Rural gentrification as permanent tourism: the creation of the `New' West Archipelago as postindustrial cultural space

In this paper I describe rural gentrificationöie the in-migration of relatively young, ex-urban members of the postindustrial middle class (PIMC)öin the northern Rocky Mountains as a form of `permanent tourism'. The colonization of previously industrial landscapesöie those created according to a regime that prioritizes the production/consumption of commoditiesöby the PIMC has led to the expansion of postindustrial class ^ cultural space and the creation of the `New'AmericanWest. This shift in what constitutes the `highest and best' use of these lands resonates with the character of late-Modern tourism in that this emerging regime emphasizes the production/consumption of `experiences' to a greater degree than does the extant regime. Thus, rural gentrifiers are enacting cultural projects that are akin to those of tourists but doing so with the intention of permanently writing them into the social and physical landscape. Drawing on ethnographic examples from my fieldwork in south ^ central Montana, I demonstrate how members of the PIMC mobilize their increasing local strength through citizens' environmental groups and political institutions and thereby forward their ideals of proper land-use policy and practice. doi:10.1068/d3309 (1) The `New' West, as the term is used in this piece, refers to a subsection of the wider American West. Contemporary rural gentrification is building upon and exacerbating the preexisting geographic, social, and ecological heterogeneity of the region and creating, in the process, an `archipelago' (Salamon, 2003, page 9) or chain of rapidly changing island communities in the midst of a relatively static, conservative, agricultural/industrial sea (Hines, 2010b). These islands form a list of the most emblematic sites of the ``New'' West, eg Aspen, Vail, Jackson, Sun Valley, Taos, Missoula, Bozeman, Durango, Telluride, Flagstaff, Moab. In the first section I provide a brief overview of the social and physical landscape where I work in south ^ central Montana. In the second section I connect the local phenomenon with larger trends affecting Western societies, namely counterurbanization and urban gentrification, which merge in my discussion to reveal the class-based character of rural gentrification. The third section establishes analytical links between local rural circumstances and larger theoretical discussions on the characteristics of contemporary Modern-capitalist society and its emerging postindustrial features. The bulk of the presentation comes in the fourth section, where I provide specific ethnographic data from my extended research projects totaling 20 months in Park County, Montana. This section relies on two specific examples, each of which centers on a slightly different type of conflictöone legal, one politicalöthat has developed between the local industrial natives and the postindustrial newcomers. I conclude the paper by summarizing the evidence presented, to refocus attention on the discussion of rural gentrifiers as enacting an abiding attention to the accumulation of experiences. In turn, this analytic approach allows us to see in clearer detail the ramifications of their actions in the (re)creation of the physical and social landscape of the `New' West Archipelago as postindustrial class ^ cultural space. Park County, Montana: two perspectives on the social and physical landscape Overall, rural newcomers to Park County include several significant subsets. There are: (1) retirees; (2) the wealthy and/or famous, including members of the: (a) national economic elite (CEOs and owners of Fortune 500 companies) and (b) national cultural elite (film actors, professional writers, and other artists); and (3) younger (30 ^ 40s) ex-urban members of the middle class. My research focuses on understanding the character and importance of the third group as they are the ones who, by virtue of being the largest and most locally dynamic (both socially and politically) subset of newcomers, represent the most profound challenge to the preexisting way(s) of life. An effective characterization of that challenge requires a focus upon the central difference between this subset of newcomersöwhom I describe here as rural gentrifiersöand Park County natives with regard to the perspectives on proper land-use policy and practice both by private individuals and by the various governmental agencies (at the local, state, and national level) charged with administering the local profusion of public lands. As I have come to see it through my ongoing research in this area, the key difference is between natives and newcomers. The former are principally (although by no means exclusively) concerned with seeing the land of Park County produce materially tangible results through its three traditional industries: agriculture, silviculture, and mining. This perspective, I believe, is most effectively associated with the ongoing era of industrial production within our epoch of Modern capitalism. By contrast, I found that newcomers, and particularly the younger middle-class subset referred to previously, tend to believe (again, not exclusively, but certainly predominantly) that the lands of Park County and the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem (GYE) are best used to produce experiences. It is for this reasonöbuilding on Dean MacCannell's analysis of The Tourist (1976)öthat I feel the members of this group represent a vision of proper land use that is best understood as postindustrial. An industrial vision of Park County, Montana Since the forced expulsion of the indigenous Crow population by European-American `settlers' in the early 1880s the vast majority of Park County's residents (up to and through the late 1980s) have been participants in the traditional American-West extractive industries of mining, ranching, and logging [and/or related domestic (re)production]. 510 J D Hines