Wilderness is a cultural construction, not an untouched natural sanctuary

Evidence

Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation—indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it’s a product of that civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made. Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural. As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires. — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 5

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sets up the core distinction between wilderness-as-idea (a human construct) and wilderness-as-land (real nonhuman others) that the essay keeps separating.
• XREF: Hinge claim connecting reader’s polyad: proves there was never a ‘pristine’ forest is the forestry-course corollary of this same idea. — connects to: The word wilderness once meant desolate wasteland, not sacred refuge — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 8; Wilderness preservation grew directly out of the vanishing-frontier lament. — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 29; Solving environmental problems requires an ethic for the home landscape, not just remote wilderness — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 67 (+13 more)
• SEED: Direction for an Eco-Justice piece: unpacking wilderness-as-mirror as the founding move for environmental pedagogy.
• recurring: this claim recurs 6 times within its source

Related

• Wilderness is a cultural construct, not a place that exists apart from humanity (similarity 0.94)
• Wilderness is a state of mind defined by wonder, not a fact of nature (similarity 0.90)
• Wilderness appreciation was an elite urban leisure projection, not a rural ideal. (similarity 0.88)
• Wilderness wonder is a cultural state of mind, not a natural fact (similarity 0.87)
• Wilderness recreation is a class privilege that devalues rural land-based labor (similarity 0.86)
• The word wilderness once meant desolate wasteland, not sacred refuge (similarity 0.85)
• Wilderness protection has historically been affiliated with wealth and class privilege (similarity 0.85)
• Every landscape, from city to wilderness, is both cultural and natural (similarity 0.85)
• Wilderness ethics fails whether it stresses continuity or independence alone (similarity 0.85)
• Before the nineteenth century, wilderness meant wasteland and evoking terror, not beauty (similarity 0.85)
• William Cronon — The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature (similarity 0.84)
• Solving environmental problems requires an ethic for the home landscape, not just remote wilderness (similarity 0.83)
• By the late nineteenth century the wilderness sublime had been domesticated into sentimentality (similarity 0.82)
• Wilderness preservation grew directly out of the vanishing-frontier lament. (similarity 0.82)
• The garden tree is as wild and wondrous as the forest tree (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Wilderness is a cultural construct, not a place that exists apart from humanity #corroborates (1.00) — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 5
• Nature’s qualities are historical, not fixed, under human mastery #corroborates (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 825
• The sublime and the frontier jointly remade wilderness into its modern form #expands (0.80) — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 12
• Wilderness is a state of mind defined by wonder, not a fact of nature #expands (0.75)
• Wilderness ethics fails whether it stresses continuity or independence alone #expands (0.75) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 604
• Wilderness conservation areas were built and maintained by coerced black labor #exemplifies (0.75) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 1236