America is a big place, full of many smaller places. And as proud as we are to be from the former, one of the best things about this country is the way we also continue to be proud of those latter places we are from. As an Ohio native, I embrace both my state (and its cryptids) and the Midwest, the region to which it belongs.
From these particularistic attachments spring not only many of the traditions, values, and associations that form us as persons, but also debates about place superiority — and even questions of definition and categorization. One such discussion often becomes a debate about what, exactly, constitutes the Midwest — and, for reasons that escape me, whether Ohio counts; it obviously does — both geographically and “culturally.”
“Data journalism,” often (rightly) mocked as an attempt by the people Edmund Burke called “sophisters, economists, and calculators” to legitimate their political preferences with a patina of objectivity, has come to the rescue. In this instance, however, its conclusions are at least interesting and worthy of consideration. In the Washington Post, Andrew Van Dam has attempted to use Airbnb listings to calculate “the most Midwestern things on Earth, according to data.” Essentially, Doran and his team used the frequency of descriptors in Airbnb listings as a way to answer some of these timeless questions. As he explains the process:
In Airbnb, we’d stumbled on an ideal data set for drawing that elusive line between culture and geography. More importantly, once we’d looked at more than half a million Airbnb listings and built a database powerful enough to answer “Where is the Midwest?” we could use it to answer a much more difficult follow-up: “What is the Midwest?” What cultural touchstones make it different from the rest of the country?
The map of the Midwest drawn by this research designates Iowa as the most Midwestern state, followed by Indiana and Wisconsin. That’s fine with me. The Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas also make the cut. As do Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio (sorry haters), despite having large urban centers whose populations are less prone to describe themselves as Midwestern in listings.
As for the most Midwestern thing, it gets interesting. With some extraneous info (e.g., brand names and state-specific attributes) screened out, the data reveal that the most Midwestern thing is . . . the walleye. The Post describes it thus:
a drab but delicious freshwater fish whose primeval bulging eyes and snaggled teeth would look at home in one of those Nebraska fossil beds. It’s the state fish of both South Dakota and Minnesota, and at least six Midwestern towns have claimed to be the walleye capital of the world.
Though I will forever cite this article’s conclusion of Ohio as Midwestern as definitive, I have to say that, by this metric, I am not very Midwestern myself. The walleye, alas, did not feature heavily in my upbringing. I did not experience much of what champion fisher Marianne Huskey Fechter called the “nostalgia of the walleye,” though I hardly begrudge those who have or do. Here, for those curious, are some of the other Airbnb descriptors established by these data as definitively Midwestern:
- Heartland
- Conservatory
- Lutheran
- Rehabbed
- Bluegill
- Blacktop
- Glacial
- Smallmouth
- Supper
- Orchestra
- Largemouth
- Snowmobile
- Amish
- Paddleboat
A lot of these are tourist-heavy, which is understandable, given the source of this information. But, as Van Dam notes, others connote regional dialect (“supper”) or characteristics (“smallmouth” and “largemouth” both appear because both types of bass can be found in the Midwest). “Lutheran” is a particularly amusing one to me, though even as a Midwestern Catholic, I cannot deny its utility as a Midwest descriptor.
At any rate, it’s all interesting information and should help continue the eternal — and welcome — conversations that arise from Americans’ particularistic attachments.