Settin' the Woods on Fire: Rural Incendiarism as Protest
Document Type
Article
Department or Administrative Unit
Geography
Publication Date
7-1999
Abstract
Fire is a fundamental tool within a broad spectrum of vegetation‐management strategies, from swidden agriculture to plantation forestry. Through the seemingly pyromanic activity of incendiarism, fire assumes additional significance in the human‐environment relationship. Case studies from England, Algeria, and the southern United States serve to illustrate the circumstance of fire as an indication of agrarian discontent and a weapon of peasant resistance. Other documented cases of incendiarism reveal that use of fire in the landscape has expanded from a constructive ecosystem‐manipulation technique to a destructive form of protest undertaken by the oppressed or disempowered.
Recommended Citation
Kuhlken, R. (1999). Settin’ the Woods on Fire: Rural Incendiarism as Protest. Geographical Review, 89(3), 343. https://doi.org/10.2307/216155
Journal
Geographical Review
Rights
Copyright © 2000 by the American Geographical Society of New York
Comments
This article was originally published in Geographical Review. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.
Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.