Southern Identity and Serendipitous Opportunity in Qualitative Research Among Appalachians in Chicago

Uses of Identity: Overcoming Resistance

In a qualitative research seminar, when queried about choosing a research topic, the urban ethnographer, Elijah Anderson, once advised me to, “do who you are.” His counsel, by definition, implicates identity in the research process, and the legitimacy of pursuing an identitycentric avenue of inquiry when it comes to studying groups. However, his response also hints at the notion that a researcher’s identity might be immutable and fixed rather than emergent, fluid, and negotiated throughout the research process. At the core of this is the idea that identity is associated with the credibility of the researcher (Adu-Ampong and Adams 2020). If identity and concurrent credibility could be negotiated with subjects, and intermediaries (Caven 2012), then it is a fluid concept that is subject to influence. Therefore, Anderson’s counsel raises the question of whether who one is (their identity) exists as an elastic phenomenon in the sense of a researcher being able to advance elements of it to suit situational or serendipitous opportunities. For example, research suggests that ethnicity is contingent on discrete social forces, structural conditions, and residential segregation characterizing urban areas; especially among white ethnics (Yancy et al. 1976; Waters 1990). Some have defined ethnicity as a “variant, processual, and emergent phenomenon and will therefore reveal itself in different forms and with varying degrees of intensity in different social settings” Marger and Obermiller 1987:25). Through interaction, my subjects, I learned that identity is subject to manipulation [even intervention] rather than being an static concept that simply allowed entry into groups that are closed to outsiders. As such, there were dimensions to identity that were dependent on volition and the situational characteristics of discrete settings. I discovered that southern identity was no exception.

Southern and Appalachian migrants are considered by some observers as akin to an ethnic group (Obermiller and Phillibur 1987). They have been noted for their vigorous aversion to researchers due in part to their negative treatment after migrating to cities in the wake of structural changes in coal mining and the mechanization of agriculture in the Postwar era (Guy 2007). A distinctive and generic southern identity had previously supplanted the regional and county identity of Appalachian and other southern migrants in Chicago as early as the 1940s. Part of this was because of the suspicion engendered by negative media depictions, and association with social problems following their arrival in the Near West Side neighborhood in the 1940s. During this period, a Chicagoan commented that they, “…were ruining the neighborhood, running the property down…and using the yard for the toilet.” (Killian 1949:78). This perception was echoed by an observer that I interviewed fifty years later about a second wave of southerners that arrived in Uptown between 1950 and 1970. “There was a rejection of hillbillies by the white population of Chicago” (Lickerman 1994 cited in Guy 2000, 2007).

In addition, observers working with Appalachians in Chicago at the height of their migration in the 1960s were aware of their mistreatment and hostile reception in the Windy City. Dewey Wood, director of the nonprofit Chicago Southern Center, commented at the time that he had “…never heard the term, hillbilly so slanderously used as in Chicago” (Wood 1964). This hostile reception by residents was exacerbated by rampant police brutality, and media stereotypes (Guy 2000) Added to this was stress and angst of being a rural migrant in Chicago. According to community worker at the time. “To be up North was degrading to people. Hollers belonged to family. This is not what people were used to. They were confined. They were never there [Uptown] to stay. They were not immigrants” (Milne, 1994). This sentiment was echoed by an Appalachian migrant, whose family was from Eastern Kentucky. “We kept thinking that we were gonna’ come back [home to Kentucky]. I mean we didn’t ever go and settle in Chicago thinking that was home” (Belcher 1987). Appalachians responded to this by adopting a defensive posture to outsiders, especially researchers. Their defiance and reluctance to embrace their port of entry presented a formidable obstacle to qualitative study and oral history because of their suspicion of outsiders.

By the 1990s, second-generation Appalachian migrants had retained a symbolic southern identity reinforced by previous depictions in popular culture, and a romanticized conception of home in the South (Guy 1997). When initiating research in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood in the 1990s, I encountered overt resistance from Appalachians until, I revealed that I was a southerner by birth, and that I had migrated to the North. This was a signal that I, too, shared their identity, and possibly had experienced similar mistreatment in the North. I noted the elements of her symbolic identity in fieldnotes in 1994 after meeting the daughter of a migrant family who was born and raised in Chicago.

I met Callie last week. She has a red Chevrolet Corsica. She likes driving with the AC on and windows open. We cruised the lake front [Lake Michigan] talking about the South and my roots in Virginia. She has an emergent southern identity even though she was born and raised in Uptown. I compare it with second or third generation Italian Americans who re-adapted and reconstructed Italian ethnicity. She likes country music, (Patty Loveless) Bud Light, and everything southern. She has even adopted a sort of southern accent that she credits her parents, who are from eastern Kentucky, with passing on to her.

It was only through her help that I eventually gained access to initial interviews ostensibly because of this southern identity. There were distinct differences in her identity and that of her parents, however. Whereas Callie’s parents encountered difficulty escaping the negative hillbilly label imposed on them by Chicagoans, their daughter embraced and romanticized the South and southern culture vicariously through secondary cultural sources, as a birthright. Her response was to accentuate it. It is important to note that while her parents readily acknowledged their eastern Kentucky origins, Callie was born and raised in Chicago, and her identity was largely symbolic. She had a penchant for anything that she considered southern and projected her parents’ southern roots through outward displays to others. This became an important distinction because it provided me with as much cultural capital as her parents since I was born and raised in the South. I was also able to actively project southern identity to others as needed to establish my place among them. For Callie, my southern roots were innate rather than adopted as her were. In this way it placed me on a similar level as her parents when it came to the authenticity of my identity and conferred on me the status of insider. I had seemingly narrowed the gap of Simmel’s status as the stranger. Later when it came to arranging interviews with Appalachian migrants, Callie would present me to others as southern to emphasize my status as an insider. This indirectly reflected positively on her with what she conceived as her people. Therefore, my qualitative work in Uptown relied on an outward display of having roots in the South as an entry narrative to an otherwise insular group of southern migrants with a considerable history in Uptown. As a Virginian, I was able to assure my subjects (through ritualized interaction) of a personal biography that extended down home in the South, and fulfilled Anderson’s admonition to “do who you are.”

Not surprisingly, my southern identity facilitated association and research with Appalachian migrants because they made the implicit assumption that as an insider, I shared a likeness to them. Therefore, I was given more access to the opportunities and intimacy necessary to conduct oral histories. Over the course of the research, I was able to develop a close relationship with Callie’s family that spanned several years. Through this I was able spend most afternoons with her parents in their small apartment, eventually leading her mother to refer to her husband as “your daddy” when relating a story to me. This status as fictive kin (Stack 1972) added an emotional element to the relationship, and facilitated acceptance by other subjects. Being immersed in their daily presence provided rich experiential tools to interpret oral histories that I gathered, and in some cases, offered insight into their tastes, talents, and emotional lives. Greater access than an outsider, posed a particular challenges and dilemmas in analyzing data, and observations. While identity became a lens through which to understand the data gathered through oral histories, it raised the distinction between what Weber conceived as direct observational understanding and explanatory understanding. Bryant observed that, “Direct observational understanding occurs whenever the observer grasps what an actor is doing (or what he is saying). Explanatory understanding involves imputation of a motive to explain why the actor is doing (or saying) it” (Bryant 1985:85). As fictive son, I developed an explanatory understanding of the content of interviews, as well as the responses from my subjects, and in the process deepening the breadth of my southern identity. I quickly discovered that I was able to deploy identity in an instrumental manner to exploit serendipitous opportunities. The ability to use identity in an instrumental manner marked a difference from previous research that views chance events as influenced by the ability of the researcher to recognize the opportunity for discovery rather managing them through identity.

Uses of Identity: Contacts and Alliances in the Research Setting

Serendipitous opportunities often lead to important contacts and alliances with informants that extend the research questions and goals of a study (Merton 1948; Åkerström 2013). As resistant to researchers, Appalachians fall into what many have classified hostile populations for which intermediator are useful (Noaks and Wincup 2004; Fielding 2004; van Dun 2014; Jenkins 2015). Added to this was the notorious reputation of Uptown and unconventional political of Appalachians in the election of alderwoman, Helen Shiller. Because of her overt affiliation with former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) who were activists in the neighborhood, she was considered radical by orthodox political observers. Therefore, there was constant suspicion of all outsiders who her inner circle considered interlopers. Being from the South allayed some of their concern when Callie presented me as a campaign worker in Shiller’s re-election campaign. Despite this tacit acceptance, I was forced to go through multiple rituals of screening and verification despite my identity as a southerner and potential ally to gain access to subjects to interviews as reflected in field notes on a Friday (May 20, 1994) that I constructed after returning to my single room in a neighbourhood residential hotel.

There was apprehension that I could feel when I showed up at the campaign office. I was introduced to a southerner, Ruby, who was a volunteer and had worked for the SDS. She was from Alabama and kept asking me where in Virginia I was from. Then she asked me to verify towns in the mountains like Hillsville and Galax before loosening up and agreeing to an interview. Through it all I sensed tension from the other people in the room who could clearly hear our conversation.

Some version of this happened each time that I was introduced to a southerner to interview, and I was expected to run through similar elements of my biography. As a southerner, there were outward manifestations (e.g., accent, demeaner, preferences) to my identity that I had long suppressed due to negative reactions when I initially arrived in the North. Much like my Appalachian subjects, they carried negative connotations of class and character to northerners. Throughout the initial research process, I found myself drawing a reservoir of traits as evidence of my southern origins and authenticity.

Initially, it was difficult to locate subjects to interview until a random encounter with Callie in front of the legal aid clinic where she worked. This was a pivotal moment in gaining entry and establishing contact with Appalachian migrants for subsequent interviews as recorded in fieldnotes on June 17, 1994.

I just happened to be riding my bicycle past the [Uptown People’s] Law Center and saw Callie out front with her father. He was leaving and when I stopped, she asked me to come in to see the office. Most of her clients were southerners that were trying to file disability claims, dispute evictions or had problems with domestic violence. I sensed that because her identity was vicarious conferred through her parents it was more intense than someone from the South. I spent the entire day there hanging around while she went through intake of clients. After this she began to mentally conjure up a list of people to interview and call them on the spot. A few she snagged from the clients like DP. That day I immediately got an interview with V.B.

Passing on the bicycle provided the opportunity that resulted in a springboard to interviews. Her deep love of the South conveyed through her parents’ Kentucky roots resulted in her being hyper-sensitive and drawn to authentic southerners since she was not one herself. After this experience, I became a regular in what community members referred to as the “law center.” Callie vouched for my identity and steered me to subjects. Her considerable clout in the community and the law office heightened my authenticity as a southerner and as someone who could be trusted. My fieldnotes from June 24, 1994 illustrate a typical experience of meeting a subject to interview just be being present in the office.

By chance, I met D.P. from Alabama when just hanging around the law center. I told him that I was from Virginia. He has a Social Security disability settlement. His alcoholism is so bad that he must have a payee for his check each month because he cannot be trusted to cash it alone. He needed some cash, so I gave him ten dollars. I asked him for an interview, and he agreed. We went to the park to do it. Afterwards D.P. told me about J.L. from West Virginia. He lived in the same building as him in a basement apartment. When I got to the apartment, a woman was cooking fried fish in a skillet with potatoes. J.L. was about 60 with a full head of white hair, few teeth, and a white beard stained in places. In the rest of the apartment, people were sleeping on couches. It seemed to be a shooting gallery with used syringes strewn about.

The nexus between identity and serendipity is evidenced in the interaction with D.P. above. Being from the South led to an occasion for an interview, and entry into the lives of other subjects. The example above also exemplifies the snowballing technique in which a subject provided us with others to interview; a method typical for ethnographic and exploratory research (Biernacki and Waldorf 1981; Çelik and Lüküslü 2012). Callie’s initial invitation to spend time in the law office depended on her knowledge that I was from the South, and my residency in the neighborhood. At times this led to opportunities to interact in intimate settings with those who otherwise were resistant to being interviewed. Once after striking up a conversation with a southerner evolved into a daily visit to her apartment that led to meeting her spouse who initially refused to be interviewed. These sorts of events are particularly important in building mutual trust and eroding the visibility of the researcher by a “display of symbolic attachment” gained by participating in routine activities of subjects (Stoddart 1986:109-113; Bucerius 2017).

The interview became a space where I could engage in work further refining my southern identity, and have it authenticated thorough cues from the subject. Self-disclosures have proven to be a useful research strategy and might act as a prompt for a more reciprocal interchange and to negotiate the unequal power relations that exists between researcher and subjects (Reinharz and Chase 2003). Much of this can occur during the identity work during an exchange through a display of southern identity thereby shedding my identity as a researcher as the following exchange illustrates:

V.B.: I’m from Blytheville Arkansas. It’s a rural community. It’s a farm town.

Identity can be likened to a platform of taken for granted knowledge that the interviewer meshes with the subject. I liken this to “mutual tuning up” (Schütz 1951, 2006) in that both parties possess highly contextualized common sense knowledge of what it means to be southern (Schütz 1953; Garfinkel 1967; Harrington 2000). At the core of this exchange is establishing credibility though behavior with subjects in the research setting (Lofland et al. 2006; Adu-Ampong and Adams 2020), and reinforcing it through the course of the interview.

D.P.: After coming to Chicago, well, I missed fishing. I never did go fishing up here or hunting or anything like that, you know. Or get out and riding on the old dirt road, riding horses.

Through gendered experiences surrounding firearms and hunting, I constructed the bond of multiple and shared identities [southern and male] with D.P. that was based on an intersubjective empathy. The experiential events connected us with others in the present and past, and ignited a sensory dimension of memory that engendered compassion by blurring the divide between the self and others (May 2017). This is exemplified in another interview with K.D. who accompanied his parents to Chicago as a child. Now in his late thirties, his identity remained firmly entrenched in his West Virginia origins. When interviewed, he had lived Uptown with his mother for over 30 years. Much of our interaction involved discussions of being southern in the nostalgic sense, as a place to which he longed to return. More importantly, through the shared experiences of hostile treatment we established an intimacy reliant on common experiences that linked us as southerners. Often this involved comparisons between the South and North.

K.D.: I’m supposed to be from Chicago, but my background is always going to be back there [West Virginia]. When I came up here, I really felt like a hick.

The subtle realization of who we are in the North, and how migration affects identity emerged from this exchange. Language and dialect solidified the bond of our southern identity, and common hostile treatment in the North. However, it also distinguished us from those origins and identity to which claim are remaining. May (2017) further argued that shared empathy engenders altruism by connecting mentally and emotionally with others. As it concerns the research process, it is logical to assume that empathy might be related to trust between both parties. It also illustrates how identity in an interview is constructed through sharing vulnerability as the exchange above illustrates.

In other cases, shared cultural practices served as a basis for co-constructing identity and establishing a connection with a subject as fieldnotes indicate following an interview with an Appalachian migrant. Cultural practices emanate from identity and can be activated through cues based on common exchanges of information that build on prior knowledge and practices revealed in fieldnotes dated, June 20, 1994.

When I arrived to interview S.D., her son said she was out in the neighbourhood. I left on my bicycle to look for her, and I noticed she was walking back to her apartment. I stopped and walked with her. In interviewing her I noticed that we had a great deal in common about southern food. We discussed pickling, cornbread, and vegetable gardens. One common ground that S.D. and I shared was about food. I believed this to be a fundamental kind of bridge that involves culture.

Identity co-construction does not need to be elaborate or extensive. It might merely involve a momentary affirmation of shared characteristics that facilitates additional elaboration from a subject as in the following exchange. This verbal ritual below sets up the mutual identity between the researcher and subject. It’s value rests in the research process, but also is extracted and held between two people as an abstract emotional attachment to the South.

H.E.: My mom used to make homemade biscuits in the morning.

In the example above identity is comprised of a shared meanings from which rapport can be co-constructed. It leads to a serendipitous opportunity to acquire trust and eventually gather additional data. Biscuit making, for example, is collective in the sense that it is a socially constructed phenomenon composed of long-term group experiences that extend beyond individual experience (Strauss 1995). The shared meaning is a linking mechanism that joins the researcher and subject in an auditory and olfactory sense. The recollection of breakfast, biscuits, and preserves also involve a temporal familial element in that it extends to childhood nurturing and gender roles.