Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Organizational Studies

Reader 1

Char Miller

Reader 2

Erich Steinman

Reader 3

Barbara Junisbai

Rights Information

© 2025 Samantha J Gottsegen

Abstract

This thesis is an interdisciplinary exploration of the role of protected natural areas—namely county-run open space preserves—in shaping political identity in Marin County, California. I critically examine the politicization of public lands and the sociorelational dynamics that emerge within local communities surrounding protected open space. I seek to deconstruct dominant understandings of landscape and nature as apolitical, neutral, or untouched, instead approaching public land as a site of ongoing meaning-making, identity formation, and power negotiation. I further place emphasis on the role of the state, through county governing bodies and affiliated organizations, in mediating access, constructing narratives of ownership, and shaping collective identity. Marin County is a compelling site for investigating the entanglements of race, affluence, entitlement, political engagement, and place-based identity. Central to my research are the tensions between progressive environmentalism and the exclusionary logics that often accompany land conservation efforts. Drawing from qualitative interviews, ethnographic observation, and critical theory, this thesis seeks to complicate dominant understandings of preservation by illuminating the political, historical, and affective dimensions of public land use in one of the nation’s most ecologically diverse, yet socioeconomically stratified, counties.

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