Anatomy of a Conflict: Identity, Knowledge, and Emotion in Old-Growth Forests (review)

The spotted owl controversy in the Pacific Northwest is often framed as a clash between loggers defending their jobs and environmentalists demanding preserved wilderness — simply "jobs versus the environment." Satterfield complicates this picture with her argument that this environmental conflict is also about culture, that is, "imagined ideal worlds" and "the assertion of moral priorities and identities." Her ethnographic account details how activists on both sides of the dispute creatively assert their group's ideas about a better future.

The strength of the book is its ethnographic detail and evenhandedness. Satterfield, who is trained as a cultural anthropologist, presents the points of view of both the Oregon Forest Community Coalition and the Ancient Forest Grassroots Alliance (pseudonyms). Between 1992 and 1996, the author interviewed activists, attended meetings and hearings, and visited mills and logging sites. The result of her work is an engaging read in which the reader can picture the people, places, and distinct "cultures." Photographs assist with this.

Satterfield attempts to provide equal coverage of both sides of the dispute. Given her social location (an educated urbanite), she is much more similar to the environmentalists in the dispute. However, she does not take sides. The self-reflective concerns that she shares with the reader are familiar to ethnographers. For example, in describing a visit to a logging site, she wonders, "Did my jeans look as though they had ever seen a day's labour?" With the environmentalists, she had a different concern. "I was careful to establish myself as an interested researcher rather than as a group member." These comments illustrate the difficulty of gaining legitimacy as a researcher and doing ethnographies of both sides of a conflict. The issues raised in doing this make excerpts from this book (chapter 3) useful for qualitative methods courses.

The objective of this ethnographic method is not just "thick description." One of Satterfield's theoretical tasks is to show the "triangular shape of cultural production" (chapter 8). She argues that multiparty ethnography allows researchers to look at how multiple and competing subordinate actors interact and compete against dominant cultural forms. In this case, both movements responded to dominant social norms regarding science and emotions and creatively generated new possibilities. This approach also suggests that it would be useful to have an ethnography of the top of the triangle; in this situation, the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management. How do superordinants react to and reshape the moral possibilities rising from below?

Satterfield also attempts to link the scholarship on emotions to social movement theorizing. She builds upon sociological work to show how the management and use of emotions becomes a tactical tool for the movements. She illustrates how the groups use the control of emotions (loggers) or expression of emotions (environmentalists) strategically to generate action and social critique and promote their moral ideals. She does not take this discussion beyond the case to generate social movement propositions, though she could.

Two additions would have strengthened the analysis. First, more of the history of the controversy is needed. The second chapter contains a history of public land management in the last 150 years. While this is necessary groundwork, more could have been said about the specifics of the spotted owl controversy. For example, a review of what economists and foresters have said about this issue, since Satterfield argues that their interpretation of the situation has been the dominant one, is needed. Second, the argument would have been strengthened by explicitly linking the class base of the dispute to the cultural argument. Fred Rose (Coalitions across the Class Divide: Lessons from the Labor, Peace, and Environmental Movements; Cornell University Press, 2000), who also writes about this controversy, has done this in his work on the challenges of coalition formation. While there is an aspect of a "cultural war...