Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Spatialization in the Atchafalaya Basin

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Around the world, increasing private and public resources are being devoted to cultural and eco-tourism as a development strategy designed to generate revenues while preserving local environments and cultures. Marginalized regions have sought to balance development with preservation of their distinctiveness, all within a post-industrial economy that paradoxically values difference while facilitating homogenization. This research suggests that while negotiating these conflicting goals and values, both residents of a region and tourists from outside engage in complex performances of "social spatialization" whereby they give particular meanings to place. In Louisiana's Acadiana region attempts to preserve the region's culture and environment through cultural and eco-tourism have been accompanied by considerable political contestation. Though historically this region was socially and environmentally marginalized, the last forty years have seen a resurgence of ethnic recognition and a growing interest in protecting the local wetland environment. Today, the Atchafalaya River Basin is characterized in a variety of ways as a space of natural resources, wilderness, tourism and ethnic heritage. These imagined attributes of place are constructed through a melding of representations about a place and subjective experiences in a place. In order to assess these conjectures, the research will compare qualitative findings from three major sources: literature and popular media; public scoping and interviews; and the experience of a variety of swamp tours. The study will give insight into how Cajun ethnicity is negotiated in the swamp for visitors and how this notion of the Atchafalaya compares to local and representational knowledges. Results will inform contribute to the literature that investigates the increased prominence of place-marketing as an economic development strategy in historically marginalized regions. This study also hopes to reinvigorate interest in Cajun culture so that researchers can better address issues such as language loss, disinvestment, and cultural commodification in the region. Analysis will reveal the ways in which individuals involved in tourism construct and articulate the place myths that undergird this economy. The findings will inform guides, planners, and anyone interested in environmental and cultural preservation in Acadiana or elsewhere. The award will enable a promising student to improve his dissertation research and to establish a strong independent research career.