“THE LAND IS OUR FAMILY AND THE WATER IS OUR BLOODLINE”: THE DISPOSSESSION AND PRESERVATION OF HEIRS’ PROPERTY IN THE GULLAH-GEECHEE COMMUNITIES OF LOWCOUNTRY SOUTH CAROLINA

Heirs’ property is land that is collectively inherited by family members when an ancestor dies without a will. The complexity and ambiguity of rights among family members makes these parcels legally vulnerable to dispossession. This form of land tenure is found across the United States, but is particularly prevalent in southern African American communities, where educational inequities and distrust of law led to a reliance on extralegal practices of inheritance. This dissertation investigates the dispossession and preservation of heirs’ property in the Gullah-Geechee communities of Lowcountry South Carolina. This investigation of heirs’ property is rooted in the interdisciplinary literature on common property. As a critical geographer and political ecologist, my approach to studying common property utilizes three distinct lenses: historical geography, legal geography, and Common Property Theory (CPT). Results rely on a mixed-method approach including: interviews, focus groups, participant observation, and archival research. Results are presented in three interlocking empirical chapters. Chapter three triangulates interviews, focus groups, and archival data to construct a historical narrative of African American landownership in the Lowcountry. The chapter closes with a discussion of how historical narratives animate contemporary land conflicts. Chapter four triangulates interviews with a variety of archival data to analyze the process and outcomes of two legal cases. These case studies are followed by a discussion of how legal conflict exposes conflicting property regimes. Chapter five triangulates interviews, focus groups, and archival data to uncover social practices that are used to manage property. This chapter closes with a discussion of how extralegal property regimes converge and diverge from the legal property rights. Together these interlocking chapters uncover clashing property regimes and values while paying careful attention to the uneven legal ground on which these conflicts occur. Further, results uncover the wide variety of ownership forms that emerge from conflicts over heirs’ property. These findings reveal property as a diverse and highly contested concept and strengthen the currently faint bond between the literatures of heirs’ property law and Gullah-Geechee culture

Gathering, Buying, and Growing Sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia sericea): Urbanization and Social Networking in the Sweetgrass Basket-Making Industry of Lowcountry South Carolina

Despite the visibility of natural resource use and access for indigenous and rural peoples elsewhere, less attention is paid to the ways that development patterns interrupt nontimber forest products (NTFPs) and gathering practices by people living in urbanizing landscapes of the United States. Using a case study from Lowcountry South Carolina, we examine how urbanization has altered the political-ecological relationships that characterize gathering practices in greater Mt. Pleasant, a rapidly urbanizing area within the Charleston-North Charleston Metropolitan area. We draw on grounded visualization—an analytical method that integrates qualitative and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data—to examine the ways that residential and commercial development has altered collecting sites and practices associated with sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia sericea [Michx.] P.M. Peterson) and three other plant materials used in basket-making. Our analysis focuses on the ecological changes and shifts in property regimes that result; we detail the strategies basket-makers have developed to maintain access to sweetgrass and other raw materials. This research highlights how land development patterns have disrupted historic gathering practices, namely by changing the distribution of plants, altering the conditions of access to these species, and reconfiguring the social networking that takes place to ensure the survival of this distinctive art form

Sweetgrass basketry: The political ecology of an African American art in the South Carolina Lowcountry

This case study sheds light on how Mt. Pleasant basket makers have adapted to and resisted environmental changes associated with amenity-driven land development in Lowcountry South Carolina. This thesis contributes to the political ecology literature that addresses land-use change and rural livelihoods in the United States. Case studies from the Western United States point to patterns of amenity-driven development that result in the cultural displacement of rural livelihoods, called rural gentrification (Brown 1995, Walker and Fortmann 2003, Ghose 2004). Scholars have also documented the persistence of rural livelihoods across the United States, where access to publicly owned lands contributes to what Emery and Pierce (2005) call contemporary subsistence. These writers emphasize how localized social processes of culture and power underlie changes in the relationship between land-use and livelihoods, described as co-production by McCusker and Carr (2005). This case study applies the lessons of co-production to suggest that cultural displacement is not an inevitable outcome in rapidly developing communities. It also emphasizes the importance of privately owned lands for the persistence of land-based livelihoods. In Mount Pleasant, South Carolina people of African descent have made coiled baskets for over 300 years, but amenity-driven population growth and rapid urbanization since the 1970s have raised concerns over supplies of local plant materials for basket making, generational interest in the craft, security of basket making communities, and the displacement of roadside sale locations. To examine the impacts of urbanization findings rely on content analysis and grounded visualization of interviews with basket makers, participant observation at public meetings and events, and Global Positioning System (GPS) field surveys. Results show that despite social and environmental pressures that interrupt traditional methods of gathering materials, sewing baskets, and selling baskets, sweetgrass basketry persists as a source of cultural expression and supplemental income for its practitioners. Results also indicate that the basket making community continues to find social pathways of change that incorporate their craft within dominant development patterns, reinventing the process of basketry. This research suggests that by understanding the relationships contributing to the persistence of basket making, policy makers and preservation and conservation organizations are in a better position to develop initiatives that support and expand on the current social pathways basket makers use to access materials and secure sale locations