Power and Place

"In 1993 anthropologist Melinda Wagner and her students began observing the "power line frontiers" in southwest Virginia; they have produced a remarkable 24 year ethnographic study of cultural attachment to land. To ground their descriptions and conclusions, Wagner cites a century of anthropological and ecological writing on the long-term value of stewardship of landscapes, the recent culture wars, the role of applied anthropology in legal advocacy, and the short-term, destructive, yet powerful agencies of power companies."—Patricia Beaver, Professor Emerita, editor of From Kathmandu to Kilimanjaro: A Mother-Daughter memoir

"Born out of the resistance by mountain residents to the development of a high voltage power line across rural southwestern Virginia, Wagner's three decades-long study lays out the significance of the power of place and its animation of the people on the land. This is an impressive example of the role anthropologists can play in collaboration with the public to discover and analyze a cultural concept like 'attachment to the land' in challenging developers in the environmental culture wars of our time."—Susan E. Keefe, Professor Emerita, Appalachian State University, and editor of Participatory Development in Appalachia: Cultural Identity, Community, and Sustainability

"This ambitious, accessible, and important ethnographic study relies heavily on residents' testimony to show how and why rural culture and life are important to American society in both practical and symbolic ways. After convincingly making this case, Wagner then examines in detail the current threats to such a life and offers specific strategies to abate the cultural wars and strike a balance between preservation and progress."—Stephen L. Fisher, co-editor of Transforming Places: Lessons from Appalachia

"Wagner summarizes twenty years of ethnographic exploration into cultural meaning, narrative and practices that have rooted rural southwest Virginians to family land across generations and framed their resistance to energy transmission lines and other intrusive development. The concluding overview of past and present strategies for protecting land and conserving natural resources offers hope for collaborative resolution of conflict between place and property, preservation and progress in rural America."—Benita J. Howell, editor of Culture, Environment, and Conservation in the Appalachian South

"Melinda Bollar Wagner's Power and Place is a labor of love—with 25 years' worth of data on rural life and contexts for understanding perennial conflicts between preservation and progress, especially when "cultural attachment" confronts environmental threats. This book contains eye-opening analyses and valuable, innovative discussions of what we stand to lose if we do not protect our rural places."—Sandra L. Ballard, editor of Appalachian Journal

"Power and Place: Preservation, Progress, and the Culture War Over Land by Melinda Bollar Wagner is both reflection on and guide to the ways social scientists can engage in the political arena on behalf of threatened communities without abandoning their academic integrity. This thoughtful book will inspire practitioners and spark discussion among all those who seek to understand how we might employ the ways and means of the academy to the benefit of the communities that lie outside higher education's hallowed halls. Wagner's work is humane, considered, and worthy of emulation. Lord love her."—Robert Gipe, retired director, Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College Appalachian Program and author of Trampoline, Weedeater, and Pop

"Wagner's probing book is rich with feeling and evidence for the multiple meanings of place in rural Appalachia. It offers a fine methodological model of student-powered research and insightful interpretations of findings acquired over decades of investigation. Above all, it lays bare the deep and perennial tension between an American drive for progress that obliterates the past and an ethos of preservation that grounds our identity and values in relationship to each other and the places we call home."—Barbara Ellen Smith, author of Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Black Lung