For the enjoyment of the people : the creation of national identity in American public lands / Mary E. Stuckey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stuckey, Mary E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National parks and reserves--United States--History.

National parks and reserves.

Public lands--United States--History.

Public lands.

Nationalism--United States.

Nationalism.

Collective memory--United States.

Collective memory.

United States.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

xviii, 270 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, [2023]

Summary:

"While its national parks are widely viewed as "America's best idea," and are both popular and noncontroversial in the United States, the establishment and history of almost every national park has been characterized by conflict over competing claims to land, history, knowledge, and economic interests. American presidents stake their claims to environmentalism, their assertions of a singular national history, and their definitions of a unified national identity on the parks, and often do so inside the parks themselves. Like any major area of public policy, however, the fissures present in debates over the national parks also represent important fracture lines in the public understanding of the meaning of "America" and of individual claims to citizenship. The park system, in other words, does a lot of political work for both presidents and the mass public, even though much of that work goes largely unnoticed. This book explores that political work, focusing on national origins and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, monuments to the national past, heritage and the assertion of a national narrative, environmentalism and natural resources, and the exploitation of the national landscape for economic gain"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Important events in the development of American public lands and the National Park System

Introduction: Interpreting "America's best idea"

Establishing national origins : erasure, disposession, and American empire

Claiming a national past : patriotism and citizenship

Asserting a singular national narrative : whose history and whose heritage?

Protecting natural resources : citizen stewards and the nation's future

Measuring value : entitlement in the land of opportunity

Conclusion: "For the benefit and enjoyment of all the people".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Stuckey, Mary E. For the enjoyment of the people

ISBN:

9780700634798

0700634797

OCLC:

1347267699