Obtain Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, And Manhood In The Rural South, 1865-1920 Picturized By Ted Ownby Shown In Edition

you ever wondered "How did the south end up that way" this is the book for you, You know all of those Jeff Foxworthy "jokes" about being a redneck, Why do they watch Nascar and wrasslin' and drink moonshine Why do they own guns and go hunting so much This book is well researched using both primary and secondary sources, and provides a great social history of American manhood.
In this book, southern cultural historian Ted Owenby uses the methods of anthropologists Victor Turner to Clifford Geetz to explore tensions in Southern culture betweenandbetween the demand of evangelical Protestantism and the rough, more profane culture of white men in this region.


Owenby began by tracing various types of male cultural/recreational habits in distinct chapters: The Field hunting The Town: Main Street, The Town: Professional Entertainment, The Plantation, ad The Farm.
These are followed by chapters on types of socialization where evangelical values and women were dominant: The Home, The Church, and The Revival Meeting.


Most interestingly, the book suggests that even those who did not live according to evangelical Christian morality recognized its supremacy,

Having provided a convincing account of these tensions, Owenby spends the last two chapters on reform in the lateth and earlyth century south.


Interestingly, technology cars for mobility and modern farm machinery and the advent of mass culture which went against regional religiouslygrounded social norms such as popular music, dancing, and especially movies worked to create social forces such that the traditional disapproval of local, rural society could no longer control the development of immoral practices.


Owenby closed by showing how the development of laws against many traditional male social practices, such as liquor laws, hunting regulation laws, etc.
, worked to try to limit this type of activity where social pressure had failed,

I don't think my review does the book justice, I strongly recommend reading this classic,

my blog:

Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation and Manhood in the Rural South,Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press,.
pages this includes an extensive bibliography and endnotes, Numerous photos and tables.


Iâm trying to get this review in under the deadline for the Southern Reading Challenge, This is the fourth book review Iâm posting for the SRC, but itâs one of the ones I had originally planned on reading so I wanted to get it posted Iâve read two of the three Iâd planned on reading.
Over the past few years, I have engaged in a study of Southern social history, partly to get in touch with my roots and partly to expand on my regional work in history that has focused on the American West.
Subduing Satan is an academic work I donât recommend it for a good read on the beach,



Ownby explores the tension and conflict between the evangelical social norms and the prevalent male vices of the South in the postbellum era.
In a way, as he points out at the conclusion, this tension can still be seen in the regional music such as when Willie Nelson begins a concert singing about Whiskey River and concludes it with a heartfelt rendition of Amazing Grace.
Another example is Elvis, a âœflamboyant sinner,â known also as a gospel singer,

Subduing Satan is a social history of white southerners in the years between the Civil War and the Great War, During this time, men in the rural South were kept home on the farm except for the occasional visit to the town where drinking and gambling and fighting were common vices.
Ownby explores this culture, from hunters who tried to outdo one another in the slaughter of game, to cockfighting and knightly tournaments, to harvest festivals and sharing agricultural chores.
During most of this time, Protestant preachers railed against âœmasculine vices,â but there was little push for probation, As long as the vices were segregated from women, preachers were happy to condemn them, As industrialization and technology began to bring the vices into the home as well as allowing women to be more easily found in the public sphere thanks to the automobile and movie theaters, the push for laws against such vices occurred.


Ownby does a wonderful job of showing what life was like at this time in history in various realms of society the field, the farm and plantation, the home, the church, Main Street, etc.
He discusses reasons why Southern men seemed to enjoy a good fight and some of the underlying tensions dealing with racial relations and the role of women.
This book would be valuable to anyone wanting to know how the past was different or any author wanting to more accurately portray life in this era.


For those wanting a more complete look at the role of religion in the South, especially in relationship to the rise of Southern Protestantism and the role the defeat in the Civil War played, I recommend the following two books:

Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press,.


Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptize in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause,Athens, GA: Univ of GA Press,,

The Praying South and the Fighting South are two of our most popular images of white southern culture, In Subduing Satan, Ted Ownby details the tensions between these complexand often opposingattitudes,

Ownby's recreation of male recreation is rich and fascinating, He paints the saloon and the street, the cockfighting and dogfighting rings as realms of distinctly male vices, enjoyed lustily by men seeking to escape the sweet virtue of the Southern Christian home.
Nation

A bold new thesis, Ownby gives us guideposts in the ongoing search for the meaning of southern history, Journal of Southern History

I suspect that for many years ahead Ted Ownby's Subduing Satan will serve as the standard guide on how to write religious social history.
Bertram WyattBrown, University of Florida

This is one of the freshest and most interesting books written about the American South in years.
By focusing on the cultural conflicts of everyday life, Ownby gets us right to the heart of white culture in the South between Reconstruction and thes.
Edward L. Ayers, University of Virginia.