Saving the Wild or Saving the Cowboy? Cultural Conflict between the Old and Nouveau West*

Abstract

AbstractIn North Central Montana, a land‐based conflict centered on the environmental organization American Prairie sparked the formation of the “Save the Cowboy, Stop the American Prairie Reserve” Facebook page, attracting posts and comments from ranchers and members of the area's agriculture‐dependent communities. Despite Montana's rapid amenity migration and rural gentrification, this region has largely maintained its Old West culture. Consequently, Save the Cowboy members often express frustration about how American Prairie's large‐scale rewilding initiative and land acquisitions affect the region's rural communities. In this qualitative content analysis, concerns about preserving the Old West culture and avoiding the New West transformation dominated Save the Cowboy's Facebook posts and comments (N = 1,002), even compared to the ostensibly more concerning economic and ecological issues. By describing a social space marked by cultural antagonisms between Old West insiders and New West outsiders, this study points to the dangers of essentializing Old West‐New West conflicts. Illustrating how Old West insiders deploy their cultural capital to contest rural change, it also expands the Old West‐New West typology by proposing the term “Nouveau West” to capture how Old West insiders assert dominance by disparaging newcomers who lack the requisite knowledge of how things are done locally.