Myth Making Amid the Mountains

Just as many myths about the Melungeons have been created, told and retold by amateurs, myths about Appalachia have been created, told and retold by professionals. This paper examines some of these academic myths and their ramifications:

Appalachian Culture and Economic Development

Ronald L. Lewis
West Virginia University
Dwight B. Billings
University of Kentucky

Journal of Appalachian Studies 1997;3(1):43–69

Abstract: For almost as long as commentators, reformers, and policy makers have worried about how to improve income, living conditions, and human welfare in the southern mountain region of the United States, a significant relationship is assumed to exist between the culture of those who live in Appalachia and the prospects for the region's economic development. Indeed, assumptions about the distinctiveness of Appalachian culture influence the very presumption that Appalachia is in fact a discrete region with a distinctive culture even though most Americans would scoff at the notion of a Rocky Mountain culture or an Adirondac culture.

A central theme in much of the vast popular and scholarly literature about Appalachia contends that deficiencies in mountain culture have contributed to, or at least reinforced, economic backwardness and poverty. Although the myth which links cultural deficiency and economic underdevelopment in Appalachia has been evolving for a century, a large body of literature written by regional scholars during the past twenty-five years, along with a reappraisal of earlier studies, demonstrates a far more complex relationship between Appalachian culture and economic development past and present than previously imagined.

In this paper we will first examine a set of once powerful beliefs about Appalachian culture and its presumed impact on economic development, and then assess existing evidence supporting those interpretations. The assumptions and beliefs include such concepts as isolationism, homogeneity, familism, and fundamentalism. These and a variety of corollary concepts grew out of a popular mythology which came to be accepted and then reified by professionals whose works were influential during the 1960s and 1970s and still influence theory and policy analysis today. The validity of these beliefs, many of which eventually calcified into stereotypes, were challenged during the period of social activism which has flourished throughout Appalachia since the 1970s. The intellectual ferment among activists, scholars, educators, writers, and artists throughout the region during this period has significantly deepened our understanding of the great diversity in Appalachia's geography, history, cultural resources, forms of social and political participation, and its relationship with the national and global markets.

This paper examines how this new knowledge of Appalachian history and culture either modifies or rejects earlier models and perspectives on the relationship between culture and economic development in Appalachia, and will postulate what the newer approaches imply for future economic development strategies and policy-making.

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