Nostalgia as a catalyst for conservation in the Carolina Lowcountry

Abstract

Critics argue that nostalgia involves viewing the past through a mental scrim that filters out all negative elements; thus, nostalgia is often dismissed as mere escapism. Yet nostalgic thinking is not always false or sentimentalized, impotent or distracting. We can come away from nostalgic remembering being inspired rather than heartbroken. To love what was and resolve to preserve what is endangered has become the animating element of nostalgic-driven conservation in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. The irony at the heart of environmentalism in the Lowcountry is that a presumptively “liberal” movement has benefited from the prevailing conservative narrative generated by a nostalgic yearning for the region’s presumably once pristine landscape. Nostalgia, in other words, can help inspire the preservation of threatened environmental places and human folkways by tapping not only pride of place but also the pride in the past that has long distinguished the Lowcountry region. At the most elemental level, conservatism and conservation intersect in their shared inclination toward nostalgia, especially the conviction that there is something transcendently superior about earlier modes of life and attitudes toward nature. Conservationists in other regions of the country and in other places have adopted quite different tactics from those used in the Lowcountry. While this essay explores one region’s experiences with conservation, it provides insights into how nostalgia may be central in understanding place-making, sense of place, and preservation of place.