I completed my dissertation in December 2001, and am now working as an environmental consultant and planner. To view my CV, click here.
I completed my dissertation in December 2001, and am now working as an environmental consultant and planner. To view my CV, click here.
The purpose of this dissertation is to ask, what happens to a cultural landscape once the National Park Service (NPS) and its discourses of management and national heritage are invoked as a means for preserving it? I argue that the historical development of the agency has resulted in national criteria, both for what "counts" as heritage and for how to manage park landscapes, which prevail over local priorities and uniqueness over time. Drawing on the fields of environmental history and landscape theory, I hypothesize that the processes of NPS preservation and management reshape landscapes away from the local characteristics that may have caused them to be preserved in the first place, and toward a reflection of NPS institutional ideology: increasingly nationalized, arrested, and natural. I investigate this question by conducting an in-depth case study of the processes and outcomes of landscape change at Point Reyes National Seashore (photo above).
I am interested in this topic for two important reasons. First, by better understanding the role of institutional ideology in causing landscape change, my work adds to the theoretical understanding of how definition and control of landscapes are used as tools of power. Various researchers (Cosgrove 1984, Bender 1993, D. Mitchell 1996) have shown that large institutions may intentionally manipulate the landscape and its meaning as a way to marginalize others' interpretations of it. In contrast, my study investigates the degree to which NPS management may be unknowingly reshaping park landscapes to reflect the institution's historic beliefs and priorities.
Second, I hope to contribute to further developing and refining landscape protection policy in the Park Service. Awareness of the historical trends and on-the-ground outcomes of NPS management of cultural landscapes is needed by both policy makers and park managers so that effective landscape preservation can be sustained over time. If NPS involvement creates a distinctive imprint of significance and meaning in cultural landscapes, the agency may wish to adjust its management policies so as to minimize these tendencies. This is of particular importance in units where the people that created the cultural landscape are still active, as the changes resulting from NPS policies may impair the residents' own sense of landscape meaning and significance, or even their ability to persist as a functioning community. At the very least, park personnel should be aware of this trend, so as to have greater clarity regarding the intent and goals of management, and greater recognition of the ways in which management may affect the landscape. There is nothing inherently wrong with causing change within parks, but the NPS should be cognizant of these processes and their implications for residents, visitors, and park managers themselves.
Examining this issue now is particularly timely, as the NPS is currently struggling with the question of how best to manage these kinds of cultural landscapes. Since the 1960s increasing numbers of new parks have included existing human settlements as part of the protected landscape, and many of these units have encountered controversy resulting from implementation of management policies. In some cases NPS management has overlooked the needs of the residents, resulting in what Joseph Sax has called "communities programmed to die" (Sax 1984, at 505). At the same time, interest and concern with the preservation of cultural landscapes has increased within the NPS (see Cultural Resource Management Guideline 1997). Hence it is crucial to understand what likely outcomes can be expected from the agency's involvement. Yet while some excellent research has been done on how NPS management has shaped biological resources over time (Chase 1984, Sellars 1997), there is very little prior research that looks at historical change in cultural landscapes within national parks.
From a larger perspective, this project focuses on preserved cultural landscapes because they represent a middle ground, in which both functioning ecosystems and working human communities and cultures coexist as part of an integrated whole, rather than managed as separate and oppositional. People need to understand their role in the larger landscape, to see that they are part of nature and not something separate from or above it. Protected landscapes that aim to conserve both natural and cultural resources with active, thriving interactions help us to see these connections. Thus this research makes a unique contribution toward achieving greater sustainability of landscape preservation and management.
My dissertation was funded by the Canon National Parks Science Scholars Program -- hooray! This is a wonderful grant program, and I am quite inspired by their interest and support of my work.
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