荒野与建筑

“荒野哲学”逐渐变成了一种属于美国的独特文化和情结,并在自然文学和绘画艺术中得到了最为集中的体现。那么建筑领域是否也有着“荒野情怀”?又是否通过建筑这一形式进行了独特的表达?本文以美国“自然主义”建筑大师赖特为主体,对“荒野”和“建筑”进行分析和探讨。     

美国国家公园建构与印第安人命运变迁——以黄石国家公园为中心(1872—1930)

19世纪中后期,随着美国西部探险与开发的不断深入,黄石地区的自然景观开始引起美国社会的关注。在一批社会精英的推动下,黄石国家公园得以建立。在这些社会精英看来,被保护为黄石公园的土地是无人定居的荒野,但实际上,那是千百年来印第安人繁衍生息的家园。《黄石公园法》确立了保护自然资源与发展旅游的公园管理目标,但印第安人传统生活方式的延续对此构成了严重挑战。于是,印第安人被视为黄石公园的威胁而遭到驱逐。然而,为了迎合游客将国家公园视为边疆荒野的想象,公园管理者和旅游开发商将印第安人塑造成了重要的旅游吸引物,从而促成了印第安人在国家公园的"回归"。印第安人在美国国家公园运动中的遭遇,是美国征服印第安人政策在自然资源利用领域中的延续,反映了美国环境主义运动中非正义的一面。     

哈德逊河画派与美国国家身份意识的塑造

在美国人追求文化独立的19世纪前期,哈德逊河画派以风景画为基础开创了具有美国特色的绘画风格。该画派不仅创作了大量令欧洲艺术评论家赞赏的绘画作品,而且为美国人提供了建构身份意识的艺术素材。画家们借助风景画建构起一套美国地理空间形象,并且将其与美国在宗教、政治上相对于欧洲的优越性联系起来。哈德逊河画派的作品与美国当时的政治理念相互呼应,将荒野的文化含义可视化,在文化层面对美国的共和制度和西进运动提供支持。同时,绘画将美国地貌压缩成地理符号,激发了美国人对共享地理空间的想象,成功地增强了美国人的地理归属感,有助于美国人对国家身份意识的构建。     

美国“使命”观的历史和文化起源

“使命”观指美国作为上帝选择的特殊国度,对人类的发展和命运承担一种特殊的责任。这种观念在美国白人文化中根深蒂固,可以说是发轫于清教徒的宗教信仰,根植于美国的特殊地理环境,形成于美利坚民族的特殊性,随后又受到美国是世界上发端较早的资产阶级民主政体的加强。“使命”观所体现出的内容在现实世界中未必真实,但作为一种文化价值观却深深地影响着美国人对外部世界的看法和态度,尤其在美国政府决策者的思想意识中体现出来。因此对美国“使命”观的历史与文化起源的探讨有助于从深层认识美国外交的实质     

读者俱乐部专版

驾越野车──力与美的结合 越野汽车让你想到的不只是山地、旷野,更多的是它的力与美的结合。你如细心便会发现,现代文明的城市中,驶入了越来越多的代表着原野的汽车－－越野车。清晨,人们突然发现,吉普车这种从前代表与荒野打交道的车辆,越来越多地出现在城市街道上,它离我们近了,就在你面前,它以特有的传奇、力与美吸引着越来越多的车迷、驾上越野汽车冲入群山荒野,摆脱烦闷的现代都市生活……我们相信,吉普越野运动将成为休闲文化中最具代表性的一环,休闲文化又是现代生活中不可缺少的一个环节。越野者汽车俱乐部五月份将组…     

美国19、20世纪之交的一场“文化战争”——神学现代派与传统福音派之间的斗争北大核心CSSCI

19、20世纪之交,伴随着美国现代化进程的快速推进,美国宗教界出现了一种新的神学观念——现代主义神学观。这种新的神学观主张破除陈旧的神学理念,用新的思维和新的方式解读《圣经》,用新的理念和新的视角诠释上帝与人和上帝与社会之间的关系。针对现代主义神学观的这些观点和主张,笃信和坚守传统基督教精神的福音派迅速做出回击,提出只有坚持基督教的最根本原则,基督徒才可能获得拯救,美国文明才可能免于毁灭。鉴于现代主义神学观和传统福音派的观点和立场截然对立,两者之间的争论引发了一场"文化战争"。     

19世纪末20世纪初美国国家公园正当性话语的建构

19世纪末20世纪初,在倡导对自然资源进行开发与利用的历史语境中,国家公园这种相悖于传统、将自然资源“锁起来”的公共土地利用模式,时常遭到美国功利主义开发势力的质疑和挑战。在支持国家公园的美国社会精英看来,国家公园保存的都是“无与伦比的风景”,是能够彰显美国独特性的国家骄傲。他们一方面构建国家公园土地对于传统资源开发乃是“无用之地”的形象,另一方面极力阐释国家公园在经济、社会、文化、科学、教育等方面的功用和益处,及其相异于其他“美国公地”的独特性,从而形成了一套塑造国家公园正当性的话语体系。该话语体系既接续了美国浪漫主义和民族主义风景观念,迎合了“后边疆时代”美国精英阶层的荒野文化心理,又从实用主义的角度发掘出国家公园在美国经济社会发展中的多重“资源”价值,最终促使国家公园在美国人的自然认知和经济社会体系中确立了正当性。     

资源保护和自然保护的首度交锋——20世纪初美国赫奇赫奇争论及其影响

赫奇赫奇是加州约瑟米蒂国家公园内的一个美丽小山谷。20世纪初,关于是否在此建立大坝,美国人展开了一场激烈争论。这场争论也是两种不同自然保护哲学之间的首度交锋。以平肖为首的资源保护主义者和以缪尔为首的自然保护主义者针锋相对,前者支持大坝的建立,后者捍卫山谷的完整和自然状态。争论最终以前者的胜利而结束。这场争论对自然保护哲学的发展,对此后的荒野保护以及环保运动的发展有着深远的影响。     

美国19、20世纪之交的一场“文化战争”——神学现代派与传统福音派之间的斗争

19、20世纪之交,伴随着美国现代化进程的快速推进,美国宗教界出现了一种新的神学观念——现代主义神学观。这种新的神学观主张破除陈旧的神学理念,用新的思维和新的方式解读《圣经》,用新的理念和新的视角诠释上帝与人和上帝与社会之间的关系。针对现代主义神学观的这些观点和主张,笃信和坚守传统基督教精神的福音派迅速做出回击,提出只有坚持基督教的最根本原则,基督徒才可能获得拯救,美国文明才可能免于毁灭。鉴于现代主义神学观和传统福音派的观点和立场截然对立,两者之间的争论引发了一场"文化战争"。     

美国宪法改革与人权政策

美国人权政策是建立在古典政治哲学基础之上的,它过分强调人民的消极权利,而忽视了人民的积极权利。随着美国社会的发展,这种人权政策显得越来越不能适应时代的需要。因此,20世纪80年代以来,美国又掀起了宪法改革运动的高潮,以解决宪法中存在的人权概念不清楚和政治自由太多、人民的经济利益太少的问题。在修宪运动中,美国的最高法院发挥了重要的历史作用,使运动取得了一些阶段性成果。但由于种族偏见的根深蒂固,因此美国人权政策的发展依然面临着有待进一步克服的问题。     

Wilderness use,conservation and tourism: what do we protect and for and from whom?

For many people today, the idea of wilderness conjures up meanings and images referring to wild, remote, and untrammeled natural areas, which need protection from human presence and utilization. Institutionally, the first Wilderness Act was prescribed in the United States over 50 years ago and the wilderness conservation originates from the establishment of the first national parks in North America in the nineteenth century. First conservation and wilderness areas and related legal acts provided a model on how to organize and manage conservation areas globally. However, this created ‘fortress’ model of global conservation thinking, separating wilderness, and nature from culture and people, has recently been increasingly challenged by views calling for more people-centered approaches in natural resource management. In addition, the tourism industry has become an increasingly important user and socioeconomic element of change in wilderness areas, which has created new kinds of utilization needs for the remaining wild environments. Thus, there are different ways to understand what wilderness is and for and from whom we are protecting those areas. This paper aims to overview some of the key perspectives on how wilderness environment are contextualized, used, and contested: as units of strict conservation; resources for livelihoods and raw materials, and/or tourist products. The purpose is to point out that while we have different and often conflicting understandings of what wilderness is and what it is for, there are also potentially symbiotic relations between different views which could help us to protect the remaining wilderness areas. This is the case especially in the Global South, where the sociopolitical pressures of economic utilization of the remaining wilderness environments are currently the sharpest.     

“Wilderness” revisited: Is Canadian park management moving beyond the “wilderness” ethic?

This paper questions whether the rescaling of conservation practice in Canada to include local and Indigenous communities, NGOs, and private market-based actors represents a move away from wilderness-thinking in conservation, and what implications this might have for the future of conservation in Canada. We explore the links between Cronon's “wilderness” ethic and coloniality, racism/sexism/classism, and political economy, and the extent to which recent trends in conservation practice, such as co-management arrangements, private tourism proposals, and a shift in programming to attract a diverse public to parks, help us to move beyond the limited vision for conservation and environmentalism that the wilderness ethic provides. We interrogate the ways in which the concept of wilderness is being employed, resisted, and transformed by a multitude of actors in three parks and conservation areas across Canada. We argue that although recent developments in conservation practice help to redress some of the worrisome aspects of wilderness-thinking in parks, they also reinforce and re-emphasize problematic lines of thinking and praxis. While the wilderness character of Canadian parks has shifted a great deal since the turn of the 20^th century, the wilderness ethic remains deeply embedded within conservation discourse and practice.     

Tourism in a nature-based destination: the human versus the ecological perspectives

In the tourism studies literature, wilderness has been addressed from two perspectives. From the first, human, perspective wilderness is a social, subjective construction that exists only in the mind of its users. From the second, ecological, perspective it is a material, objective reality. Here, we compare these two perspectives based on data collected in one of Poland's most popular nature-based destinations, The Great Masurian Lakes region, and develop a methodological framework which would operationalise this comparison and make it measurable. The research approach combined a survey of tourists and mapping of natural features. The data was analysed, first, to verify whether stated preferences regarding nature and the natural features surrounding tourist accommodation were coherent; this resulted in the construction of a Coherence Index (CI). Second, we analysed how stated preferences with respect to nature were linked to outdoor recreational activities; this was measured by a Nature Cruciality Index (NCI). Finally, both indexes were mapped and their spatial distributions were analysed. The findings showed that the subjective, social construction of wilderness does not always correspond to objective reality. Although tourists declared natural environment to be very important to them, in some cases the analysis found a lack of consistency between expressed preferences and the natural features found around accommodation. The phenomenon was mainly found in towns, where tourists were most nature-indifferent. Moreover, they were not interested in activities with high NCI. In some cases, however, the two perspectives were coherent, especially among nature-oriented tourists who stayed near lakes and those who stayed in villages (who were most conscious of their choices). Tourists who stayed near lakes undertook the most nature-crucial activities. These findings can be used to enhance local planning, management and marketing strategies for nature tourism.     

Organicism,womanhood and domesticity in Anne LaBastille's Woodswoman saga

Anne LaBastille's Woodswoman saga presents an ecological approach to organicism that aims to recuperate the notion of nature and the wilderness as live organisms in perpetual, cyclical transition. LaBastille's conception of nature as an animate entity to which the self is intimately connected unleashes her discursive advocacy for a necessary reversion to a communion with natural rhythms. Her hermitage represents a voluntary conversion into the laws of nature, a conversion which results in the identification of the self as a self-in-place, and in the redefinition of the categories of domesticity, privacy and territoriality from an ecofeminist perspective. Such redefinitions lead to an implosion of the notion of femininity itself: as LaBastille negotiates between the categories of womanhood, the wilderness, and private and public domains in accordance to organicist principles, she opens a new discursive space that acknowledges women's need for a territory of their own where they too can become independent selves-in-relation.     

Common Roots and Entangled Limbs: Earth First! and the Growth of Post-Wilderness Environmentalism on California's North Coast

Conflicts over the protection of redwood trees on California's North Coast are often depicted as following the trajectory of the radical wing of the larger American environmental movement, in which "radical" refers to the sharpness of the boundary drawn and defended between human despoliation and pure nature or "wilderness." Earth First!—an environmental organization characterized by their slogan, "No compromise in the defense of Mother Earth!"—is often depicted as simply the leading edge of this deepening rift between nature and culture. I argue, on the contrary, that the Earth First! branches on California's North Coast should be understood as making bold, if incomplete, attempts to cast off the problematic nature–culture dichotomy and to define social justice and ecological health as struggles with a common root. By moving beyond wilderness, the North Coast Earth First! offers the promise of a truly radical movement, by which I mean one which truly confronts capital's interlinked degradation of both natural and human communities. This article examines the efforts by the North Coast Earth First! to inscribe a new community of activists and timber-workers joined in the struggle to contest corporate claims on the redwood forest. It explores the ambiguous effects of activists' "embodied" and "home-based" practices on this budding alliance, particularly the ways in which such practices also have alienated workers by redefining the redwood forest as the exclusive property of the activists' themselves.     

Wilderness and tolerance in Flora MacDonald Denison: towards a biopolitics of whiteness

Building on recent argumentation concerning the relationship between wilderness and multiculturalism and whiteness in Canada, this essay argues that the relationship between wilderness and tolerance, one of multiculturalism's operative terms, offers a potentially rich vein for researching and theorizing liberal biopolitics and whiteness in Canada. To formulate this argument the essay historicizes the pairing of tolerance and wilderness in Edwardian Canada through the figure of Flora MacDonald Denison, an important early twentieth-century Canadian feminist and labour activist, a wilderness enthusiast, Theosophist/spiritualist and Walt Whitman devotee.     

The Consequences for Wilderness Conservation in the Development of the National Park System in Tasmania,Australia

Statewide extents of wilderness are mapped and calculated for four historic time‐slices that reflect major periods of national park development in Tasmania. The representation of wilderness in the Tasmanian reserve system is calculated for 1937, 1970 and 1992. National parks were established in wilderness areas during all major periods of reserve development. While the total core wilderness area in Tasmania decreased by 63% between 1916 and 1992, the core wilderness area captured in the reserve system increased by 618%, with the largest increase being in the post‐1970 period. However, those parks established prior to 1970 suffered an enormous attrition of their wilderness resource. This reflects man‐agement policies inconsistent with the maintenance of wilderness during early periods of national park development. The huge increase in wilderness area captured in the reserve system after 1970 suggests that wilderness conservation only became a significant motive behind the expansion of the reserve system in the later decades of the twentieth century.     

The Effect of Federal Wilderness on County Growth in the Intermountain Western United States

A consistent theme in the debate over federally-owned wilderness areas in the intermountain western United States is that local economies may be adversely affected by such a designation. Yet empirical evidence of this negative effect is rarely offered. This paper finds, for a sample of 250 nonurban counties in the eight states of the intermountain west, no evidence that the existence of federal wilderness is directly or indirectly associated with either population-density or total-employment-density growth between 1980 and 1990. This empirical finding is based on a disequilibrium model of population and employment growth. Furthermore, much of the economic concern over wilderness designation centers on its perceived effect on resource-based industries. Yet, this study finds no empirical evidence that county-level resource-based employment is adversely affected by the existence of federal wilderness.     

Marine Tourism in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia

Marine tourism is an important component of nature‐based tourism in the Kimberley Region of northern Western Australia. It offers a wide range of passive and active recreational activities in near‐pristine wilderness areas. Marine tourism in the region is recognised as a growth sector having expanded rapidly since 2000, and it is unusual in that growth has been limited by a lack of vehicular access points to the coast. This unplanned growth has been irregular. A marked downturn in visitation by yachts has coincided with an increase in visits by charter boats. Although only five bush camps are established along the coast, boat visits occur at approximately 216 locations that are all subject to potential environmental damage. The extent to which this unplanned industry can be sustained without jeopardising environmental, social and economic values remains open to question.     

Editorial

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show how national interests and western ideas about the polar wilderness influenced initiatives taken in the early decades of the twentieth century to protect the natural environment of the Arctic islands of Spitsbergen, today called Svalbard. After a brief outline of the environmental history of the islands, the explanatory significance of a game theory-based assumption about the predicament of nature conservation on common land is discussed by applying it to this historical case. It is the environmental dilemma known as the “tragedy of the commons”. Some elements of the western and Scandinavian ideological interpretations of the Arctic nature are introduced as a background to the following discussion of the most significant early initiative of nature conservation in the Arctic: Hugo Conwentz's proposal for the protection of the nature of Spitsbergen of 1914. The conception and outcome of Conwentz's initiative is explained by references to the political, social and ideological contexts of early twentieth-century science and colonialism. In the final section, the post-war development of the environmental administration of the islands is correlated to the political situation following World War I with its many historical contingencies and the breakdown of internationalism in science and nature conservation.