| Culture, Environment, and Conservation in the Appalachian South. | ||
Culture, Environment, and Conservation in the Appalachian South. Edited by Benita J. Howell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Pp. ix+203. Index, biographical glosses, notes, photos. Cloth $39.95. Paper $16.95. The articles in this volume, by thirteen scholars, activists, city planners, and community members, depict communities' particular experiences with conservation. As a composite these articles promote an interdisciplinary approach to cultural and environmental conservation activities at the regional and local levels. Building on the premise that environmental science models have traditionally emphasized humanity's role in degrading natural resources, three key perspectives are advanced. First, human manipulation of the environment is noted as having produced beneficial results, as least as often as negative ones. Second, by overlooking opportunities for collaboration between the sciences, federal resource management has historically excluded "cultural knowledge and practice," thereby creating a "nature-culture dichotomy." Third, this text responds to the historic trends of environmental models and federal management policies by promoting the inclusion of ethnographic research in cultural resource management planning. The inclusion of this methodology results in silent, often excluded groups becoming part of environmental or conservationist planning processes. Several disciplinary perspectives of the cultural sciences emerge in the first two sections of the book. Forming a locale's history through zooarcheology or through merging data from diverse sources (such as archival resources, personal letters, business records, community newspaper columns, and archeological surveys) are two highlighted means for creating a baseline that can be used for guiding land management planning. The role of ethnoecology in formulating a full image of land and the people who interact with its resources coheres the second set of essays. From the influence of relocated families returning "home" to national park lands for reunions, to the documentation of historic ties to a locale, these essays suggest the import of familial ties and familial history in relationship to documented land parcels. Delineation of familial ties and history are offered in three formats. First, relocated individuals continue to define national park land as personally relevant space by returning for reunions, at first despite the park administration's wishes and later with its help. Following this, space is defined as "commons" through the documentation of historic claims to land, the documentation of both the local ginseng gathering tradition's environmental needs and economic impact at the personal, regional and state level, and the joint use of land plots by individuals participating in the local ginseng gathering tradition. Finally, the last article suggests further research strategies: the documentation of separately owned plots as composing a "genealogic landscape" where family members share land use over an area owned by individual members and where place names act as symbols of historic ties to a locale. In the concluding section, case studies link research findings directly with beneficial results for resource management agencies, threatened communities, and communities actively organizing their own futures. These articles focus on the "cultural intangibles" that mark individual and community attachment to place as well as their role in negotiation and planning activities with the American Electric Power Company in southwestern Virginia, the Forest Service in South Carolina, and the small town planners, town members, outside land owners, and a national park in east Tennessee. Dr. Rachel Gholson |
