Redefining the Refuge: Rearticulating the Meanings of Environmentally Variable Spaces

• In Event: 254 - Section on Environment and Technology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Environmental Perception

Abstract

How the meanings and uses of spaces are rearticulated in response to environmental variability is a topic that needs to be addressed more carefully considering the current and predicted environmental consequences of climate change. Utilizing participant-observation, interview, and textual data, in this discussion I illustrate how the meanings and uses of a National Wildlife Refuge in rural Missouri were being reconfigured following a shift in trans-national Canada goose migration patterns away from the area that undermined understanding the Refuge as a space for goose hunting and research. I show how the meanings of the Refuge were being rearticulated as local residents responded to policies implemented by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service that increasingly restricted the use of locally mundane practices that were being utilized to redefine the Refuge as a space for environmental education. Incorporating and expanding on a number of interdisciplinary works on space, I highlight the usefulness of Symbolic Interactionism for future research on space generally and climate change specifically.

Author

• Braden Leap, University of Missouri