Where Is the American West?

Nugent, Walter

doi:10.2307/j.ctt200604c.7

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…There is a substantial body of human-environment research embedded within the often-taken-forgranted bounds of the West, historically thought of as lands west of the 100th meridian (Wilkinson 1993, Seager et al 2018 for a few research examples, see Brick et al 2001, Robbins et al 2009, Altaweel et al 2015. Various prior research efforts that have attempted to define the West as a distinct region have focused on factors such as water appropriation law, lack of demographic diversity, rurality, or presence of iconic animal species (Nugent 1992, Berry et al 2000, Robbins et al 2009, McKinney and Thorson 2015. Despite these efforts, there has been relatively little effort to analytically demarcate and define the West as a region with consistent social and ecological characteristics, organized by a common set of system variables, and marked by diverse sets of nested dynamics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The American West as a social-ecological region: drivers, dynamics and implications for nested social-ecological systems

Jones

Abrams

Belote³

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The American West exists in the popular imagination as a distinct region, and policies and politics often suggest that both the challenges and the opportunities for land management and human wellbeing across the region are relatively homogeneous. In this paper, we argue that there are key characteristics that define the West as a social-ecological region, and also that there are myriad socialecological systems (SESs) within the region that require diverse and dynamic approaches to managing change over time. We first conceptualize aridity, topography, and a unique political economy of land as exogenous factors that persist over time and space to define the American West as a contiguous social-ecological region. We then identify a second set of characteristics that show high degrees of variation across SESs within the American West. Finally, we operationalize the relationships between regional characteristics and local dynamics through a set of case studies that exemplify specific types of SESs in the region. The results of these empirical representations of the regional and intra-regional social-ecological dynamics of the contemporary American West highlight the implications for research and management of taking a cross-scale integrated approach to address pressing socialecological opportunities and challenges in complex adaptive systems.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The American West as a social-ecological region: drivers, dynamics and implications for nested social-ecological systems

Jones

Abrams

Belote³

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…Walter Nugent's survey of western scholars, journalists, and writers promised but did not deliver help in mapping the boundaries of the West (Nugent ). While nearly all respondents agreed that the Canadian and Mexican borders were valid edges, only 13 percent agreed that the West began at the 100 th meridian.…”

Section: Where Is the West?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Four Symbolic Boundaries of The American West

Wright

2014

Geographical Review

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“…However, paying attention to the idea of process – the West as frontier, and the frontier as “contact zone” (Pratt 1992) – has also proven to be useful. Defining the boundaries of the West‐as‐place has also been difficult for Western historians (Nugent 1992). Should Alaska and Hawaii count?…”

Section: Challenges In the Field Of Religion And The American Westmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion and the American West

Newell

2012

Religion Compass

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The standard narrative of American religious history largely omits the story of religion and the American West. Integrating this story would produce a more coherent history of American religion, allowing nuanced consideration of interactions between Native Americans and colonists and eliminating gaps in the traditional narrative. The West serves as a microcosm and predictor of national religious developments and also contributes to the study of world religions. Five themes have emerged in recent scholarship on religion and the American West: race and ethnicity; transnationalism; the construction of the category of religion; religion and the environment; and the myth of the American West. Scholars in the field face four challenges: learning from Western history's definitional debates and defining the boundaries of religion and the American West; showing that the American West is a useful unit of regional analysis; constructing synthetic narratives of religion and the American West; and integrating the story of religion and the American West into the story of American religion as a whole.

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Where Is the American West?

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

The American West as a social-ecological region: drivers, dynamics and implications for nested social-ecological systems

The American West as a social-ecological region: drivers, dynamics and implications for nested social-ecological systems

Four Symbolic Boundaries of The American West

Religion and the American West

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