Wilderness, cultivation and appropriation
Philosophy and Geography 5 (1):35 – 50 (2002)
| Abstract | "Nature" and "wilderness" are central normative categories of environmentalism. Appeal to those categories has been subject to two lines of criticism: from constructivists who deny there is something called "nature" to be defended; from the environmental justice movement who point to the role of appeals to "nature" and "wilderness" in the appropriation of land of socially marginal populations. While these arguments often come together they are independent. This paper develops the second line of argument by placing recent appeals to "wilderness" in the context of historical uses of the concept to justify the appropriation of land. However, it argues that the constructivist line is less defensible. The paper finishes by placing the debates around wilderness in the context of more general tensions between philosophical perspectives on the environment and the particular cultural perspectives of disciplines like anthropology, in particular the prima facie conflict between the aspirations of many philosophers for thin and cosmopolitan moral language that transcends local culture, and the aspirations of disciplines like anthropology to uncover a thick moral vocabulary that is local to particular cultures. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,875 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesR. Edward Grumbine (1994). Wildness, Wise Use, and Sustainable Development. Environmental Ethics 16 (3):227-249.
Michael P. Nelson (1996). Rethinking Wilderness. Philosophy in the Contemporary World 3 (2):6-9.
David Havlick (2006). Reconsidering Wilderness: Prospective Ethics for Nature, Technology, and Society. Ethics, Place and Environment 9 (1):47 – 62.
Scott Friskics (2008). The Twofold Myth of Pristine Wilderness. Environmental Ethics 30 (4):381-399.
Kimberly K. Smith (2005). What is Africa to Me?: Wilderness in Black Thought From 1860 to 1930. Environmental Ethics 27 (3):279-297.
Wayne Ouderkirk (2003). On Wilderness and People: A View From Mount Marcy. Philosophy and Geography 6 (1):15 – 32.
Thomas H. Birch (1990). The Incarceration of Wildness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons. Environmental Ethics 12 (1):3-26.
David Graham Henderson (2009). The Possibility of Managing for Wilderness. Environmental Ethics 31 (4):413-429.
David Graham Henderson (2009). The Possibility of Managing for Wilderness. Environmental Ethics 31 (4):413-429.
John Hintz (2007). Some Political Problems for Rewilding Nature. Ethics, Place and Environment 10 (2):177 – 216.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-02-04Total downloads10 ( #107,734 of 556,895 )Recent downloads (6 months)0How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
