James R. Shortridge

A New Regionalization of American Religion

Using data from a recent detailed survey of church membership, measures for four important dimensions of religion are developed and used to create a regionalization of American religion. The four measures are Catholics as a percentage of total population, liberal Protestant adherents as a percentage of all Protestants, church members as a percentage of total population, and an index of religious diversity. The statistical regionalization has patterns generally similar to those found on two earlier, largely subjective maps of American religious regions. That the same regions appear under different map compliation strategies reinforces the concept of the religious region. When religious regions are compared with other cultural regionalizations major inconsistencies are found in the western Middle West, in New England, and in the northern Plains.

Cities on the plains : the evolution of urban Kansas

From Abilene to Wichita and beyond, a constellation of cities glitters across the fertile plains of Kansas. Their history is entwined with that of the state as a whole, and their size and status are rarely questioned. Yet as James Shortridge reveals, the evolution of urban Kansas remains a largely untold story of competition, rivalry, and metropolitan dreams. Cities on the Plains relates the history of Kansass larger communities from the 1850s to the present. The first book to provide a comprehensive, comparative account of an entire states urban development, it shows how Kansass current hierarchy of cities and urban development emerged from a complex and ongoing series of promotional strategies. Railroads, the mining industry, the cattle trade - all exercised their influence over where and when these settlements were originally established. Drawing on rich historical research filtered through cultural geography, Shortridge looks at the 118 communities that ever achieved a population of 2,500. He tells how mercantilism dominated urban thinking in territorial days until after statehood, when cities competed for the capital, prisons, universities, and other institutions. /

Sacred Worlds: An Introduction to Geography and Religion

This book, the first in the field for two decades, looks at the relationships between geography and religion. It represents a synthesis of research by geographers of many countries, mainly since the 1960s. No previous book has tackled this emerging field from such a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, and never before have such a variety of detailed case studies been pulled together in so comparative or illuminating a way. Examples and case studies have been drawn from all the major world religions and from all continents from both a historical and contemporary perspective. Major themes covered in the book include the distribution of religion and the processes by which religion and religious ideas spread through space and time. Some of the important links between religion and population are also explored. A great deal of attention is focused on the visible manifestations of religion on the cultural landscape, including landscapes of worship and of death, and the whole field of sacred space and religious pilgrimage.

Traditional Rural Houses Along the Missouri-Kansas Border

I-houses and I-cottages predominate in the pre-1940 rural landscape along the Missouri-Kansas border, a region settled by people from different culture areas of the eastern United States. Cultural heritage explains part of the housing pattern, particularly the distributions of I-cottages and one-story bungalows, but for the most part, regional culture associations are not strong. The housing situation is understood better historically. To judge from various external indicators, local I-structures have been influenced by both the Georgian and the Gothic architectural traditions. More recent house types, although often not considered to be products of the folk tradition, nonetheless have traits that link them with this past. Using the construction of I-structures as a general measure, one can say that traditional architecture has been in decline since at least 1880 and that the rate of decline has accelerated through time.

Historical Atlas Of California (review)

on masculinist notions of adventurous risk-taking, gave early manufacturers a pass on product defects. Auto company lawyers successfully argued that consumers, in other words, and not entrepreneurs, were the real risk-takers in early 20th century America (courts similarly bestowed upon injured or killed workers the same heroic role). Clarke explains that auto buyers, in those early days, often resorted to “sociability” (e.g., joined auto clubs) to learn how to safely control their dangerous machines. During the late progressive era, the courts turned against the manufacturers, forcing them to instigate research and testing to make safer, more reliable products; unable to rely on a privileged legal position they had to, instead, win their customers’ trust. Clarke argues that as auto makers sought a mass market, not only did they turn to marketing style and design to increase sales, they also learned that it was actually good business to show customers that owning an auto was not a risky adventure but was safe and fun. Clarke gives an equally remarkable account of the evolution of the auto credit market and the role the government played in that development. Using the twinned themes of “trust” and “power,” Clarke has given us a model for how to understand the historic battle—mediated by the government—between corporate managers fixated on profits and consumers seeking safe and satisfying products. Temple University David Farber