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    Public Land and Democracy in America
    Understanding Conflict Over Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

    Julie Brugger (Author)

    9781496233011

    Hardback, published 1 January 2025

    444 pages, 18 photographs, 2 illustrations, 5 maps, 3 tables, index
    22.9 x 15.2 x 3.7 cm, 0.798 kg

    “Important and timely. Conflict over the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has increased dramatically over the last six years, and public land issues have been more prominent in national politics in recent years as well. Questions about the substance of American democracy are also vital, given the level of partisanship in American politics today. . . . This book is an important contribution to national discussions of public lands.”-James R. Skillen, author of This Land Is My Land: Rebellion in the West

    In recent years the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah has figured prominently in the long and ongoing struggle over the meaning and value of America’s public lands. In 1996 President Bill Clinton used the Antiquities Act to create the monument, with the goal of protecting scientific and historical resources. His action incensed Utah elected officials and local residents who were neither informed nor consulted beforehand, and opposition to the monument has continued to make its day-to-day management problematic. In 2017 President Donald Trump reduced the monument’s size, an action immediately challenged by multiple lawsuits; subsequently, President Joe Biden restored the monument in 2021.

    In Public Land and Democracy in America Julie Brugger brings into focus the perspectives of a variety of groups affected by conflict over the monument, including residents of adjacent communities, ranchers, federal land management agency employees, and environmentalists. In the process of following management disputes at the monument over the years, Brugger considers how conceptions of democracy have shaped and been shaped by the regional landscape and by these disputes.

    Through this ethnographic evidence, Brugger proposes a concept of democracy that encompasses disparate meanings and experiences, embraces conflict, and suggests a crucial role for public lands in transforming antagonism into agonism.
     

    List of Illustrations
    List of Tables
    Preface
    Acknowledgments
    Abbreviations
    Introduction
    Part 1. Landscape
    1. National Landscape
    2. Regional Landscape
    Part 2. Conflict
    3. Conflict over Grazing
    4. Conflict over Roads
    Part 3. Democracy
    5. The Locals: Democracy and Community
    6. The Ranchers: Democracy and Freedom
    7. The Environmentalists: Democracy and the Environment
    8. The BLM Employees: Democracy and Bureaucracy
    Conclusion
    Notes
    Bibliography
    Index

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