This tread comes from a comment made by A.Stanley.Groves form the Introductions thread:

the midwest is the concept for a logic,

it's the testing ground

Mc Pizza to John Edwards.

To which I replied:

This community is certainly not lacking in folks residing in the geographical space of the Midwest, however that is construed.

As for it being a concept for a logic, what kind of logic, or many kinds of logic. In so far as it is a testing ground, do you mean a space for testing marketability (McPizza or Edwards), and then the logic of marketability? Are you suggesting that the "Midwest" is a concept for a particular logic of markets? Or perhaps a function within a (pseudo)science of advertising?

Now, I'm placing this thread here, because well I think that the Midwest is largely a cultural conception, though I am sure, that it could be a question of philosophy... perhaps we'll move it at some point. But I think it is an interesting question/problem... "the Midwest"...

I've always tied an historical significance to the term midwest. Geographically, it's closer to the east and ends in the middle, but through it's name relates two things:
1) It is a passage, a middle not an end, an expansion WEST through a previously unknown plane.
2) Transportation (means of movement) through both the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and later the railroad, changed our perception of distance and space.

The "Northwest Territory" was created out of the ceded English frontier lands under the Northwest Ordinance. It would be interesting to see when and why the "northwest" sometimes separates itself from "midwest" (Northwest Airlines / Northwestern University).

Muncie, IN, was researched in a famous sociological study, published as a book with the _title_, Middletown. It was chosen, I am told, for being seen as the "most average"--and for a long time after was a center for test-marketing new products (products at McDonald's etc.)...
Funny story: later, a PBS documentary of the same name focused on Muncie. One episode, however, was not shown in Muncie (though it was shown in the rest of the nation), an episode in which students cursed (!!) and smoked pot. Families of students at that school protested that students at that school didn't smoke pot and certainly didn't curse (!)--and so it was blocked from being shown in Muncie, because it was felt people might get the idea that students there smoked pot ...and cursed. Holy... um... 'shucks.'

The wiki article on Muncie is pretty interesting and resonates with a pretty typical American experience from taking Delaware Indian land to a former manufacturing industry.
Ball State University’s Center for Middletown Studies releases The Social Change Report, the most recent (Winter 2006) on Arms Control Today.
The demographics are perhaps also telling. (Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin 1.4%)

On a personal note, I lived in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and associated it with the Indiana from which I came. The 'Midwest' isn't really in the middle of the Western states (as the name "Midwest" might suggest), and Minas Gerais, called the "interior" by Brazilians, was really next door to the state of Rio de Janeiro, which is on the coast... Minas Gerais, the "Indiana" of Brazil.


(By the way, on a side note, the movie Persepolis, which opened at the end of Dec. 2008, is apparently not showing anywhere in Kansas or Missouri--oh, wait: it's only opening in NYC and L.A., so nowhere in the Midwest.)

There's a statue of an 'Indian' in Muncie, but you don't see many Native Americans around any more...