Wilbur Zelinsky

The Cultural Geography of the United States

A classic exploration of the role of geography in shaping the people and destiny of the United States.

On Some Patterns in International Tourist Flows

or some of the years from 1948 through 1966, the rate of growth appears to be even more rapid, see Table 1.1 In view of its great and increasing economic import, the probable signficance of tourism in diffusing information and attitudes, and its even greater future potential for modifying patterns of migration, balance of payments, land use, and general socioeconomic structure with the introduction of third-generation jet transport and other innovations in travel, it is startling to discover how little attention the circulation of tourists

THE UNIQUENESS OF THE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE

The assemblage of objects that constitute the publicly visible religious landscape of the United States—houses of worship and a variety of church‐related enterprises—deviates so markedly from its counterparts in other lands that we can regard its uniqueness as a significant argument for American exceptionalism. The diagnostic features in question include the extraordinary number and variety of churches and denominations, their special physical attributes, the near‐random microgeography of churches in urban areas, and, most especially, their nomenclature and the widely distributed signage promoting godliness and religiosity. Such landscape phenomena suggest connections with much‐deeper issues concerning the origin and evolution of American society and culture.

The roving palate: North America's ethnic restaurant cuisines

Abstract Although patterns of food consumption, and foodways in general, have profound social, cultural and economic implications, geographers and other social scientists have accorded the topic minimal attention. By examining the identity, number and location of restaurants in the United States and Canada offering self-consciously ‘ethnic’ and regional cuisines, i.e. a form of gastronomic tourism, to largely non-ethnic and extra-regional patrons, we can begin to explore the shifting connotations of ethnicity and the general transnationalization of culture in recent years, as well as changing food preferences. The information available in classified telephone directories for 271 metropolitan areas (the SMSAs of the U.S. and their Canadian equivalents) enables us to chart the larger outlines of the North American ethnic restaurant scene ca. 1980. Analysis of all recent Pennsylvania directories and those of Philadelphia over the period 1920–1980 provides insight into the nonmetropolitan and historical dimensions of the phenomenon. Ethnic restaurant cuisines are now both quite numerous and widespread throughout the continent, and contain dietary items from virtually all the many immigrant groups present, be they major or minor. But the incidence of the cuisines relative to total number of inhabitants or restaurants varies greatly among regions and by category of metropolis. Furthermore, there is usually at best only a weak relationship between the geographic pattern of a given cuisine and that of the related immigrant stock. On the other hand, socioeconomic class, regional culture and volume of affluent visitors seem to be significant determinants. Of special interest are the patterns for the three dominant cuisines, Chinese, Italian and Mexican, and their variants, and the two most important elite cuisines, the French and Japanese.

THE GEOGRAPHER AS VOYEUR

w h e t h e r they are aware of it or not, I suspect that what has motivated the instigators of this special issue of the Geographical Review is no slight nervousness over the intellectual respectability of fieldwork within the geographical discipline. Well might they worry, at least in the short term, for the quantifiable facts are hardly comforting. But I must insist on taking the long view-indeed, an exceedingly long view-in reporting that the prognosis is not all that bleak. I base my argument on the uniqueness of the human creature. Homo sapiens is a mammal, but of a most special sort, being the only species with the capability of uttering fully developed languages. And the human brain that can engage in verbal wizardry can also devise an endless series of devices to separate us farther from the remainder of the animal kingdom. Unlike other creatures, which are inextricably tied to the here and now, to their immediate surroundings, human beings can transport themselves anywhere and anywhen mentally; and in physical terms they can sequester themselves within artificial or even “virtual” settings, shut off from the outer world. This duality of our existence, dwelling as we do in our own mental and material cocoons but also ultimately linked, like all other organisms, to the actualities of our planet, is what lies behind the current plight of the advocate of geographical fieldwork. At the moment, it is the fashionableness of the cerebral and the mechanical that puts the field-worker on the defensive. Eventually, however, we have no choice but to maintain awareness of our environs even as we invent new ways to rise above and beyond them, no choice but to accept that neither life nor scholarship can be satisfactory unless we reconcile the human superstructure in our legacy with the generic mammalian substructure. Well, then, just what is the status of fieldwork within the ranks of professional geographers today? How does it rate as a topic for serious cogitation, research, or pedagogy? The sad and simple answer is: Pretty much fallen off the screen. For a once-vaunted venture to spiral into such a lowly estate is a radical departure from days of yore. During the first centuries of the Modern Age, the heroic phase of West-

Is Nonmetropolitan America being repopulated? The evidence from Pennsylvania’s minor civil divisions

We analyze population change and net migration, by age and sex, from 1940 to 1970, for 1,834 Nonmetropolitan Pennsylvania Minor Civil Divisions (MCD’s) classified by residence, population potential, socioeconomic status, and distance from metropolitan centers. Our analysis indicates, as expected, reconcentration of residents from both urban and remoter nonmetropolitan localities into exurban peripheries 25 to 35 miles from metropolitan centers. Since 1960, however, a “turnaround” appears in many truly rural tracts, which have been experiencing an influx or retention of persons 35 years of age and older. Statistical explanations are strongest for males in poor, isolated places, weakest for more accessible, socioeconomically advanced places and their female inhabitants. Throughout the study period and area, nonurban MCD’s register more positively than the rural.

Coping with the migration turnaround : the theoretical challenge.

The authors of the three main papers in this symposium have covered their ground thoroughly, expertly, and with more than a token dose of self-critical skepticism. Since I have only the tiniest of nits to pick with any of these three works, I’d like to spend my few paragraphs here in a different fashion: by standing back and excavating the larger issues imbedded in these papers using the broadest perspective I can muster.

Changes in the Geographic Patterns of Rural Population in the United States 1790-1960

IF ANY theme dominates in the human geography of the United States, it is certainly that of vigorous, accelerating change. The population patterns of this nation have been particularly volatile and symptomatic of the rapid transformation of its total geographical character; hence any approach to American population geography-and through this seminal topic to the broader aspects of our human scene-must necessarily treat dynamics as a central issue.

The Historical Geography of the Negro Population of Latin America.

With the recent upsurge of interest in the study of the American Negro, the need for an overall synthesis of the existing knowledge in the field has made itself felt with increasing urgency. Initially, it seemed reasonable to the writer that such a synthesis could be organized about a discussion of the historical geography of the American Negro; but a survey of the literature has convinced me that such a synthesis, to be adequate, would require a lifetime of preparation both in the library and in the field and an extraordinary understanding of American history and culture. Only because the subject has been almost totally neglected by the geographer and demographer have I ventured to undertake this tentative historical-geographical study. Although principal emphasis rests on questions of distribution, temporal relationships, and statistics, sketchy statements of the other major problems in this field are to be included. In brief, then, this will be an examination of the matter of where, when, and in what numbers Negroes have been present in Latin America, the possible explanations for these phenomena, and, in a cursory fashion, their significance within the totality of American life. It is hoped that this paper, circumscribed though it be, may yet afford some frame of reference for others concerned with Negro studies since this may well be the first occasion on which geographic and cartographic methods have been applied to the Latin American sector of Negro studies. A word of explanation on the areal limitations of this paper is in order. Although perhaps no other social phenomenon has such a strongly developed hemispheric continuity nor has so notably transcended the generally slharp cultural dichotomy of the Americas as has the Negro and

The Indochinese Peninsula: A Demographic Anomaly

It is a commonplace that the great majority of the worlds inhabitants are concentrated within a few demographic areas covering only a small portion of the surface of the earth. Of these, perhaps only three are of a first order of magnitude, while easily the greatest of these, the agglomeration in Monsoon Asia, may contain as much as 50 per cent and certainly more than 40 per cent of the worlds population. Within this crescent of favored littorals and archipelagoes, certain areas – Japan, China, Java, India, and Tonkin in particular – demonstrate the most delicate and potentially disastrous balance between the physical endowment of an area and the ability of men to win a livelihood and to increase their numbers.