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Remaking Identity, Landscape and Belonging in the Florida Everglades Rebecca I

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Remaking Identity, Landscape and Belonging in the Florida Everglades Rebecca I Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 3-26-2013 Sociocultural Complexities of Ecosystem Restoration: Remaking Identity, Landscape and Belonging in the Florida Everglades Rebecca I. Garvoille Florida International University, [email protected] DOI: 10.25148/etd.FI13042213 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Garvoille, Rebecca I., "Sociocultural Complexities of Ecosystem Restoration: Remaking Identity, Landscape and Belonging in the Florida Everglades" (2013). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 841. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/841 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida SOCIOCULTURAL COMPLEXITIES OF ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION: REMAKING IDENTITY, LANDSCAPE AND BELONGING IN THE FLORIDA EVERGLADES A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in GLOBAL AND SOCIOCULTURAL STUDIES by Rebecca I. Garvoille 2013 © Copyright 2013 by Rebecca I. Garvoille All rights reserved. iii DEDICATION I dedicate my dissertation to my parents and to our home, Lost Horizon Farm, for sparking my intense interest in working landscapes and environmental conservation. Thank you for your unwavering support throughout my intellectual journey. I also dedicate my dissertation to my husband, Mike, for his endless patience and his enduring willingness to accompany me into the field with a smile. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to my committee members for accompanying me on this intellectual journey, and for always encouraging me to be a better and more insightful scholar. Your incisive questions, good humor and helpful feedback were always welcome. I am especially grateful for all of the time and guidance my advisor, Dr. Laura Ogden, generously offered on researching, ethnographic interviewing, writing and revising along the way. I could not have completed this project without help from Bonnie Ciolino, Archivist at the South Florida Collections Management Center. Her keen knowledge of the Big Cypress papers was helpful on many occasions. I would also like to thank Robert Blythe, a retired National Park Service historian who is currently writing an administrative history of Everglades National Park. Robert provided me with several key archival references, and indispensable research tips along the way. My colleagues and mentors at the Florida Coastal Everglades LTER provided important feedback, an opportunity to learn more about Everglades ecology and hydrology, and a productive intellectual space in which to explore my ideas about the social nature of the Everglades. I would also like to thank the staff at Everglades National Park and the Big Cypress National Preserve for being receptive to my research and for responding to my many requests for interviews and information. Many, many thanks to all the glades hunters and glades people who opened their doors to me and granted me interviews during the course of my fieldwork. You literally opened my eyes to a wealth of human histories that animate the Everglades and make it a truly inspiring and fascinating place. I will always remember our compelling conversations about Everglades histories, politics and places; my swamp buggy rides; and my visits to your backcountry camps. And, finally, to R for v illuminating my Everglades world with your interesting commentary, indispensible insights and inspiring words. I couldn’t have done it without you. This work would not have been possible without support from the National Science Foundation through the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research program (NSF Grant No. DBI-0620409), a National Science Foundation SBE Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (NSF Grant No. BCS-1155026), a FIU Graduate School Dissertation Year Fellowship, a FIU Graduate School Doctoral Evidence Acquisition Fellowship, and a FIU Morris and Anita Broad Research Fellowship. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION SOCIOCULTURAL COMPLEXITIES OF ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION: REMAKING IDENTITY, LANDSCAPE AND BELONGING IN THE FLORIDA EVERGLADES by Rebecca I. Garvoille Florida International University, 2013 Miami, Florida Professor Laura A. Ogden, Major Professor The Florida Everglades is a highly diverse socionatural landscape that historically spanned much of the south Florida peninsula. Today, the Florida Everglades is an iconic but highly contested conservation landscape. It is the site of one of the world’s largest publicly funded ecological restoration programs, estimated to cost over $8 billion (U.S. GAO 2007), and it is home to over two million acres of federally protected lands, including the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park. However, local people’s values, practices and histories overlap and often conflict with the global and eco-centric values linked to Everglades environmental conservation efforts, sparking environmental conflict. My dissertation research examined the cultural politics of nature associated with two Everglades conservation and ecological restoration projects: 1) the creation and stewardship of the Big Cypress National Preserve, and 2) the Tamiami Trail project at the northern boundary of Everglades National Park. Using multiple research methods including ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, participant observation, surveys and vii semi-structured interviews, I documented how these two projects have shaped environmental claims-making strategies to Everglades nature on the part of environmental NGOs, the National Park Service and local white outdoorsmen. In particular, I examined the emergence of an oppositional white identity called the Gladesmen Culture. My findings include the following: 1) just as different forms of nature are historically produced, contingent and power-laden, so too are different claims to Everglades nature; 2) identity politics are an integral dimension of Everglades environmental conflicts; and 3) the Big Cypress region’s history and contemporary conflicts are shaped by the broader political economy of development in south Florida. My dissertation concluded that identity politics, class and property relations have played a key, although not always obvious, role in shaping Everglades history and environmental claims-making, and that they continue to influence contemporary Everglades environmental conflicts. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION: The Socionatural Everglades...................................................1 Research Goals and Objectives……………………………………………8 Research Study Site .....................................................................................9 Literature Review.......................................................................................15 Research Methods......................................................................................23 Overview of Chapters ................................................................................36 References..................................................................................................39 CHAPTER 1: Political Ecologies of Progress ......................................................46 Introduction................................................................................................46 Literature Overview...................................................................................50 The Developmentalist Will to Improve: A More Productive Everglades .................................................................................................54 The Social Costs of Progress .....................................................................60 An Enduring Developmentalist Will to Improve: The CS&F Project, Post- WWII Suburbia, and the Making the Big Cypress National Preserve ......69 Ecological Restoration: Rehabilitating and Redefining the Everglades....79 Conclusion .................................................................................................82 References..................................................................................................84 CHAPTER 2: Hydropolitics of Environmentalism in the Florida Everglades......89 Defining Everglades Hydropolitics............................................................89 Background: Everglades Restoration, A Development Project.................91 The Rise of Everglades Environmental NGOs and the Everglades Waterscape.................................................................................................93 Water as Capital for ENGOs....................................................................107 Environmentalist Visions for Everglades Restoration.............................110 The Devil is in the Details: Diverse Environmental NGO Positions on Getting the Water Right ..........................................................................115 Conclusion ...............................................................................................123 References................................................................................................125 CHAPTER 3: A Hunter’s Landscape – Place, Property and Practices in the Big Cypress.................................................................................................................129
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