Agency, complexity, memory: A scholarship for western places

Abstract

Agency, complexity, and memory are core values for the scholarship, especially the historical scholarship, of western places in the 21st Century. The doctrine of agency derives from action theory in philosophy and individualism in sociology. Chaos theory and its companion, complexity, defy determinisms and lead scholars toward narrative explanations capable of dealing with organized complexity. Collective memory situates scholars in a western landscape and society where they are responsible for the stories they tell.

Notes

1 My consciousness of the phase of human development known as generativity was raised through the household experience of my wife's dissertation (Kelley, 2010), which work contains a sound exposition of the human development concept as applied to historical memory studies.

2 My weekly feature on history, folklore, and life on the Great Plains of North American, Plains Folk, is heard statewide in North Dakota on Prairie Public Radio.

3 Dorman (1993) analyzes the origins of Great Plains regionalism in the 1920s and 1930s; Wishart (2004) is a handy compendium of regional scholarship generated through the 20th Century.

4 Beginning in 1993, and on multiple public occasions since then, I have delivered a public lecture entitled “The Promise of Life on the North American Plains.” This lecture takes to task regional scholars, chief among them Elwyn Robinson of the University of North Dakota (Robinson, 1966), who have embedded dependency into a declensionist narrative of the northern plains at the expense of agency.

5 Terry Stafford and Paul Fraser, “Amarillo by Morning,” as sung by George Strait, Strait from the Heart (MCA, 1982).

6 The Walter Prescott Webb Papers, 1857–1966, are housed in the Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, where I examined them.

7 Stan Rogers, “Northwest Passage,” as sung by Rogers, Northwest Passage (Fogarty's Cove Music, 1981).

8 Chuck Suchy, “Saturday Night at the Hall,” as sung on Dancing Dakota (Flying Fish Records, 1989).

9 Neil Young, “Heart of Gold,” as sung by Young on Harvest (Reprise, 1972).