Environmental politics goes underground: Cavers, cave conservation, and subterranean subcultures in Appalachia - Kai Bosworth, Ph.D.

For the past five years, I have been conducting ethnographic exploration of the North American community of recreational cavers, in order to develop a better understanding of how they think about environmental conservation of subsurface spaces. I initially theorized lines of care that cavers extend to subsurface spaces as a kind of geological ethics, but extended research with cavers in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky has challenged and changed how I think about cave conservation and subterranean subcultures. This talk descends into the social world of caving in the United States, an odd world which combines science and mapping with recreation and subcultural community organized into local "grottos" of the National Speleological Society. I delve into the historic origins of cave conservation -- in “conservancies” established in the 1940s to protect caves, and later in 1960s debates about whether caves are "wilderness." From there, I shed light on the 1980s legislative efforts to protect caves on federal lands, and why this legislation hasn't always worked. Finally, I describe how cavers today think about their “cave ethic,” and its relation to caver communities. What emotions and attachments make cavers think that caves, subsurface water, and cave critters important to protect -- and what are the challenges and debates do they have in conceptualizing how to undertake this protection?