Touring the Extremities of Culture in New York\u27s Southern Tier

This paper explores ideas of regionalism in the counties of New York’s Southern Tier- the extreme north of Appalachia. Connecting experiences of Appalachian New York places and culture to experiences of place and culture throughout the Appalachian region helps to solidify the importance of the Southern Tier in Appalachian Studies. The basic question this paper addresses is “How do the counties of New York’s Southern Tier culturally relate to the rest of Appalachia?” This question is motivated by a cultural anthropological interest in tourism and museum studies, as these industries essentialize, frame, and display human behavior, values, and material culture. Often what is believed to be important in a population’s culture is preserved and housed in museums. In turn, such collections are promoted by tourism developers. This conveys incomplete and contrived representations of local place and culture to visiting tourists. Museums as tourist attractions, then, are rich repositories for what is deemed important or interesting about a population by themselves and/or by others. Tourist attractions and museums are couched in economic, political, historical, geographic, and social dynamics that reveal much about the struggle of representation. Vigilance against chronic cultural misrepresentation of Central and Southern Appalachia remains strong in Appalachian Studies. In Northern Appalachia, however, cultural misrepresentation is less recognized. This paper is based on field research within tourist attractions and of visitor reviews of museums located in New York’s Southern Tier. Analysis show nostalgia, race, and class as underlying forces in depictions of local culture