monuments,” “Museums,” or “Jim Crow,” or on specific myths such as “Plantation Myth,” “New South Myth,” “Garden Myth,” or “Lost Cause Myth” are documented. Often, however, these concepts merge in discussions of specific topics such as “Civil War Reenactments,” “Fighting South,” or “Stereotypes.” Social interaction is discussed throughout the volume and specifically the entries “Etiquette of Race Relations in the Jim Crow South,” “Ladies and Gentlemen,” “Manners,” and “Visiting.” Some entries morph into accounts of Southern meaning, such as those on “Community,” “Family,” and “Sexuality.” For example, in “Family,” author Ted Ownby writes that “People in the South sometimes like to claim that an attachment to family, or even a sense of family, is an important regional trait, but their definitions of family vary so widely that it is clear the concept has far different meanings for different people. Perhaps the best generalization is that people in the South have often used the concept of the family to think and argue--and have sometimes used it to fight--about who they are and want to be” (55). In fact, it is often a southern-specific interpretation of meaning that is discussed in many of the individual entries, such as “Beauty,” “Sexuality,” and “Sense of Place.”
While the contributors to this volume occasionally make generalized statements about the whole South or all Southerners, most often care is taken to provide specific ethnographic examples that stand on their own rather than unnecessarily represent the entirety. Because the work is an encyclopedia, many of the entries focus on breadth over time rather than depth. However, the majority of this volume is richly detailed and theoretically engaging. The volume is abundant with theoretical perspectives, even including entries on “Modernism and Postmodernism.” The “Cult of Beauty” entry is particularly notable and includes much research on the myth of southern beauty, particularly as it pertains to beauty pageants and the energy and expense that Southerners spend on pageantry, “rituals that perform a specific, regional notion of gender.” This entry combines well with others such as “Gays” and “Sexuality” for an overall portrayal of gender and sexuality in the South.
One criticism of this otherwise remarkable volume is that this volume of The New Encyclopedia often seems to be an updated account of the Old South, dwelling on history rather than the present day (History is a separate volume in the encyclopedia series), and contemporary practices are discussed in some entries only as afterthoughts. The volume’s emphasis on historical memory notwithstanding, entries that focus on memory such as that on “Confederate Monuments” merely hint at contemporary consciousness, as when author Thomas Brown notes “several attempts to remove or recontextualize” some Confederate monuments. More detail about contemporary interactions with historical memory--the reinterpretation and recontextualization of memory--would reveal change in collective consciousness that is noteworthy. The entry “Manners” contains some interesting contemporary anecdotal material that makes one wish for deeper analysis of today’s practices. While these historical analyses of southern cultural history are indeed fascinating and important, more focus on contemporary practices would be welcome additions to this volume. Notable exceptions to the volume’s heavy focus on the past are the entries “Motherhood” and “Sexuality,” which draw from and interpret contemporary practice.
Ironically, my criticism is itself addressed in the entry “Memory,” in which author W. Scott Poole writes that some Southerners argue that there is a Southern obsession with the past (106). Indeed, the South maintains a “culture of remembrance” in which remembering, commemorating, and re-interpreting the past are flourishing activities reserved not only for scholars. It is this culture of remembrance as it is practiced today that deserves equal documentation in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Myths, Manners, and Memory. Quibbles aside, this volume is an extraordinary collection of topics that encompass the beliefs and attitudes that define the South and is an essential read for those who wish to understand how the South is imagined and lived.
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[Review length: 949 words • Review posted on August 5, 2008]