University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 The Hospitable South: Religion, Politics, And Belonging In A Southern Community Betsie Garner University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Garner, Betsie, "The Hospitable South: Religion, Politics, And Belonging In A Southern Community" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2299. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2299 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2299 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Hospitable South: Religion, Politics, And Belonging In A Southern Community Abstract This dissertation interrogates the so-called myth of Southern hospitality. I review the historical origins of hospitality on antebellum plantations and engage with theoretical distinctions that have been made between hospitality as discourse and hospitality as practice. Given decades of social and political change in the region, I ask, how is Southern hospitality practiced today, and what are the consequences? I draw on ethnographic and interview data from a community study in Rockdale County, Georgia to explore how the culture of Southern hospitality became manifested as a set of religious practices through which residents determined who did and did not belong in their local community. Originally a mostly-white farming community, Rockdale had witnessed decades of dramatic population growth and diversification during Metro Atlanta’s rapid expansion. I explain how changes like the arrival of immigrants and growth of non-white populations made the community a fitting place for observing how Southern hospitality, with its ethos of gracious hosts and warm welcomes, was actually put into practice.