Public Lands in the Western US

Kathleen M. Sullivan is professor in the Department of Anthropology at California State University at Los Angeles.James H. McDonald is professor of anthropology at University of Montevallo.

This collection, which grew out of a 2017 conference for the Society for Applied Anthropology, presents a series of essays about how a sense of place contributes to conflict or collaboration regarding access to public lands and their management in the western US. The book is divided into three parts—“Overview,” “Exploring Senses of Place,” and “Practices and Contexts of Collaboration and Conflict”—but these divisions seem unnecessary given several recurrent themes. Each chapter treats issues related to competing cultural, economic, and political (among other) perspectives on management issues relating to public lands or waterways in western states. The one exception is the chapter on constructed identities of New Mexico, which does not address public land issues directly and seems to belong in a different book. Most chapters also acknowledge Native American displacement and its consequences. Overall, the issues presented are complex, as shown in the two chapters that treat conifer succession in Yosemite (about restoring landscapes through limited tribal gathering and stewardship practices) and the Great Basin (about the fundamental issues around restoration). Supplemented with chapter bibliographies, this volume is suitable for academic collections on environmental conservation and cultural resource management. Recommended.

• Chapter 1: Public Lands through the Prism of Senses of PlacePart II: Exploring Senses of PlaceChapter 2: The New Wild West: Range War as Revitalization MovementChapter 3: Public Land, Place, and Shadow Displacement in Rural UtahBruce R. Tebbs and James H. McDonaldChapter 4: Claiming the Los Angeles River for "The Public," By Boat and By PermitChapter 5: Chile and New Mexico: Identity, Difference, and PlacePart III: Practices and Contexts of Collaboration and ConflictChapter 6: A Reckoning of the Nuclear WestChapter 7: Public Lands Security: The Dispute over Federal versus Local Law EnforcementChapter 8: Restoring Wild Bison to the Heart of Cattle Country: Yellowstone’s Political FirestormChapter 9: Through a Forest Wilderness:” Native American Environmental Management at Yosemite and Contested Conservation Values in America’s National ParksChapter 10: Nature’s Belonging: Landscapes, Conservation, and the Cultural Politics of Place in the Great Basin