Dissertation Research: Cultural Models, Landscapes, and Large Dams: A Cognitive and Historical Approach to Environmental Change

University Of Georgia Research Foundation Inc, Athens GA

Investigators

Abstract

Massive landscape changes affect how people relate to the environment. This dissertation research investigates the cultural perceptions of the large-scale development of the Santee Cooper hydroelectric system in South Carolina. This construction of dams and lakes in the years 1938-1942 greatly altered the local landscape and displaced many long-time residents. During this time, the promoters of the dams and the local people employed particular cognitive models with regard to the development. This project analyzes what these cognitive models were and how they were related. By combining a cultural models approach with environmental history, the study describes and analyzes how people - the promoters on one hand, and ordinary local "folks" on the other - thought the landscape, both cultural and physical, was affected by the building of the large dams. The research will show how modernization, wrought by political and economic goals, is reflected in humans' cognitive and cultural associations with the local landscape as shaped by their cultural ideals and personal experience. The research contributes to cognitive anthropology by extending its domain to historical developments and by comparing cultural models elicited from primary historical documents with contemporary ethnographic data. The broader impacts of the research include the interest society has in new knowledge about the impact of large-scale environmental projects, which will be useful to planners and administrators as well as to the public. In addition the project advances the education of a young social scientist.