Book Review: Preserving nature in the National Parks: a history

Abstract

tion and resistance. That this is so is not surprising, because a sense of locality and belonging to place form a fundamental part of ontological security. The self and society are both projects in which locality is brought to bear always resulting in a situated and dynamic politics of place. The role of the anthropologist in an analysis of a politics of land and place is an uncomfortable one, as many of the discussions in this book demonstrate. While modern anthropological theory stresses culture as process in which people are always contextually defining and redefining themselves such a notion may not match the practical desires and wishes of indigenous populations very well. From their point of view culture is much better regarded in the traditional anthropological sense as an unchanging essence in which identity is grounded and safeguarded. In this manner it can be represented as having an aura of authenticity, grounded in the distant past and owing nothing to modernity. Nothing, to them, could be worse than to subscribe to the position that culture is invented, or constructed. This book demonstrates forcefully that culture, politics, identity and attitudes to the land can never be distanciated. There is no point for discussion, or place, outside relations of power. Voices of the land is an excellent book that should be standard reading on any university courses concerned with landscapes, place and social identity.