Lost and Found: The resurrection of place and identity after loss

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2012
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Haverford College. Department of Anthropology
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Thesis
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Award
Language
eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
This thesis paints a portrait of a rural Midwestern town faced with the task of rebuilding their community-–physically and metaphysically-–after the ravaging effects of natural disaster. In recovering from the EF-5 tornado that leveled nearly thirty percent of the entire town in May 2011, the residents of Joplin, Missouri, engaged in processes of livelihood and landscape reconstruction that, in turn, unearthed questions of personal and collective identity definition, and questioned the intersection between recovery and redefinition. I examine how a community like Joplin, MO finds meaning after such trauma, and argue that the self is effectively recovered and repossessed through interaction with and investment in the physical landscape and community around them in all of their past, present, and future forms – by way of art projects, shifts in language, and the transfer of heightened significance onto ordinary objects.
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