Commons Environmentalism: Forest History, Culture, and Politics in the Appalachian South

FAIN: FB-54257-09

Kathryn Newfont
Mars Hill College (Mars Hill, NC 28754-9134)

A book project, "Commons Environmentalism: Forest History, Culture, and Politics in the Appalachian South" will be completed during the fellowship year. The manuscript traces the history of forest use in the Appalachian South, the development of a regional forest-based culture informed by that history, and the mobilization of this culture through "commons environmentalism" in the post-WWII period. It examines a series of postwar battles fought over management of roughly 1 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land in western North Carolina--the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests. The project argues that rural and working-class people in the southern mountains often proved hostile to wilderness environmentalism, but still mounted vigorous forest protection efforts based on their views of local woods as commons harvest grounds. The piece draws on and contributes to environmental, Appalachian, Southern, and women's history, and the history of environmentalism as a social movement.

Associated Products

Blue Ridge Commons: Environmental Activism and Forest History in Western North Carolina (Book)
Title: Blue Ridge Commons: Environmental Activism and Forest History in Western North Carolina
Author: Kathryn Newfont
Abstract: In the late twentieth century, residents of the Blue Ridge mountains in western North Carolina fiercely resisted certain environmental efforts, even while launching aggressive initiatives of their own. Kathryn Newfont examines the environmental history of this region over the course of three hundred years, identifying what she calls commons environmentalism—a cultural strain of conservation in American history that has gone largely unexplored. Efforts in the 1970s to expand federal wilderness areas in the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests generated strong opposition. For many mountain residents the idea of unspoiled wilderness seemed economically unsound, historically dishonest, and elitist. Newfont shows that local people’s sense of commons environmentalism required access to the forests that they viewed as semipublic places for hunting, fishing, and working. Policies that removed large tracts from use were perceived as “enclosure” and resisted.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/blue_ridge_commons
Primary URL Description: Blue Ridge Commons: University of Georgia Press Fall 2011 Catalog copy
Secondary URL: http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ridge-Commons-Environmental-Activism/dp/082034124X
Secondary URL Description: Blue Ridge Commons: Amazon page
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: ISBN-10: 0820
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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