Gerald R. Webster

The American mosaic : the impact of space, time, and culture on American politics

The author presents his theory of American political behaviour for all students of political science. Drawn together in this text are the outlines of several major themes and concepts essential to Elazars understanding of the way the US political system works: American pluralism, historical change, federalism, urbanization and the metropolitan shift and the forces of political culture.

Whose South is it anyway? Race and the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina

Abstract The states of the former Confederacy are embroiled in vitriolic debates over the display and meaning of the Confederate battle flag. The purpose of this study is to examine this conflict in South Carolina through an analysis of two legislative votes taken in the states House of Representatives. After first discussing the studys relevance, this article provides a brief historical overview of the contested meanings of the flag. It then focuses upon the debate in South Carolina using a logistical regression analysis to model legislative voting on the issue. It finds legislative positions on the battle flag are strongly divided along partisan and racial lines. These finding are then discussed in the context of “ethnic” nationalism and whiteness studies.

Political Culture, Religion, and the Confederate Battle Flag Debate in Alabama

The American South is beset by a series of widespread and vitriolic debates over the meaning of symbols associated with the short-lived Confederate States of America (1861-1865). The largest proportion of these controversies pertains to the Confederate Battle Flag and the contrasting understanding of the flags meaning by both black and white southerners. The purpose of this article is to examine the debate over the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag in the chambers of the Alabama House of Representatives. After analyzing a 1999 vote by legislators on the issue, the controversy is considered in the context of the Souths traditionalistic political culture and historic adherence to conservative Protestantism. The article concludes that both political culture and religion aid in an understanding of the passionate condemnations and defenses of the Confederate Battle Flag.

A Sociodemographic and Partisan Analysis of Voting in Three Anti-Gay Rights Referenda in Oregon*

Since 1988, three separate anti-gay rights referenda have been placed on the ballot in the state of Oregon. While in 1988 Oregon voters passed the first measure (subsequently found unconstitutional), they rejected similar referenda in 1992 and 1994. This paper examines the electoral geography of these three referenda both cartographically and quantitatively. It finds patterns of support for the referenda were closely associated with voting patterns for the Republican Party in gubernatorial and presidential elections, and with sociodemographic indicators reflective of traditionalist areas.

The Bible Belt in a Changing South: Shrinking, Relocating, and Multiple Buckles

The term “Bible Belt,” a familiar label associated with religion in the South, was coined by journalist H.L. Mencken following his coverage of the Scopes “monkey” trial in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. It has been used regularly since that time to refer to a religiously conservative or fundamentalist region in the American South and sometimes the Midwest, though its exact geographic extent remains debatable. Geographers have attempted to define the location of the Bible Belt in the past. Most notably Heatwole defined the geographic extent of the Bible Belt in a 1978 article using 1971 data from the Glenmary Research Center. We replicate his effort for 1971, but add cartographic and statistical analyses for 1980, 1990 and 2000. Changes in the Belt’s location have occurred as a result of new migrants to the South as well as shifts within the region itself. The Bible Belt region today stretches from northern Texas to western North Carolina, and from Mississippi north to Kentucky. Also the region’s core or “buckle” was located in eastern Tennessee in the 1970s, but by 2000 it had moved west to north-central Texas and southwestern Oklahoma. Dynamism and fluidity as well as tradition continue to be important forces shaping the region’s religious landscapes.

Quantitatively Delineating the Black Belt Geographic Region

The Southern Black Belt has been variously defined in character and geographic extent. In the nineteenth century settlement focused upon the region’s rich dark soils for which it was originally named. The Black Belt became the site of the South’s Antebellum plantation-cotton-slave complex. Today many of the counties in the region have large African American populations and are more noted for their lack of economic opportunities than the fertility of their soils. As a result, the Black Belt region is now more commonly defined on demographic and economic factors than soil. Using principal components analysis, this study attempts to define quantitatively the county membership of the Alabama and Georgia Black Belts based upon a set of criteria commonly associated with the character of the Black Belt. It finds the Alabama Black Belt has greater uniformity of character than the Georgia Black Belt, and that growing urbanization has brought economic opportunities to some portions of the region.

Rebel with a cause? Iconography and public memory in the Southern United States

Recent years have witnessed debates in the American South between traditional white Southerners and African American Southerners over whether and how symbols from the regions two defining historical events – the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement – are displayed on the regions landscape. This paper examines the most contentious of these debates, the conflict over government sanction for flying the various flags of the Confederate States of America. This article first discusses the concepts of iconography and public memory, and then the role of Confederate flags in traditional white Southern iconography. We then examine four recent attempts in the states of Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, and within the chambers of the U.S. Senate to remove government sanction for flying Confederate flags. We conclude from these debates that while icons can act as centripetal forces binding a people together, they can also emerge as centrifugal forces, further splitting apart a regions population along major cultural and racial divisions.

Fifty Years of Political Change in the South: Electing African Americans and Women to Public Office

In the 50 years since the founding of SEDAAG there has been marked political change in the South. In this article, we examine one aspect of change in southern politics—the election of women and African Americans to public office. Historically excluded from political power in the South, these two groups are in many ways highly indicative of the consequences of the changing politics of the region. This aspect of the changing South is examined through a historical summary of the success over time of African Americans and women in gaining access to political office in the region. We conclude that while recent increases in the levels of black representation in the region have been impressive (albeit thanks to federal pressure), the South continues to lag behind the rest of the country in electing women to public office.

Geographical Patterns of Religious Denomination Affiliation in Georgia, 1970-1990: Population Change and Growing Urban Diversity

The religious landscape of the South has long been dominated by a small number of evangelical Protestant denominations, most particularly the Baptists and Methodists. But the region has experienced a tremendous rate of in-migration from both inside and outside the United States in recent decades. Have these in-migrants altered the Souths traditional geographic patterns of religious denomination affiliation? The central purpose of this study is to examine Georgias denominational landscape between 1970 and 1990 to determine if changes have occurred, and are likely to continue in coming decades. The studys primary focus is upon seven denominations including Southern Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, Mormons, and Pentecostals. Among its findings are that Southern Baptists and Methodists are slowly declining in their proportion of the states population, most particularly in the states metropolitan areas. In contrast, Catholics are rapidly increasing in the states urban areas, and both Mormons and Pentecostals are growing very rapidly in a diverse set of rural and urban locations.

Sustaining the “Societal and Scriptural Fence”: Cultural, Social, and Political Topographies of Same-Sex Marriage in Alabama

In June 2006, voters in Alabama overwhelmingly approved a statewide referendum that added a prohibition against same-sex marriage to the states constitution. This research examines the Alabama vote by “placing” the politics of sexuality within the states multifaceted web of cultural and social space. We fuse a traditional electoral geography approach with an overall postpositivist cultural and social perspective, beginning with an assessment of the politics of place by situating Alabama as a place with a long history of battles over the so-called culture wars. The cultural politics of the legislative debate and the geographic distribution of the actual vote are also examined within a socio-demographic context, drawing some comparisons from a similar vote in Georgia in 2004, another state in the American Deep South. Those opposed to same-sex marriage in Alabama made effective use of various social constructions that are deeply embedded within a “moral” geography, situating the state as a fenced-off bastion of “religious traditional values,” a common theme throughout the American South. In this vein, social boundaries and territory were demarcated as a powerful political act in Alabama, a strategy that situated the state as hetero-normatively “in place,” while deeming sexual minorities as “out of place.”