Abstract
There is growing recognition among political ecologists of the need to examine shifting natural resource regimes and their effects on livelihoods in “First World” places. This emerging literature has variously examined the “Third World within,” the persistence of “subsistence activities” in the “First World,” and the “reterritorialization” of land tenure and access. However, much of this work has tended to focus on traditional extractive industries in the American West, indigenous claims to lands and resources in the U.S. and Canada, and non-timber resources on public lands. In contrast, we use a case study of African-American sweetgrass basket-makers, associated with the Gullah culture, in South Carolina’s lowcountry to examine the ways in which ongoing amenity-driven residential development is fundamentally reshaping resource access on private lands. Historically, basket-makers harvested the materials (primarily sweetgrass or Mulenbergia filipes) needed for their culturally important art form from accessible, rural, and privately held tracts of land in close proximity to their communities, but development pressures and changes in resident interpretation of property rights has decreased access to basket-making resources. The case is particularly illuminating, as it examines the emergence of ‘conservation subdivisions’ in the region and raises important questions about what “rural uses” and users are being conserved through responses to exurban, suburban, and urban development in formerly rural areas.
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Notes
Sweetgrass is from the perennial grass Muhlenbergia sericea Peterson [synonyms: Muhlenbergia filipes, Muhlenbergia capillaris var. filipes]. It occurs in sandy maritime habitats on barrier islands and coastal woodlands in the Southeast US (see Gustafson and Peterson 2007 for an overview).
Interview 9, July 15, 2002, Charleston, SC.
Speaker at the Lowcountry Heritage Planning Workshop on “Sweetgrass basketry: A tradition under fire.” Avery Research Center, Charleston, South Carolina. December 10, 2005.
Interview 4, June 27, 2002, Mt. Pleasant, SC.
Interview 18, October 24, 2002, Mt. Pleasant, SC.
Interview 17, October 10, 2002, Mt. Pleasant, SC.
Interview 1, June 13, 2002, Charleston, SC.
Interview 20, November 11, 2002, Mt. Pleasant, SC.
Interview 4, June 27, 2002, Mt. Pleasant, SC.
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Acknowledgements
The comments of Valentine Cadieux and Laura Taylor as well as two anonymous reviewers contributed greatly to this article. We thank South Carolina Sea Grant for funding the 2002–2003 data collection effort. We also wish to thank the respondents who participated in interviews and all of the individuals who have provided input on this ongoing project. In particular, we greatly appreciate Dr. Dale Rosengarten, Curator of the Special Collections at the College of Charleston’s Addlestone Library, for her thoughts on this work. In addition, we are grateful to Dr. Norm Levine at the College of Charleston Santee Cooper GIS Lab for his assistance in putting together the map in Fig. 1. As always, all normal disclaimers apply.
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Hurley, P.T., Halfacre, A.C. Dodging alligators, rattlesnakes, and backyard docks: a political ecology of sweetgrass basket-making and conservation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, USA. GeoJournal 76, 383–399 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-009-9276-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-009-9276-7