A Poverty Case: The Analgesic Subculture of the Southern Appalachians

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 140.Social planners have been unable to understand and deal with widespread, apparently "irrational" recalcitrance among the people whose lives they are attempting to "improve," because they hold an essentially rationalistic view of man. Actually, the origin, development and continued survival of many "problem" subcultures can be explained in terms of nonrational responses to environmental circumstances. Drawing on observations of frustration-instigated as distinct from motivation-instigated behavior in Maier's experiments with rats, and on speculations by Toynbee, the author maintains that, to explain, predict and alter the behavior of people in such subcultures, one must recognize the extent to which it reflects that institutionalized nonrational response to frustration which is here termed the "analgesic subculture." The assertion is exemplified by reference to the folk subculture of the Southern Appalachians. DESPITE the presence of a tradition of vigorous dissent and considerable evidence to the contrary, conventional sociology still tends to assume an essentially rationalistic view of man. Reminiscent of the eminently cool and calculating "economic man" of classical economics, the model of modern "sociologic man" is on the order of an almost perfectly programmed android, op-erating in accordance with the dictates of his culture. Any injudicious behavior on his part is typically attributed to "conflicts" or conditions of "anomie" in the cultural program, and only ritualistic lip service is paid to Thomas's (1928:572) early emphasis on the idiosyncratic "definition of the situation," to Wrong's (1961:187-193) more recent criticism of the "over-socialized conception of This content downloaded from 140.

Analyzing Income Convergence at the County Level: The Case of Development in Central Appalachia

“…The argument generally advanced is that the people of Appalachia exhibit different cultural traits than the rest of the country, thereby creating an Appalachian subculture (Ball 1974;Lewis 1974;Raitz and Ulack 1984). The Appalachian people, it is hypothesized, are fatalistic, oriented toward existence rather than status, and antagonistic toward government.…”

Appalachian Culture and Resistance

“…Thus Caudill (1963) linked his globalizing treatment of Appalachia as a culture of despair and defeat to internal colonialism and Weller (1966; linked his notoriously pejorative account to harsh conditions dating back to frontier days and to the exploitation of Appalachia as a "mineral colony." Ball (1968) argued that mountain people had responded to "a history of unremitting physical, economic, and social frustration" (p. 889) by adapting an "analgesic subculture," characterized by traits of "fix-Downloaded by [University of Calgary] at 08:15 06 February 2015 ation, regression, aggression, and resignation" (p. 890) that buffered them from-yet perpetuated-failure. Louv (1977) noted that "when the land runs out and jobs vanish, people make out sometimes in perverse and self-destructive ways" (p. 40) which he identified as "the Appalachia syndrome."…”

Learned helplessness and community development: A case study

“…In these "analgesic subcultures" (Ball, 1968), resistance may have originated from physical, economic, and political constraints (Ortiz Valdes, 1982). In recent years, many community development programs have attempted to reduce constraints by increasing community control over the development process, as illustrated by recent definitions of community development.…”

“…Passivity towards implementing community upgrading schemes and alienation from community life have been reported in rural and urban communities (Ball, 1968;Hawley, 1963;Wirth, 1938). In Third World countries this has arisen in the context of the urgency of providing basic needs, such as housing and education.…”