Wilderness recreation is a class privilege that devalues rural land-based labor

Evidence

Why, for instance, is the ” wilderness experience“ so often conceived as a form of recreation best enjoyed by those whose class privileges give them the time and resources to leave their jobs behind and ”get away from it all?“ Why does the protection of wilderness so often seem to pit urban recreationists against rural people who actually earn their living from the land (excepting those who sell goods and services to the tourists themselves)? Why in the debates about pristine natural areas are ”primitive“ peoples idealized, even sentimentalized, until the moment they do something unprimitive, modern, and unnatural, and thereby fall from environmental grace? What are the consequences of a wilderness ideology that devalues productive labor and the very concrete knowledge that comes from working the land with one’s own hands? — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 65

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘primitive peoples idealized until they do something modern’ dynamic ties directly to settler-colonial erasure and the polyad’s Indigenous-presence thread. — connects to: Solving environmental problems requires an ethic for the home landscape, not just remote wilderness — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 67; Wilderness protection has historically been affiliated with wealth and class privilege — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 64; Wilderness appreciation was an elite urban leisure projection, not a rural ideal. — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 36 (+5 more)

Related

• Wilderness appreciation was an elite urban leisure projection, not a rural ideal. (similarity 0.91)
• Wilderness protection has historically been affiliated with wealth and class privilege (similarity 0.88)
• Wilderness is a cultural construction, not an untouched natural sanctuary (similarity 0.86)
• Wilderness is a cultural construct, not a place that exists apart from humanity (similarity 0.83)
• Solving environmental problems requires an ethic for the home landscape, not just remote wilderness (similarity 0.83)
• William Cronon — The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature (similarity 0.80)
• Before the nineteenth century, wilderness meant wasteland and evoking terror, not beauty (similarity 0.80)
• Wilderness wonder is a cultural state of mind, not a natural fact (similarity 0.80)
• The word wilderness once meant desolate wasteland, not sacred refuge (similarity 0.80)
• Wilderness is a state of mind defined by wonder, not a fact of nature (similarity 0.80)
• By the late nineteenth century the wilderness sublime had been domesticated into sentimentality (similarity 0.80)
• Every landscape, from city to wilderness, is both cultural and natural (similarity 0.79)
• Wilderness ethics fails whether it stresses continuity or independence alone (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Wilderness is a cultural construct, not a place that exists apart from humanity #qualifies (0.80) — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 5
• Environmental history has privileged rural production over metropolitan land use #expands (0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 14
• Calling a place by its true name transforms wilderness into homeland #qualifies (0.75) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 123