Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
political justification for the conservation and legal protection of such areas. Geographers
have contributed to an understanding of a number of different dimensions of the
relationship between wilderness and national park concepts and recreation and tourism:
• the changing meaning of wilderness in western society
• the environmental history of national parks and wilderness areas
• the value of wilderness
• the identification and inventory of wilderness
• the demand for wilderness and natural areas, including visitor profiles, activities and
behaviours
• the development of wilderness and national park policy and the supply of wilderness
and natural areas for recreation and tourist activities.
THE CHANGING MEANING OF WILDERNESS IN WESTERN
SOCIETY
Definition presents a major problem in the identification of wilderness areas. Definition
is important 'because it is the basis for common understanding and communication' and
it 'provides a basis for putting a concept into action through creating and preserving a
referent' (Gardner 1978:7). However, wilderness is an elusive concept with many layers
of meaning (Gardner 1978; Graber 1978). Tuan (1974:112) has gone so far as to claim
that 'wilderness cannot be defined objectively: it is as much a state of mind as a
description of nature'. Wilderness has now become 'a symbol of the orderly progress of
nature. As a state of mind, true wilderness exists only in the great sprawling cities'.
The problem of defining wilderness was well summarised by R.Nash (1967), who
emphasised that the notion of wilderness was loaded with personal symbolic meaning:
'Wilderness' has a deceptive concreteness at first glance. The difficulty is
that while the word is a noun it acts like an adjective. There is no specific
material object that is wilderness. The term designates a quality (as the '-
ness' suggests) that produces a certain mood or feeling in a given
individual and, as a consequence, may be assigned by that person to a
specific place. Because of this subjectivity a universally acceptable
definition of wilderness is elusive.
(Nash 1967:1)
The notion of wilderness is substantially culturally determined and is derived in the main
from the northern European experience of nature (Oelschlaeger 1991). Although the
meaning of wilderness has changed over time, several themes may be distinguished. The
word 'wilderness' is derived from the old English word
wilddeoren
meaning 'of wild
beasts', which in turn is derived from the Teutonic languages of northern Europe. In
German, for example,
Wildnis
is a cognate verb, and
Wildor
signifies wild game (Nash
1967:2).
The Romance languages have no single word which expresses the idea of wilderness
but rely instead on its attributes. In French the equivalent terms are
lieu desert
(deserted
