Women, Freedom, and Coherence Among Lowcountry Heirs’ Property Tenure

Abstract

This session presents results of an empirical arts-based study and ongoing critical review of continued research into Lowcountry heirs’ property ownership and the recurrent generational challenges, governmental influences, and tourism impact on property dispossession and retention along the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Comparisons are explored across oceans and decades to illustrate the cyclical nature of research and attention into the phenomenon of land dispossession with a lens of Leavy’s concept of coherence to assess the paucity of contemporaneous narratives of women landowners. Land tenure, voice and land dispossession, freedom as ownership, and the culture of home/place are also explored as well as the legacy of the African diaspora specifically among women landowners. A comparison/contrast is offered of the two arts-based research products: a scholarly journal article and an allegorical novella.

Full text

Women, Freedom, & Coherence
Among Lowcountry
Heirs’ Property Tenure
ROBIN THRONE, PHD
NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY
GULLAH GEECHEE CULTURAL HERITAGE CORRIDOR COMMISSION RESEARCH CONSORTIUM
1ST ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL GULLAH GEECHEE AND AFRICAN DIASPORA CONFERENCE
COASTAL CAROLINA UNIVERSITY

Abstract
This session presents results of an empirical arts-based study and ongoing
critical review of continued research into Lowcountry heirs’ property ownership
and the recurrent generational challenges, governmental influences, and
tourism impact on property dispossession and retention along the Gullah
Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Comparisons are explored across oceans
and decades to illustrate the cyclical nature of research and attention into the
phenomenon of land dispossession with a lens of Leavy’s concept of coherence
to assess the paucity of contemporaneous narratives of women landowners.
Land tenure, voice and land dispossession, freedom as ownership, and the
culture of home/place are also explored as well as the legacy of the African
diaspora specifically among women landowners. A comparison/contrast is
offered of the two arts-based research products: a scholarly journal article and
an allegorical novella.

Fidelity of Non-Indigenous Researcher Positionality
•Non-indigenous, outsider-researcher to the study phenomena
•European and Scandinavian immigrant ancestry
•Aesthetic and epistemology rooted in feminist principles
•Research-based understanding of the complexities of land
culture values/curator-versus-owner
•Value for spiritual and relational aspects of earth, land agency,
and coastal access
•Water as other

Two Studies
Critical Qualitative Inquiry
Arts
-based Research
Data collection: Archival personal narratives
▪
The Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina–
Chapel Hill Louis Wilson Library Special Collections
▪
Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938
▪
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, the U.S. National Archives
and Records Administration
Past as Prologue: Sea Island Cotton as
Heuristic Metaphor for the Port Royal
Experiment (2016
SAGE Open)
The Cotton Breath
, an allegorical
novella (2019, Anaphora Literary)

Conceptual Framework
•Black’s (1954, 1958, 1962, 1979) interaction theory of
metaphor (ITM)
•Leavy’s (2015, 2017a, 2017b) concept of coherence
•Demise of Sea Island Cotton as heuristic metaphor
(Ruaune, Carney, & Keane, 2007)

Future Research
•Insights into the legacy of land and voice dispossession among Lowcountry
GG women heirs’ property
•Collaborative research is by both non-indigenous and indigenous
researchers for gap in gendered perspectives for current heirs’ property
challenges and land dispossession among the GGCHC:
▪Power dynamics
▪Trauma (past and current)
▪Economic impact
▪GG ways of knowing
▪Heritage tourism
▪Natural resources/family land
▪Legacy of land and voice
dispossession
▪Land as agency for self/spirit

THANK YOU!
QUESTIONS?