[nekokami]

Originally Posted by jæd

That large continental areas like Europe (and the US) can't be thought of homogeneous based on their history.

Very true. For those interested in regional and cultural differences in the US, I highly recommend The Nine Nations of North America, by Joel Garreau.



Summary:

In his first book, The Nine Nations of North America (1981) Garreau argued that the existing political boundaries of North America are becoming increasingly irrelevant as regions begin to coalesce into smaller "nations," each with its own economic, political, and cultural characteristics. Garreau identifies nine new North American nations:

1. The Breadbasket: Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma and northern Texas as well as southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada
2. Dixie: southern and southeastern U.S. states, including most of eastern Texas and Florida to the city of Fort Meyers
3. Ecotopia: the Pacific Northwest coast stretching from Alaska in the north to just south of San Francisco.
4. The Empty Quarter: most of Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Denver, Colorado as well as the eastern portions of Oregon, California, Washington, and all of Alberta, British Columbia and Northern Canada.
5. The Foundry: the declining industrial areas of the northeastern United States stretching from New York City to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and including Chicago as well as southern Ontario
6. The Islands: the Caribbean islands, parts of Venezuela and the Miami-Fort Lauderdale portion of southern Florida
7. MexAmerica: the southern and central valley portions of California as well as Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico
8. New England: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut and the Canadian Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland
9. Quebec: the Canadian province of Quebec

The implication of these developments, Garreau argues, is that everything from politics to urban planning needs to be redesigned to match the evolving regional sensibilities that now matter more to people than national and international borders. In the Ecotopia, for instance, residents prize the natural environment and specialize in environmentally friendly high-technology industries like software. Meanwhile, communities in the Empty Quarter are organized around extraction of natural resources such as the oil and timber that are their economic mainstay. Such regional differences, Garreau suggests, result in fundamental differences in worldviews that are pulling each of the nine nations apart. This evocative thesis has been controversial since the book was first published, but even critics concede that in the ensuing years developments in national and international politics, including the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, have made Garreau's views seem especially prescient.

Reading this book (years ago) helped me understand why my views, as a New England citizen, differ so much from those of someone like Ralph, from a completely different part of the country with its own values. Both of us are surrounded by people with similar backgrounds to our own, and it is easy to fall into the assumption that the rest of the country is the same, but this is an illusion, I believe. When Ralph speaks of what "Americans" believe or "American culture," he does not and cannot speak for all of the US. Different parts of the US were settled by different groups with different reasons for being here, and our culture is no more homogeneous than that of the EU.

Edit: Another interesting reference is The 10 Regions of US Politics.