Thomas Parker Hatley

An analysis of the everyday ethics of hospitality in Morristown, Tennessee, a former manufacturing hub in southern Appalachia, this project seeks to understand the relationship between religiosity, politics, and the meaning of community in a context of deindustrialization and demographic change. Exploring the degree to which residents invoke moral principles in their efforts to make sense of ongoing deindustrialization, fewer available jobs, an aging population, and transformative migration, this project interrogates the interpersonal, political, and religious practice of both hospitality and hostility between different segments of Morristown?s population. In a nation and region deemed increasingly inhospitable characterized by the ascendance of xenophobic nationalisms, white supremacist ideology, and anti-immigration politics, this project asks how reflexive ethics of mutuality may influence the production or disruption of localized enmities.