Review of Struggle Over Utah’s San Rafael Swell by Jeffrey Durrant

Authors

Michael Coughlan, Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia

Date of this Version

2008

Comments

Published in Ecological and Environmental Anthropology Vol. 4, No. 1, 2008. Copyright 2008 Coughlan. Used by permission. Online at http://eea.anthro.uga.edu/index.php/eea/index

Abstract

Jeffrey O. Durrant’s Struggle Over Utah’s San Rafael Swell: Wilderness, National Conservation Areas, and National Monuments presents a history of the political conflict over public lands use and management of the canyon riddled landscape of central Utah. It examines the conflict using the content of the public record: journalistic media, governmental correspondence, mission statements and public statements of the stakeholder organizations, agencies and local governments involved. Struggle is at its core a journalistic narrative that unfortunately does not live up to the standards of an academic presentation of a recurrent political ecological theme in the American West. Indeed, Durrant reviews none of the relevant academic literature other than a standard recital of iconic works which serve to color his narrative rather than illuminate the reader (e.g. Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Carl Sauer).