American Space American Place

American Space/American Place offers geographical perspectives on the condition of the United States at the outset of the twenty-first century. It compares the American ideal of liberty, equality, individual opportunity and social improvement with the contemporary condition of the regions, states and localities--the ideal American space with its reality as a place. It uses the public standard provided by the official ideology of the United States to see how well things are really going. Agnew and Smith consider the contrast between ideal and reality at local, state and national levels in education, health, and welfare, in community, race, gender, and calss relations, in economic and industrial development, and in the use and exploitation of America's landscape. American Space/American Place provides a series of compelling insights into the current condition of American Society, its natural environment and its place within the world.

This book offers geographical perspectives on the condition of the U.S. at the outset of the 21st century. It compares American ideals of liberty, equality, opportunity and social improvement with the condition of the regions, states and localities.

We typically take public space for granted, as if it has continuously been there, yet public space has always been the expression of the will of some agency (person or institution) who names the space, gives it purpose, and monitors its existence. And often its use has been contested. These new essays, written for this volume, approach public space through several key questions: Who has the right to define public space? How do such places generate and sustain symbolic meaning? Is public space unchanging, or is it subject to our subjective perception? Do we, given the public nature of public space, have the right to subvert it? These eighteen essays, including several case studies, offer convincing evidence of a spatial turn in American studies. They argue for a re-visioning of American culture as a history of place-making and the instantiation of meaning in structures, boundaries, and spatial configurations. Chronologically the subjects range from Pierre L'Enfant's initial majestic conceptualization of Washington, D.C. to the post-modern realization that public space in the U.S. is increasingly a matter of waste. Topics range from parks to cities to small towns, from open-air museums to airports, encompassing the commercial marketing of place as well as the subversion and re-possession of public space by the disenfranchised. Ultimately, public space is variously imagined as the site of social and political contestation and of aesthetic change.

Occupying Space in American Literature and Culture inscribes itself within the spatial turn that permeates the ways we look at literary and cultural productions. The volume seeks to clarify the connections between race, space, class, and identity as it concentrates on different occupations and disoccupations, enclosures and boundaries. Space is scaled up and down, from the body, the ground zero of spatiality, to the texturology of Manhattan; from the striated place of the office in Melville’s "Bartleby, the Scrivener" on Wall Street, to the striated spaces of internment camps and reservations; from the lowest of the low, the (human) clutter that lined the streets of Albany, NY, during the Depression, to the new Towers of Babel that punctuate the contemporary architecture of transparencies. As it strings together these spatial narratives, the volume reveals how, beyond the boundaries that characterize each space, every location has loose ends that are impossible to contain.

In a series of pioneering studies, this book examines the creation—and the conflict behind the creation—of sacred space in America. The essays in this volume visit places in America where economic, political, and social forces clash over the sacred and the profane, from wilderness areas in the American West to the Mall in Washington, D.C., and they investigate visions of America as sacred space at home and abroad. Here are the beginnings of a new American religious history—told as the story of the contested spaces it has inhabited. The contributors are David Chidester, Matthew Glass, Edward T. Linenthal, Colleen McDannell, Robert S. Michaelsen, Rowland A. Sherrill, and Bron Taylor.

Increasing evidence of the irreparable damage humans have inflicted on the planet has caused many to adopt a defeatist attitude toward the future of the global environment. Local Environmental Movements: A Comparative Study of the United States and Japan analyzes how local groups in both Japan and the United States refuse to surrender the Earth to a depleted and polluted fate. Drawing on numerous case studies, scholars from around the world discuss efforts by grassroots organizations and movements to protect the environment and to preserve the landscapes they love and depend upon. The authors examine citizen campaigns protesting nuclear radiation and chemical weapons disposal. Other groups have organized to protect farmlands and urban landscapes to groups that organize to preserve steams, wildlife habitats, tidal flats, coral reefs, National Parks, and biodiversity. These small groups of determined citizens are occasionally successful, demonstrating the power of democracy against seemingly insurmountable odds. In other cases, the groups failed to bring about the desired change. This book explores the distinctive leaders, the relevant laws and regulations, local politics, and the historical and cultural contexts that influenced the goals and successes of the various groups. The contributors conclude that there is no one single environmental movement but many, and the volume emphasizes grassroots movements and advocacy groups that represent local constituencies. By studying these groups and their respective challenges, Local Environmental Movements highlights the common themes as well as the distinctive features of environmental advocates in the United States and Japan. Over decades, these groupsÕ have nurtured environmental awareness and promoted the concept of sustainable development that respects the need for both environmental protection and cultural preservation.

A passionate work about the fragile and arid West that Stegner loves