Abstract
This dissertation demonstrates how social constructions are mobilized as discourse through arguments about the meanings of certain concepts, and how these arguments over meaning are themselves constitutive of social construction. In particular, it focuses on the interrelated constructions of place, culture, and identity made in land-use conflicts involving historic preservation, such as that surrounding the historic Hickory Ground site, located on tribal land near Wetumpka, Alabama. Methodologically, these constructions are revealed through the study of differential meanings given to the concepts of heritage, sacredness, preservation, indigineity, and sovereignty as they are employed in the Hickory Ground case, in original interviews, newspaper articles, and other documents by social actors with different positionalities and powers. This paper eschews analysis of the construction of place, culture, and identity, in favor of an understanding of power relations, and the ways particular discourses, and the constructions they represent, come to be dominant and affect the most material change: land-use management decisions that transform (or preserve) the Hickory Ground site. This understanding is essential for historic preservation policy analyses in which seeking the resolution of contentious disagreements over particular places is the goal, as any resolution must emerge from negotiations amongst multiple parties rather than top-down policy decisions made by appeal to historical “fact.”
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