We Are the Horses: Identity Work in the Southeastern Missouri Ozarks

Abstract

In the face of extreme conditions such as a natural disaster, social upheaval and forced relocation, how do populations maintain cultural continuity with identity and tradition? This dissertation considers a specific community's response at the end of the 20th and early 21st centuries to government appropriation of traditional territory and forced relocation. The residents of Carter and Shannon Counties in Missouri, forced to abandon and change their long-time relationship to the land, were faced with the task of maintaining their identity after the 1964 establishment of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways (ONSR), a National Park Service (NPS) project in the Missouri Ozarks. The primary research question posed here is: what factors inform and influence the identity work of Ozarkers in the face of extreme insults to their community, most importantly the loss of ownership and community control of traditional territory? I argue that an historic pattern of domination by external entities (who have often vilified residents), including the establishment of the ONSR and the forced removal of a community subset, have given rise to an interpretive oppositional identity framework of symbols produced by affected residents in Shannon and Carter Counties. This framework functions to protect, assert, refine and maintain identity constructions by guiding identity work that includes resistance.