Campsteading: Family, Place, and Experience at Squam Lake, New Hampshire

Synopsis

The campstead is an American institution. After the Civil War, with neo-colonialism, environmentalism, and arts-and-crafts on the rise, some families sought rural locations for rustic camps. There they raised their children in the summertime. Around Squam Lake, after some eight generations, twenty-one such camps remain in these families. The Squam area thus becomes a natural place to study relationships of persons and places, families and landscape, and humans and the world. Our present concerns for environmental stewardship, open space protection, and core values instead of consumerism, make this a good time to revisit the simple American Campstead. Rustic camping itself revisited aspects of the American frontier. Just as the western frontier was disappearing, some families resorted to remnants of the first frontier among mountains and lakes of the Northeast. Through campsteads, these families preserved elements of the frontier ethos. Campsteads facilitate particular experiences involving nature and family. Brereton investigates campstead experience, and through it the nature of human experience generally. This book is the first detailed account of campsteading, the first application of critical realism in anthropology, and the first anthropological use of John Dewey's evolutionary model of experience. Building on Dewey, the author further analyses experience into its levels, orders, and features.

Copyright:

2010

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781351572767

Related ISBNs:

9781315095998, 9780415562966, 9780415592000, 9780415562966, 9780415592000, 9781138176096, 9781138176096

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

03/24/20

Copyrighted By:

Derek Brereton

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Social Studies, Sociology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.