University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 12-2017 Our Land Is Not Just Soil: Knowing, Feeling, and Doing Environmental Activism in the Arkansas Ozarks Ramey Arlen Moore University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Moore, Ramey Arlen, "Our Land Is Not Just Soil: Knowing, Feeling, and Doing Environmental Activism in the Arkansas Ozarks" (2017). Theses and Dissertations. 2560. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/2560 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Our Land is Not Just Soil: Knowing, Feeling, and Doing Environmental Activism in the Arkansas Ozarks A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Ramey Moore University of Arkansas Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies, 2005 University of Texas Master of Arts in Middle Eastern Studies, 2009 December 2017 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. ____________________________________ Dr. Justin M. Nolan Dissertation Director ____________________________________ ___________________________________ Dr. Kirstin Erickson Dr. George Sabo Committee Member Committee Member Abstract The Ozarks is a holey place, an ancient plateau formed from ancient rocks and the sediment of millions of years of living things. The Ozarks is also, from another perspective a place made from a mesh of overlapping lines, lines of migration, lines of living things, lines of water movement over and through the land. This dissertation engages with the practice of conservation and environmentalism as it is performed and lived by Ozarkers and Arkansawyers, natives and transplants. Based on more than a year of ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, Save the Ozarks, Arkansas Master Naturalists, and with Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area, this dissertation examines how emotion, affect, enacted knowledge through performance, and strategic reinterpretations of the nature of political engagement are all part of a local system of conservation. In this dissertation, I seek to analyze links between individual emotion, social performance of expertise, political organization, and conceptual understandings of the physiogeography of the land. © 2017 by Ramey Moore All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements I must first thank my long-suffering family, Laine Gates and Arlen Gates-Moore, for making it possible for me to conduct this research and complete this dissertation. It would have been impossible to reach this point without their active assistance and forbearance. It is also necessary to thank my dissertation director Dr. Justin M. Nolan. It was only through his engagement and support that I have become the scholar that I am today. I must thank him for being a good friend, and occasionally a sounding board for ideas both good and ill- advised. A special thanks to Dr. Kirstin Erickson and Dr. George Sabo who I hope can both see the enormous influence that they have had on this research. Their support was essential, and I am grateful for their patience. Also, I must recognize the support of the department, particularly Dr. JoAnn D’Alisera, the Director of Graduate Studies, and Dr. Ted Swedenburg. I have been fortunate to have two distinguished and supportive mentors in these scholars. I owe them more than I can convey. I would also like to thank the University of Arkansas staff, in the department and generally. Support and assistance from Shannan Kaye Freeman was instrumental in completing my program of study. I would also like to thank the University of Arkansas Graduate School for the financial support provided through the Doctoral Academy Fellowship of which I was a recipient. Finally, I must express my thanks to Dr. Mary Jo Schneider and Dr. William Schneider whose enthusiasm and support was the deciding factor that put me on the path that has led to this point. Table of Contents I. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 II. Where From and To Where?: A Review of Relevant Literature ....................................... 37 III. Ozarkmentalities: Environmentalities of the Ozarks in Performance for Aldo Leopold Day 76 IV. Returning to the Natural State: Power, Race, and Landscape in the Ozarks ..................... 98 V. Activism Subverting Boundaries: Karst-thought and Water-language in the Ozarks .... 136 VI. Concluding Lines: Traces of Where We Have Been and Living Trajectories ................ 157 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 167 1 I. Introduction “Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals. food chains are the living channels which conduct energy up ward; death and decay return it to the soil. The circuit is not closed; some energy is dissipated in decay, some is added by absorption from the air, some is stored in soils, peats, and long-lived forests; but it is a sustained circuit, like a slowly augmented revolving fund of life.” -Aldo Leopold from The Sand County Almanac A sound of stones crunching against the tires, my car slides slightly as a I pull to a stop in the gravel lot next to the Buffalo Outdoor Center in the small unincorporated hamlet (village, town) of Ponca, Arkansas. A slight trepidation moves through me; I’m about to head out with members of the Buffalo River Foundation (BRF) leadership including Mike Mills, and the then- Director Rayne Davidson, a gregarious and outgoing woman who is also a local real estate agent. The BRF is a local version of organizations like the Nature Conservancy (see Compton 1992) whose mandate involves environmental easements on privately owned land. The BRF has worked in the area for more than a decade. Today’s work is another chance to experience the boots-on-the-ground work that the BRF engages in. It is also my chance to learn some of the basics to generating the necessary reporting required to filing the easements that result in the long-term conservation of historical, cultural, and/or environmental resources on private land. The piece that we’ll be walking and documenting today is a triangular piece that makes up part of the Gossett hollow just up the road from the BOC and the greater metropolitan city center of Ponca proper. I have packed some food, water, a bag with my tools (chief among these is the inexpensive Garmin GPS unit that I am still learning the ins-and-outs of). 2 John1 is an engaging person whose sun-darkened face is often split with a grin in spite of recent heart surgery. John is a long-time resident of Harrison who is a former Professor of Geology at the University of Michigan. To work he is dressed in a wide-brimmed hat, his comfortable work clothes, broken-in brown hiking boots, and customary smile. He has also built his own kind of equipment holder that clips together with his backpack straps where it covers most of his torso. Packed in to its rigid wooden storage compartments are an aluminum clipboard, compass, flagging tape, GPS unit, pens, and probably a few other things that are tucked away for the right occasion. He has, today, graciously let me tag along to see how he goes about producing this technical document necessary to both the tax benefits of the easement, but also key to the protection of the land (theoretically) in perpetuity. John and I have already had a few conversations about the nature of “in perpetuity.” For John’s purposes the specific and detailed descriptions of property lines, inclusion of relevant photographs of boundary lines, key features, and viewsheds were necessary to ensure a broad utility for the reports that he would file. Ostensibly these reports, referred to as baseline reports, would serve as the standard by which the environmental easement was judged. The threat of losing the tax benefits of the easement were used as the means of enforcing the environmental restrictions outlined by the landowner. At the same time, John acknowledged that “these reports aren’t a way of preventing damage,” but that their role is more about enforcing good behavior through highlighting the consequences of ignoring the easement’s regulations of activity on a given parcel of land. This ex post facto punishment, according to John, requires a mix of good monitoring and a clearly written baseline report that has enough information to allow later 1 In general, I have changed names, combined individuals, and made other attempts to obscure the identities of the people with whom I worked. I have used real names where the individual concerned is a public figure, or holds a public-facing position in an environmental group. 3 evaluations to immediately recognize changes in the property. For John, more so than for other members of the BRF (and several members of the Nature Conservancy of Arkansas with whom I spoke), he acknowledged that it’s likely that in the future there will be issues and problems that cannot be addressed ahead of time, such as how to deal with damage caused outside the control of a property owner. “What about in the case of a massive ice storm, like the one a few years ago?2“ I asked. John’s reply is telling. He noted, “Well, it might be very difficult to tell what might be damage from a storm that has been cleared and what might have been done for other reasons.” John is taking me out with him on this first outing since his heart attack and is presently coping with his wife’s ongoing illness as well.