I am interested in the politics of place in rural areas of North America, especially how residents politicize their emotional attachments to home and region. Recently completed ethnographic research projects have focused on grassroots rural social movements and interethnic partnerships in British Columbia as well as the cultural politics of development in rural Colorado and Georgia. I also have used content analysis to examine struggles in the news media over the representation of places. In my current research projects, I am using ethnographic methods to interpret how the residents of historically resource-reliant areas in western North America are conceptualizing and assessing community sustainability in the context of rapid rural change.
Larsen, S.C. (2006) “The future’s past: Politics of time and territory among Dakelh First Nations of British Columbia.” Geografiska Annaler 88B (3): 311-321.
Larsen , S.C. and T.J. Brock (2005) “Great Basin imagery in newspaper coverage of Yucca Mountain.” Geographical Review 95: 517-536.
Larsen , S.C. (2004) “Place identity in a resource-dependent area of British Columbia.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94: 944 – 960.
Larsen , S.C. (2004) “Place, activism, and development politics in the Southwest Georgia United Empowerment Zone.” Journal of Cultural Geography 22: 27 – 49.
Larsen, S.C. (2003) “Collaboration geographies: Native-White partnerships during the re-settlement of Ootsa Lake, British Columbia, 1900-52.” BC Studies 138-139: 87-114.
Larsen , S.C. (2003) “Promoting aboriginal territoriality through interethnic alliances.” Human Organization 62: 74 – 84.
Chair, Awards Committee, Cultural Geography Specialty Group of the AAG
Book Review Editor, Historical Geography
Soren Larsen
