Perimeters of Democracy: Inverse Utopias and the Wartime Social Landscape in the American West by Heather Fryer (review)

Heather Fryer's recent book charts an intriguing path into the history of the American West and the unique federal presence in the region. The author focuses on four "inverted utopias," locations where federal authorities segregated potentially threatening domestic populations from American society, especially during World War II. In these isolated places, federal agencies and employees created putatively ideal and rehabilitative democratic communities. Fryer rightfully argues that such a comparative analysis of these communities—Klamath Indian Reservation, Topaz Relocation Center, Vanport housing complex, and Los Alamos—can provide unique insights into these western utopias and the legacy of federal management of western spaces. The author notes her intention in her introduction: "Instead of flattening these political, economic, and social histories to fit a rigid analytical construct, they are set within a single constellation that captures the broad context of this collective history, offers a fuller assessment of the significance of security towns to the West as a whole, and accounts for the uniqueness of each separate place while articulating the commonalties between them"(40). It is an ambitious, original tack.

Fryer demonstrates how Klamath Reservation, Topaz, Vanport, and Los Alamos collectively represent a characteristic federal approach to managing a military crisis: placing marginalized groups outside society under the guise of practicing and ensuring democracy and American identity, an observation that echoes prior work by scholars of western history, immigration, and ethnic studies. A shared weltanschauung drove practices at agencies like the War Relocation Authority and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as these agencies were not only related institutions but, at times, were staffed by the same individuals, such as former War Relocation Authority director and later Federal Public Housing Authority commissioner and BIA commissioner Dillon Myer. These agencies meshed ideas about racial identity, agrarianism, and Americanism into a program of social reform targeted to transforming western places and western peoples.

Fryer details the interconnectedness of these sites and the broader history to which they belong by discussing thematic points that bind these communities: the labeling of populations as subversive, community building efforts, federal economic policies and practices, the ironic contradiction between democratic ideals and government acts, and the termination of these locales and their postwar histories, including the resulting activism of former residents. Her focus on their ongoing legacy is especially noteworthy.

Fryer's rationale for choosing these specific sites includes opportunities to see "what they might reveal about race, class, and geography" (4). But why the author chose this specific set of federal sites remains unclear, and arguably other constellations of sites may better serve her purposes. For instance, Fryer ignores sites that seem to reveal the most direct thread across these federally managed utopias, such as the Poston and the Gila River War Relocation Centers. Both wartime concentration camps were on reservation land taken by federal authorities over the protestations of the Gila River and Colorado River Indian tribes.

The author defines her rationale for including the Klamath Reservation, including its pre-World War II history, as a means to connect the wartime hysteria of the World War II era to the similar social climate of the Indian wars, and the history of the Klamath Reservation frames Fryer's exploration of a Japanese American relocation center, a World War II labor community, and a secret nuclear research facility. But while Vanport and Klamath Reservation were both in Oregon, Topaz and Los Alamos were situated hundreds of miles away in regions distinctly different, in terms of both geography and social history, and these differences sometimes challenge Fryer's ability to analyze these four locales both in individual detail and as a singular constellation. At times the specific histories of these places are flattened to fit her larger rubric, and vital differences remain unacknowledged. Her approach does offer a fresh way to connect these seemingly disparate places and histories, but such an approach means...