the actual subject in the interest of categorizing.nIt is the chief virtue of his booknthat Mr. Reed is not able to levitate tonsuch a plane, which gives virtue to somenof his recognitions rather than detractingnfrom them. That he is aware of divisionnin his own mind is reflected by the ordernof his essays. In the first he is more professionallynconcerned; those in the finalnsection take the opportunity to be “explicitlynexhortative.” Mr. Reed apologizesnfor the latter—which are more interestingnand, I think, more sound—essays,npresumably to his professional peers:n”From time to time, I get the opportunitynto write about what I like and dislikenabout the South, and it is hard to resist.”nThat apology points to a more fundamentalndivision in the book than its sectionalnstructure, a division both encouragingnand, at times, distressing. If ournauthor feels uncomfortable with the professionalnrequirements he is compelled tonhonor as sociologist, there must be somethingnvisceral in his spirit telling himnthose requirements are not adequate tonthe complexity of his subject. He paysnhomage to Howard Odum, his professionalnprecursor, but with something likenembarrassment, a bit like a grandsonnwho loves his grandfather but is uncomfortablenwhen the old man is brought intoncompany with his own contemporaries.nWe all, whether we admit it or evennknow k, choose fathers and grandfathersnfrom a community of companionablenspirits. Mr. Reed consciously choosesnW.J. Cashaswereadhimin r/6^Af/Wo/n(Ae South (1941), over Odum in SouthemnRegions of the United Stipes (1936),na regrettable choice. For the Cash ofnMind of the South is not as likely to revealnto Mr. Reed the validity of his instinctsnabout the South, those intincts for whichnhe apologizes.nDesides those fathers whom we deliberatelynchoose, there are others who mustnbe reckoned with if we are true to our intellectualnand spiritual callings, as Mr.nReed dearly intends to be. As professionalnintellectuals, we are required to seeknthem out, and it is here that my disquietnZ^mmm^^^m^nChronicles of Cttltnrenwith One South grows. I do not believenMr. Reed has fully explored the minds ofnOdum and Cash. He recognizes that ancertain Hegelian spirit haunts sociology,nbut in choosing Cash over Odum henoverlooks the decidedly Hegelian slant innCash. Even more disturbing is Mr.nReed’s failure to discover allies who articulatenthe Hegelian problem. One thinksnat once of Donald Davidson, who mightnwell supply precisely the insight needed.nIn his defense of regionalism againstndeterministic deconstructions of reality,nThe Attack on Leviathan (1938), Davidsonnprovides a sympathetic but criticalnexamination of “Howard Odum and thenSociological Proteus.” It is as sound in itsnfundamental concerns for “an ethnic approachnto culture” as when it was firstnwritten to examine Odum’s SouthernnRegions; it is particularly helpful in settingnOdum’s virtues apart from the morendeterministic sociologists who dominatenthe new “science.” Another of Davidson’snessays cries out by its title alone fornthe sociologist as regionalist to confrontnit: “Still Rebels, Still Yankees.” Thatnessay is also the title of a later collection ofnDavidson’s pieces, issued in 1957 by Mr.nReed’s own publishers. This secondngathering includes a devastating aitiquenof Cash’s The Mind of the South, “Mr.nCash and the Proto-Dorian South.” Inread Mr. Reed’s concluding essay, “ThenSame Old Stand,” as it first appeared in ansymposium honoring the publication ofn/’// Take My Stand. In tribute to thosen”12 Southerners” (one of whom isnDavidson) Mr. Reed—surprisingly—ntakes a position as a disciple of Cash; as Inreread the piece, I wonder how he couldnbe unaware of Davidson’s critique, whynhe must not either confirm, repudiate, ornmodify his own reading of Cash, givennhis enthusiasm for the Agrarian cause.nI wonder about other omissions asnwell, particularly of some pieces by thenauthors of /’// Take My Stand:nDavidson’s Attack on Leviathan . . .nFrank Lawrence Owsley’s King CottonnDiplomacy: Foreign Relations of thenConfederate States of America (1931)n. . . hn’dxe^il.ytlt’s A Wake for the Liv­nnning (1975) . . . Richard Weaver’s ThenSouthern Tradition at Bay: A History ofnPost helium Thought. . . Allen Tate’snEssays of FourDecades… One especiallynregrets that Tate’s own exhortative essayn”The New Provincialism” (1945) is notnconsidered since it has incisive things tonsay about distinctions between the termsnregionalism and provincialism thatnwould enrich and clarify and deepen Mr.nReed’s terms regionalism and localism.nSeveral of these works would throw lightnon a central puzzle Mr. Reed says he cannotnquite disentangle, namely: why thenSouth itself has not been hospitable tonsociology. He sees it a failure of thenSouth, but deep down I suspect he feelsnit is a failure of sociology.nWhy does the South prove inhospitablento sociology? “I don’t think thensociological way of thinking comes asneasily to well-articulated Southerners asnto other Americans,” Mr. Reed says. Fornsociological thinking is “a generalizedndiscipline [his italics]. It requires, at leastninitially, that one ignore the differencesnbetween individuals and betweenngroups, and concentrate on what theynhave in common. At its best, it is supposednto apply absttact theoretical categoriesnto disparate phenomena and to seenthe underlying similarities among apparentlynquite different empirical cases. . . .nSociology intends to talk about thenforest; detailed and loving attention tonindividual trees is not our business.” Ifnthis is the sum of sociology’s intellectualnposition, it is not difficult to see why it isnnot good enough. For if “this isn’t a verynSouthern way to go about things,”nneither is it an intellectually sound way tongo about things in any place or time. Butnthe distinction Mr. Reed intends to makenis not really one between seeing the forestnon the one hand and the individual treenon the other: it is between seeing thenforest as so many board feet and the individualntree as so many 2 x 4’s as opposednto seeing elm or pine or poplar in anlandscape breathing, suspiring with lifendeeper than the lumberman’s measurements.nIt is not necessarily cause forn