Between the Rivers: A Socio-Historical Account of Hegemony and Heritage

Drawing from the writings of George Ritzer, James Scott, and others this paper offers a critical, first-person account of a people's struggle to defend their cultural heritage and connection to place against the Weberian application of “order,” and “modernity” by government agencies attempting to “improve” their lives. This paper focuses on the experiences of the Between the Rivers people, who, since the eighteenth century, lived on an inland peninsula formed by the Cumberland, Tennessee and Ohio Rivers in far western Kentucky and extending into Tennessee, but the threat to placed cultures by the rationalized forces of “progress” applies to innumerable localities. Beginning with a sketch of the historical context in which geographical and social forces combined to forge a cultural heritage that is place specific, I move from the failed attempts to remain on the land as the Land Between the Lakes recreation area project culminated in a total population expulsion, to the twenty-first century struggle of a displaced people to retain ownership of their cultural heritage in the face of government attempts to “preserve” that heritage by usurping it as a commodity to market for heritage tourism.