New Perspectives on the Chesapeake

Maryland Sea Grant has launched a new monograph series on the Chesapeake Bay, entitled Chesapeake Perspectives. The new series provides a platform for scholars, researchers, and other experts to share their insights into the Bay's physical, biological, and cultural complexities, its mysteries and conflicts.

Edited by Jonathan G. Kramer and Jack Greer, the series of invited essays will feature a wide range of thinkers, including anthropologists, biologists, fisheries experts, environmental policy experts, and others in the social and physical sciences.

The first volumes in the series take an anthropological look at the Bay. Two cultural anthropologists from the University of Maryland hold a rigorous lens to our familiar images of the Bay. What exactly, they ask, do we mean by heritage? Which aspects of the Bay do we celebrate, and which do we ignore? And, most importantly, who gets to decide?

Copies of Chesapeake Perspectives are available for $9.95 each. A free review copy may be available to educators and others. Call for more information: 301-405-6376.

Chesapeake Perspectives

Inquiry in a Culture of Consensus

Science and Management for the Chesapeake Bay

William Matuszeski

Book, 36 pages. UM-SG-CP-2008-01. $9.95.

William Matuszeski examines efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay and what is at times an uncomfortable relationship between scientists and managers. He notes how “sound science” can be used as a compass to guide restoration efforts or as a label to pay lip service. In some quarters, he says, the notion of “sound science” has even been used to stall environmental efforts.

He argues that the Chesapeake region benefits from a cadre of world-class researchers, but that there can be a mismatch between the rapid demands of political pressure and the much slower pace of scientific inquiry. He points to several examples and in each case suggests whether it was science or politics that won.

Matuszeski draws on long years as a Bay manager — he served in a number of capacities at the federal government and was Director of the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program from 1991 – 2001. He concludes that managers have no choice but to depend on scientists for the best information possible. There are, he says, few other places where the interplay between land use, runoff, and coastal waters is so well studied. In the end he describes a management approach that accommodates a dramatic tension between science and management, and ultimately benefits from it.

[cover of Chesapeake Perspectives: History Matters]

Heritage Matters

Heritage, Culture, History, and Chesapeake Bay

Erve Chambers

Book, 54 pages. UM-SG-CP-2006-02. $9.95.

Erve Chambers questions the often expressed view that Bay cultures are "dying." According to Chambers, a characteristic that most defines the iconic Eastern Shore watermen is their resilience, their capacity to make do. Watermen and their families pass down a range of skills, the daily lessons of life. These skills and beliefs form part of what Chambers calls "cultural heritage," a genuine form of inheritance that he contrasts with the "public heritage" we so often see in museums and tourist shops.

Chambers draws clear distinctions between private heritage that develops through the local connections of families and communities, and public heritage that is often connected to regional or national history — the publicized stories we tell ourselves that often become codified but which may lose contact with genuine roots of experience.

Chambers expresses a deep faith in the ability of local communities to adapt and change, and worries that we may be conceptually forcing Bay communities into the rigid — even if celebratory — visions we have of them.

Chesapeake Environmentalism

Rethinking Culture to Strengthen Restoration and Resource Management

Michael Paolisso

Book, 46 pages. UM-SG-CP-2006-01. $9.95.

Michael Paolisso argues that we have defined environmentalism too narrowly. Describing issues that face the Chesapeake Bay, such as excess nutrients from agriculture and the contentious blue crab fishery, he describes the ways in which we may misunderstand each other and therefore fail to join together in common purpose. Paolisso considers the ways in which farmers, watermen, scientists, and activists all value the environment. He argues that each group has its own set of deep-seated beliefs that form the foundations of their "cultural models."

Paolisso contends that because we discount the validity of different cultural models, we often neglect to include watermen, farmers, and others as "environmentalists," and therefore fail to take full advantage of their own strong ethic for preserving both the soil and the Bay.