The nine nations of North America
by Joel Garreau · first published 1981
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North America is really Nine Nations. Each has its capital and its distinctive web of power and influence. A few are allies, but many are adversaries. Several have readily acknowledged national poets, and many have characteristic dialects and mannerisms. Some are close to being raw frontiers; others have four centuries of history. Each has a peculiar economy; each commands a certain emotional allegiance from its citizens. These nations look different, feel different, and sound different from each other, and few of their boundaries match the political lines drawn on current maps. Some are clear
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…shared people. You see this in the "union" part of the soviet union and the 56 nations of China, though this is frequently disingenuously translated as "ethnic groups". * building off the above book, "The Nine Nations of North America" is a must read. This was written by Joel Garreau. * "Racial ideas and the impact of imperialism in Europe": https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1084877980857986... * "the color complex: the…
Don't forget to include Joel Garreau's "The Nine Nations of North America". The theme is similar, but the outcome is slightly different.
on “An Economic Geography of the United States: From Commutes to Megaregions (2016)” ↗If you are interested in this, there are two related books -- American Nations [1] which was inspired by The Nine Nations of North America [2] as well as the data presented in the link above -- that explore geographic variation in American subcultures. There is also some recent work in personality psychology that aims to get at regional…
on “American English Dialects” ↗Reminds me of Joel Garreau's Nine Nations of North America (1981) about which he commented 3 decades later: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/03/where-do-bor... It also ignores state boundaries, but includes Canada and parts of Mexico and the Caribbean.
on “A New Map for America” ↗…west. You'd expect to see lots of linguistic diversity in a place where different cultures are rubbing up against each other. Interestingly, Woodard's book echoes an earlier work, Joel Garreau's 1981 The Nine Nations of North America (https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Nations-North-America/dp/0380578...). Garreau, however, put all of NC inside his "Dixie" nation, the analogue to Woodard's "Deep South." I wonder how much of this can be chalked…
on “On Ocracoke Island, the only American dialect that is not identified as American” ↗…are about the only way to do it. This means you can have a shortage of water in one place, and water available somewhere else, and not be able to fix things. Then, as Joel Garreau pointed out in "The Nine Nations of North America", there's the difference in viewpoint between northern and southern California. Southern California (think LA) believes in development, growth, conquering nature. Northern California believes in harmony…
on “California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought” ↗…Carribean. I think the article mentions some of these same cities as being important centers for their regions. EDIT: wiki page might be better for facilitating discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Nations_of_North_America
on “How the Crash Will Reshape America” ↗In "The Nine Nations of North America", Joel Garreau put it like this (from memory, not verbatim): "This is all discombobulated in terms of traditional Democratic and Republican positions. "The Democrats tend to be quality-of-life people.…
on “Trump's Big Border Wall Is Now a Pile of Rusting Steel” ↗Go back to "The Nine Nations Of North America" by Joel Garreau in 1981. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_Amer...
on “The American Nations regions across North America” ↗I try to explain North America to others like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Nations_of_North_America
on “After correcting for demographics, US schools fare better than EU/Asian schools” ↗"The Nine Nations of North America" and "Albion's Seed" have detailed data on the distinct cultural regions of the US, but no genetic information.
on “Genetic map of Europe; genes vary as a function of distance” ↗