Fractured Identities and the Diminution of Political Agency

It is a mistake to characterize tracts of public land as mere quantities of physical space. Parcels of public land are complex artifacts comprised of individual and cultural perceptions, ecological factors, technologies, legal-institutional stipulations, and socioeconomic relationships. This article is an interdisciplinary interpretive analysis of scholarship dealing with the concepts of self, place, and political agency and their application in US multiple-use land policy and planning. Given the centrality of political agency within the liberal democratic tradition, I argue that recognition of self- and place-constructs may be elemental to the enactment of legitimate land management policy regimes and explore how these constructs can be better reflected in the policy process, focusing on Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land use planning activities.