Bryan, William D. (Author)
University of Georgia Press
Physical Details: 254
Language: English
Using the lens of environmental history, William D. Bryan provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the post–Civil War South by framing the New South as a struggle over environmental stewardship. For more than six decades, scholars have caricatured southerners as so desperate for economic growth that they rapaciously consumed the region’s abundant natural resources. Yet business leaders and public officials did not see profit and environmental quality as mutually exclusive goals, and they promoted methods of conserving resources that they thought would ensure long-term economic growth. Southerners called this idea "permanence." But permanence was a contested concept, and these businesspeople clashed with other stakeholders as they struggled to find new ways of using valuable resources. The Price of Permanence shows how these struggles indelibly shaped the modern South.Bryan writes the region into the national conservation movement for the first time and shows that business leaders played a key role shaping the ideals of American conservationists. This book also dismantles one of the most persistent caricatures of southerners: that they had little interest in environmental quality. Conservation provided white elites with a tool for social control, and this is the first work to show how struggles over resource policy fueled Jim Crow. The ideology of "permanence" protected some resources but did not prevent degradation of the environment overall, and The Price of Permanence ultimately uses lessons from the New South to reflect on sustainability today.
...MoreReview Caroline Grego (2022) Review of "The Price of Permanence: Nature and Business in the New South". Environmental History (pp. 163-165).
Review Andrew P. Patrick (2020) Review of "The Price of Permanence: Nature and Business in the New South". Journal of Southern History (pp. 193-195).
Similar Citations
Book
Derek R. Larson;
(2016)
Keeping Oregon Green: Livability, Stewardship, and the Challenges of Growth, 1960–1980
(/isis/citation/CBB268188691/)
Book
Crane, Jeff;
(2015)
The Environment in American History: Nature and the Formation of the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB001551938/)
Article
Morris, Christopher;
(2009)
A More Southern Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB001030727/)
Book
Casey P. Cater;
(2019)
Regenerating Dixie: electric energy and the modern South
(/isis/citation/CBB592644863/)
Book
Benjamin Heber Johnson;
(2017)
Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation
(/isis/citation/CBB507273842/)
Book
Unger, Nancy C.;
(2012)
Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB001320951/)
Book
Sara Dant;
(2016)
Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West
(/isis/citation/CBB832367208/)
Book
Lewis, Michael L.;
(2007)
American Wilderness: A New History
(/isis/citation/CBB000930098/)
Book
Kimberly K. Smith;
(2019)
The conservation constitution: the conservation movement and constitutional change, 1870-1930
(/isis/citation/CBB094848491/)
Book
Estella B. Leopold;
(2016)
Stories from the Leopold Shack: Sand County Revisited
(/isis/citation/CBB904763551/)
Book
Kirby, Jack Temple;
(2006)
Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South.
(/isis/citation/CBB000930068/)
Article
Alexandra Hui;
(2021)
Listening to Extinction: Early Conservation Radio Sounds and the Silences of Species
(/isis/citation/CBB559063769/)
Article
Germán Vergara;
Emily Wakild;
(2022)
Extinction and Its Interventions in the Americas
(/isis/citation/CBB254805814/)
Book
Runte, Alfred;
(2006)
Allies of the Earth: Railroads and the Soul of Preservation
(/isis/citation/CBB000700538/)
Article
Bowcutt, Frederica;
(2011)
Tanoak Target: The Rise and Fall of Herbicide Use on a Common Native Tree
(/isis/citation/CBB001034500/)
Book
Horace Kephart;
Claxton, Mae Miller;
George Frizzell;
(2020)
Horace Kephart : writings
(/isis/citation/CBB154285362/)
Book
John F. Ross;
(2019)
The Promise of the Grand Canyon: John Wesley Powell's Perilous Journey and His Vision for the American West
(/isis/citation/CBB963886291/)
Article
Tomory, Leslie;
(2012)
The Environmental History of the Early British Gas Industry, 1812--1830
(/isis/citation/CBB001232557/)
Chapter
Hasenöhrl, Ute;
(2011)
Nature Conservation and the German Labour Movement: The Touristenverein Die Naturfreunde as a Bridge between Social and Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB001214637/)
Book
Charlotte Vallino;
(2023)
Salvaguardare la natura, proteggere l'ambiente, difendere la Terra. I pionieri del pensiero del nostro tempo
(/isis/citation/CBB029916093/)
Be the first to comment!