ABSTRACT
The discovery of regionalism provides social science with a form of scientific approach to an actual condition. Beyond that, it suggests, at least to the social scientist, a possibility of compromise. The Southern theory of regionalism, as expressed in terms of social science, took form in two notable books, Rupert Vance's Human Geography of the South and Howard Odum's Southern Regions. In discussing the sectional problem, the social scientist is reluctant to use the vocabulary of the historian. The great survey of national trends undertaken by President Hoover's committee of social scientists, and finally issued under the title, Recent Social Trends, took little systematic notice of regional trends and characteristics, although its pages are full of data that invite a regional interpretation. The Federal government itself takes notice both of Frederick Jackson Turner's theory of American history and of the conclusions of geographer and social scientist.
