The Wilderness Debate Rages On: Continuing the Great New Wilderness Debate

by Michael P. Nelson, J. Baird Callicott, Charles C. Adams, Jill M. Belsky, Wendell Berry

Overview

Ten years ago, The Great New Wilderness Debate began a cross-disciplinary conversation about the varied constructions of "wilderness" and the controversies that surround them. The Wilderness Debate Rages On will reinvigorate that conversation and usher in a second decade of debate.

Like its predecessor, the book gathers both critiques and defenses of the idea of wilderness from a wide variety of perspectives and voices. The Wilderness Debate Rages On includes the best explorations of the concept of the concept of wilderness from the past decade, underappreciated essays from the early twentieth century that offer an alternative vision of the concept and importance of wilderness, and writings meant to clarify or help us rethink the concept of wilderness. Narrative writers such as Wendell Berry, Scott Russell Sanders, Marilynne Robinson, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Lynn Maria Laitala are also given a voice in order to show how the wilderness debate is expanding outside the academy.

The writers represented in the anthology include ecologists, environmental philosophers, conservation biologists, cultural geographers, and environmental activists. The book begins with little-known papers by early twentieth-century ecologists advocating the preservation of natural areas for scientific study, not, as did Thoreau, Muir, and the early Leopold, for purposes of outdoor recreation. The editors argue that had these writers influenced the eventual development of federal wilderness policy, our national wilderness system would better serve contemporary conservation priorities for representative ecosystems and biodiversity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820331713
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	10/15/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	744
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

MICHAEL P. NELSON is an associate professor of environmental ethics and philosophy at Michigan State University, where he is affiliated with the Lyman Briggs College, the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, and the Department of Philosophy. He is coeditor, with J. Baird Callicott, of The Great New Wilderness Debate and The Wilderness Debate Rages On (both Georgia), and coauthor, with Callicott, of American Indian Environmental Ethics: An Ojibwa Case Study.

J. BAIRD CALLICOTT is a professor of philosophy at the University of North Texas. He is coeditor, with Michael P. Nelson, of The Great New Wilderness Debate and The Wilderness Debate Rages On (both Georgia), and coauthor, with Nelson, of American Indian Environmental Ethics: An Ojibwa Case Study.

Michael P. Nelson (Editor)
MICHAEL P. NELSON is an associate professor of environmental ethics and philosophy at Michigan State University, where he is affiliated with the Lyman Briggs College, the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, and the Department of Philosophy. He is coeditor, with J. Baird Callicott, of The Great New Wilderness Debate and The Wilderness Debate Rages On (both Georgia), and coauthor, with Callicott, of American Indian Environmental Ethics: An Ojibwa Case Study.

J. Baird Callicott (Editor)
J. BAIRD CALLICOTT is a professor of philosophy at the University of North Texas. He is coeditor, with Michael P. Nelson, of The Great New Wilderness Debate and The Wilderness Debate Rages On (both Georgia), and coauthor, with Nelson, of American Indian Environmental Ethics: An Ojibwa Case Study.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi
"Introduction: The Growth of Wilderness Seeds" Michael P. Nelson J. Baird Callicott 1 Part 1 The Unreceived Wilderness Idea: The Road Not Taken
"Animal Life as an Asset of National Parks" Joseph Grinnell Tracy I. Storer 21
"The Need for a More Serious Effort to Rescue a Few Fragments of Vanishing Nature" Francis B. Sumner 30
"Importance of Natural Conditions in National Parks" Barrington Moore 45
"The Importance of Preserving Wilderness Conditions" Charles C. Adams 55
"Problems of Geographical Origin," from Fauna of the National Parks of the United States: A Preliminary Survey of Faunal Relations in National Parks George M. Wright Joseph S. Dixon Ben H. Thompson 67
"Big Game of Our National Parks" George M. Wright 71
"The Preservation of Natural Biotic Communities" Victor E. Shelford 79
"Conservation versus Preservation" Victor E. Shelford 90
"Wilderness as a Land Laboratory" Aldo Leopold 93
"Science, Recreation, and Leopold's Quest for a Durable Scale" Julianne Lutz Warren 97
"The Value of Wilderness to Science" Stephen H. Spurr 119
"From Woodcraft to 'Leave No Trace': Wilderness, Consumerism, and Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America" James Morton Turner 137
"Wilderness Preservation Argument 31: The Psychotherapy at a Distance Argument" Mark P. Jenkins 170 Part 2 Race, Class, Culture, and Wilderness
"Imagining Nature and Erasing Class and Race: Carleton Watkins, John Muir, and the Construction of Wilderness" Kevin DeLuca Anne Demo 189
"Jackfish Pete: Pete LaPrairie's Story" Lynn Maria Laitala 218
"Wilderness Preservation and Biodiversity Conservation: Keeping Divergent GoalsDistinct" Sahotra Sarkar 231
"Cross-Cultural Confusion: Application of World Heritage Concepts in Scenic and Historic Interest Areas in China" Feng Han 252
"Recycled Rain Forest Myths" Antonio Carlos Diegues 264
"A Willing Benefactor: An Essay on Wilderness in Nilotic and Bantu Culture" G. W. Burnett Regine Joulie-Kuttner Kamuyu wa Kang'ethe 282
"What Is Africa to Me? Wilderness in Black Thought, 1860-1930" Kimberly K. Smith 300
"African-American Wildland Memories" Cassandra Y. Johnson J. M. Bowker 325 Part 3 The Wilderness Idea Roundly Criticized and Defended ... Again
"Is Nature Real?" Gary Snyder 351
"Contemporary Criticisms of the Received Wilderness Idea" J. Baird Callicott 355
"The Real Wilderness Idea" Dave Foreman 378
"Changing Human Relationships with Nature: Making and Remaking Wilderness Science" Jill M. Belsky 398
"The Not-So-Great Wilderness Debate ... Continued" David W. Orr 423
"On Wilderness and People: A View from Mt. Marcy" Wayne Ouderkirk 435
"Something Wild? Deleuze and Guattari, Wilderness, and Purity" Jonathan Maskit 461
"Wild: Rhythm of the Appearing and Disappearing" Irene J. Klaver 485
"Against the Social Construction of Nature and Wilderness" Eileen Crist 500
"Wilderness, Cultivation and Appropriation" John O'Neill 526
"Conservation Biologists Challenge Traditional Nature Protection Organizations" Michael McCloskey 551 Part 4 Thinking through the Wilderness Idea
"Wilderness" Marilynne Robinson 563
"The Implication of the 'Shifting Paradigm' in Ecology for Paradigm Shifts in the Philosophy of Conservation" J. Baird Callicott 571
"Hell, No. Of Course Not. But ..." Wendell Berry 601
"Wilderness as a Sabbath for the Land" Scott Russell Sanders 603
"Distinguishing Experiential and Physical Conceptions of Wilderness" John A. Vucetich Michael P. Nelson 611
"The Riddle of the Apostle Islands: How Do You Manage a Wilderness Full of Human Stories?" William Cronon 632
"Letting Nature Run Wild in the National Parks" Rolf O. Peterson 645
"Ecological Theory and Values in the Determination of Conservation Goals: Examples from Temperate Regions of Germany, United States of America, and Chile" Kurt Jax Ricardo Rozzi 664
"Wilderness as Witness (Cape Perpetua)" Kathleen Dean Moore 692 Index 697

Editorial Reviews

This new collection, like the first one, will be essential reading for anyone working in the new and burgeoning field of religion and ecology.

Religious Studies Review

The Wilderness Debate clearly rages on, and this is a fine and engaging representation of it as well as a constructive contribution to it on many levels. Strong and wide-ranging essays detail and deepen a real rollicking philosophical debate with serious stakes and thus will make this collection stand out and stand alone.

author of A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox - Anthony Weston