Storied land : community and memory in Monterey /

Walton (sociology, Univ. of California, Davis) presents a 230-year storied-history of California as it worked itself out on the Monterey Peninsula. It is an analysis of history making by a succession of actors: Ohlone Indians; Franciscan monks and Spanish soldiers; the mixed-race Californios and "paisanos"; American soldiers and squatters; Chinese immigrant workers; Sicilian fishermen; and the modern service economy of education, marine science, and tourism. This exercise in historical sociology addresses the role of dominant narratives and silent voices in the social construction of "official" and "public" histories. Walton effects a theoretically sophisticated interpretation of what he calls a "collective action" theory of social memory that depends on "on the interplay of actors, social circumstances, and situational contingencies." Apart from the constant refrain of the interplay between consensual history and constructed narrative, the author notes that collective memory appears to come to the fore "during periods of social physical reorganization--conquest, economic transition, and reconstruction of the material landscape." Well illustrated by five tables and 39 figures and photographs, the text is supported by footnotes and an efficient bibliography. Walton has presented a volume that will be welcomed by students of this specific place, as well as those interested in the more general question of how history is made. B. Osborne Queen's University at Kingston