Mieka Brand Polanco
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814762882
- eISBN:
- 9780814724743
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814762882.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, American and Canadian Cultural Anthropology
This book examines the concept of community in the United States: how communities are experienced and understood, the complex relationship between human beings and their social and physical ...
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This book examines the concept of community in the United States: how communities are experienced and understood, the complex relationship between human beings and their social and physical landscapes—and how the term “community” is sometimes conjured to feign a cohesiveness that may not actually exist. Drawing on ethnographic and historical materials from Union, Virginia, the book offers a nuanced and sensitive portrait of a federally recognized Historic District under the category “Ethnic Heritage—Black.” Since Union has been home to a racially mixed population since at least the late 19th century, calling it “historically black” poses some curious existential questions to the black residents who currently live there. Union's identity as a “historically black community” encourages a perception of the town as a monochromatic and monohistoric landscape, effectively erasing both old-timer white residents and newcomer black residents while allowing newer white residents to take on a proud role as preservers of history. Gestures to “community” gloss an oversimplified perspective of race, history, and space that conceals much of the richness (and contention) of lived reality in Union, as well as in the larger United States. They allow Americans to avoid important conversations about the complex and unfolding nature by which groups of people and social/physical landscapes are conceptualized as a single unified whole. This multi-layered, multi-textured ethnography explores a key concept, inviting public conversation about the dynamic ways in which race, space, and history inform our experiences and understanding of community.Less
This book examines the concept of community in the United States: how communities are experienced and understood, the complex relationship between human beings and their social and physical landscapes—and how the term “community” is sometimes conjured to feign a cohesiveness that may not actually exist. Drawing on ethnographic and historical materials from Union, Virginia, the book offers a nuanced and sensitive portrait of a federally recognized Historic District under the category “Ethnic Heritage—Black.” Since Union has been home to a racially mixed population since at least the late 19th century, calling it “historically black” poses some curious existential questions to the black residents who currently live there. Union's identity as a “historically black community” encourages a perception of the town as a monochromatic and monohistoric landscape, effectively erasing both old-timer white residents and newcomer black residents while allowing newer white residents to take on a proud role as preservers of history. Gestures to “community” gloss an oversimplified perspective of race, history, and space that conceals much of the richness (and contention) of lived reality in Union, as well as in the larger United States. They allow Americans to avoid important conversations about the complex and unfolding nature by which groups of people and social/physical landscapes are conceptualized as a single unified whole. This multi-layered, multi-textured ethnography explores a key concept, inviting public conversation about the dynamic ways in which race, space, and history inform our experiences and understanding of community.
Lindsay Proudfoot and Dianne Hall
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719078378
- eISBN:
- 9781781702895
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719078378.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This chapter investigates the four narratives of place which exemplify the complex and ambiguous environmental, racial, social and ethnic semiotics that inflected the pastoral cartographies created ...
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This chapter investigates the four narratives of place which exemplify the complex and ambiguous environmental, racial, social and ethnic semiotics that inflected the pastoral cartographies created by Scots and Irish squatters in Victoria and New South Wales. Charles Fetherstonhaugh, James Hamilton and William Moodie wrote autobiographies celebrating Australia's pioneering era and their role in it. It is apparent that for some squatters, the indigenous presence formed a disquieting element within their colonial present. Acts of enclosure such as those by Patrick Coady Buckley created a new and, for settlers, arguably universal vocabulary of landscape. Scottish architecture offers firmer grounds on which to establish deliberate invocations of ethnic memory. Each squatter's engagement with the physical landscape depended upon cognitive behaviour and environmental learning that were equally subjective. The place meanings enacted in the pastoral landscapes of Victoria and New South Wales by Irish and Scottish squatters were characteristically ambiguous.Less
This chapter investigates the four narratives of place which exemplify the complex and ambiguous environmental, racial, social and ethnic semiotics that inflected the pastoral cartographies created by Scots and Irish squatters in Victoria and New South Wales. Charles Fetherstonhaugh, James Hamilton and William Moodie wrote autobiographies celebrating Australia's pioneering era and their role in it. It is apparent that for some squatters, the indigenous presence formed a disquieting element within their colonial present. Acts of enclosure such as those by Patrick Coady Buckley created a new and, for settlers, arguably universal vocabulary of landscape. Scottish architecture offers firmer grounds on which to establish deliberate invocations of ethnic memory. Each squatter's engagement with the physical landscape depended upon cognitive behaviour and environmental learning that were equally subjective. The place meanings enacted in the pastoral landscapes of Victoria and New South Wales by Irish and Scottish squatters were characteristically ambiguous.
Grant A. Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300100488
- eISBN:
- 9780300127751
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300100488.003.0003
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Nature
This chapter discusses the Yellowstone fires and relates these to the physical landscape. Fires such as those of 1988 in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem clearly have major ecological significance ...
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This chapter discusses the Yellowstone fires and relates these to the physical landscape. Fires such as those of 1988 in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem clearly have major ecological significance through changes in age structure and composition of vegetation, but their impacts on the physical landscape can be equally profound. Both transient and persistent alterations of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems may result from post-fire geomorphic processes. Fire is particularly important as a catalyst of landscape change in mountain regions, where high-severity burns markedly increase the potential for surface runoff, soil erosion, and landslides on steep slopes, resulting in debris flows and floods during intense storms and rapid snowmelt. Such events account for a large proportion of long-term sediment export in many mountain drainage basins.Less
This chapter discusses the Yellowstone fires and relates these to the physical landscape. Fires such as those of 1988 in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem clearly have major ecological significance through changes in age structure and composition of vegetation, but their impacts on the physical landscape can be equally profound. Both transient and persistent alterations of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems may result from post-fire geomorphic processes. Fire is particularly important as a catalyst of landscape change in mountain regions, where high-severity burns markedly increase the potential for surface runoff, soil erosion, and landslides on steep slopes, resulting in debris flows and floods during intense storms and rapid snowmelt. Such events account for a large proportion of long-term sediment export in many mountain drainage basins.
