As North America has undergone a shift from an industrial to a post-industrial society, the rural landscapes devastated by industrial activity (i.e. resource extraction) have begun a transition as well (ODNR 2010). In Southeast Ohio, an economically depressed and formerly environmentally degraded region, this transition can be seen in a gradual forest recovery, or “regreening” (Mather 1992). This regreening process and the decline of the extractive industry have led to a diversification of the Appalachian Ohio economy. Local people have taken advantage of the changing landscape, reasserted a claim on their region, and are pursuing alternative means of economic opportunity.
This research focuses on one local initiative that exemplifies local people attempting to create a positive alternative future for their region, The Ohio Outback project. The Ohio Outback project is an initiative based on unifying Appalachian Ohio under a single brand in order to market the region more widely as a tourism destination. Through an analysis of the Ohio Outback project and its leaders, this thesis offers a rich narrative about rural economic development, connection to place, and the challenges of place-based initiatives. This thesis also addresses themes of local power and elitism in a rural America, a setting often not associated with those ideas. Through a study on the agency of rural people, this research presents a much more complex and conflicted situation than might be expected in the “backwards” countryside of Appalachian Ohio.
This thesis tells a unique dual story, first explaining why the Outback program should likely have succeeded based on previous evidence from McSweeney and McChesney (2004) and three other major bodies of literature: innovation diffusion, political ecology, and sense of place. These three literatures, which rarely reference one another, are used in tandem to create the theoretical background of this research and explain the processes occurring in places like Appalachian Ohio. Next, evidence is presented that illustrates that the Ohio Outback project has seen little success in the region. An analysis of this evidence reveals that the complexity of regional collaboration, the inability to reach consensus on a brand for the region, and the zealousness and suspected corruption of Outback leaders resulted in a failure of the initiative to unite Appalachian Ohio under a singular moniker.