The following is from one Andrew McMichael, posted to soc.history.moderated on 23 July 2001 (advanced Google Groups search will turn it up; also includes a reference to a journal article with further discussion and criticism):
1. Authors have "questioned the accuracy and utility of Fischer's classification of British cultural regions." Essentially, they're saying that he's generalized in such a way as to miss a large portion of the British cultural landscape that actually may have had as much or more of an effect on the developing American landscape. People have also charged him with not applying the definitions consistently.
2. Many of Fischer's regional cultural features were actually not regionally specific, but appeared throughout Britain.
3. Emigrants from the various regions were not numerous enough to have had the impact Fischer attributes to them. Essentially, other people migrated into the areas Fischer discusses as well.
4. In Massachusetts and the Delaware Valley religions such as Puritanism and Quakerism had more effect on cultural development than did folkways. This point calls into question the ways in which other things might have had an impact in ways Fischer doesn't admit.
5. His ignorance of the African and Indian residents of the areas, as well as other Europeans, denies another way in which American folkways have been shaped.
6. His focus on elites denies another rich, and significant, source of cultural development--the "undersiders."
7. He neglects the formation of culture in the backcountry, which would have been under more local pressure than what he sees in his almost exclusively "urban" focus.
8. He treats "cultural imperatives . . . as if they were almost self-generating." That is to say, his imperatives act independently of "spatial differences, and persist intact in drastically different social and historical circumstances." His focus on cultural determinism prevents us from understanding how immigrant societies mix and develop under new and unique circumstances.
9. Even though Fischer admits that cultures are "never static" (pp. 7-8), an admission which would seem to be the author's own complete admission of the flaw in his work, Fischer treats culture as if it is.
10. He uses sources out of context. In his rush to see culture as transcendent of time and place, Fischer, for instance, uses Harriet Beecher Stowe "as an illustration of colonial New England folkways (pp. 69, 113, 117, 124, 138, 150) or the 1905 collections of Emma Mills as a guide to cultural practices in the eighteenth century southern backcountry (pp. 65, n. 5, 667, 679, 689, 692, 699, 700, 715, 759, 763)."
(All above quotes, and my concatentation, are taken from Jack Green's introduction to "Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America--A Symposium" in _The William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History and Culture_. 3d Series, Vol. XLVII, No. 2. April, 1991. pages 226-228. The historians he is summarising are Virginia DeJohn Anderson, James Horn, Ned Landsman, Barry Levy, and himself. This was an entire forum devoted to nothing but criticism of Fischer's work. I haven't been
reading the WMQ for long, but I cannot ever remember this happening for any other author or book.)
OK, now my own humble, or not so humble, additions to the above list:
1. Citations, since you challenged me.
A. (on the lack of) He provides plenty of cites for some things, but odd bits critical to his argument get no footnote. One example is on page 115 in his description of "Death Ways." He notes that funerals were the one area in which
New Englanders "drank to excess. Entire communities became intoxicated. Even little children" were drunk, and intoxicated infants fell into "yawning grave(s)." No footnote to this supposedly radical change in behaviour among New Englanders.
b. (On the misuse of) In other cases his footnotes, in order to make his point, are very outdated. On page 53 his take on the introduction of slavery in New England is drawn from a 1924 book on the subject. Any number of more modern sources were available to him. On page 253 he describes a 1948 source as "modern."
2. Static culture. He becomes so intent on tracing the origins and effects of Puritans that he descends to the absurd in his characterization of Franklin Roosevelt as a descendent of Puritans. Perhaps, but FDR's cultural imperatives were anything but Putitan. But this section is the necessary logical extension of his argument--and therefore calls his entire argument into question.
3. On a more theoretical, but substantive note, Fischer uses what he calls a "modified germ theory" to describe the persistence of culture. He sets it in opposition to, but as taking from, the frontier model and the migration model. In the end, however, it is the germ theory that informs his work. The germ theory assumes that people bring their culture with them, transplant it to their new land, and nurture and maintain it. In a land as radically different as the New World, this theory borders on the absurd. For one, it neglects the role of Indians in shaping American culture and thought. Heck, the onset and Puritan reaction to King Metacom's War should be enough to destroy that theory, as should the need for, and the existence of, the Halfway Covenant. The introduction of African slaves also destroys
the idea of using the germ theory to understand America.
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