The World and the Wild.

David Rothenberg & Marta M. Ulvaeus, eds. 2001. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson. ISBN 0-8165-2063-1 (paper) $19.95 (U.S.). 250 pp.

If the main theme in The World and the Wild is the inseparability of culture and nature, then the main message is to respect differences--in policy, in knowledge and in experience. This eclectic volume revives the tiresome biocentricvs-anthropocentric debate over the management, conservation and preservation of the wild. Its strength, however, is its juxtaposition of intellectual and emotive writing to unite these two spuriously opposed positions and thereby demonstrate the many ways in which wilderness becomes translated politically, physically and psychologically.

Rothenberg exhorts us to "question the idea of wilderness so that we can defend it more forcefully" (p. XVII). Thus, there are provocative critiques of policy decisions and lucid accounts of the emergence of major approaches such as social ecology, conservation biology and protected parks. However, this volume is also about experiencing wilderness. Writing with humour, reverence, lyricism, sadness and rage toward the wild, wilderness-dwelling peoples and wilderness management, the authors of the 16 chapters promote the idea that wilderness is as much about humans as about non-humans. Western's reflections on his early efforts to establish a self-run wildlife park among the Masai peoples of Kilimanjaro, Bevis' account of the elusive and threatened Penan "wild men of Borneo", Harrison's quizzical narrative about medicine and religion in Mexico, Player's induction into Zulu history and ecology through learning to listen, and Vanderbilt's eloquent blending of volcanoes with Mexican myth suggest that wilderness m ust be experienced before it can be managed, conserved or preserved.

The volume makes a strong case for placing indigenous peoples within any effective and equitable framework for wilderness policy. Indeed, "re-place" is a more appropriate term, since many top-down decisions concerning wild places and natural resources displaced these same indigenous groups. The point is that humans can, and traditionally often do, live harmoniously and sustainably with nature, both as extractors and caretakers. Thus their existence in nature should be respected. Sarkar explicitly calls for social justice after the Indian model of social ecology to achieve "conservation with a human face" (p. 53). Importantly, Sarkar notes that qualitative research techniques found in social ecology may be inadequate; he advocates use of quantitative analytic tools to help predict ecological threats such as extinction of species. Cafaro and Verma take a more cynical view of humankind in their section on wilderness preservation, their tone veering toward deep ecology and an unapologetic privileging of non-huma n life. But their position has merit: they insightfully argue that social ecology and human autonomy must address the appropriateness of control and self-determinacy, challenging blind faith in community-based bottom-up approaches that fail to take into account the cultural, social and political contexts for specific wilderness preservation efforts.

Ultimately, we are encouraged to develop a conceptual map of the wild and to listen to the Earth Jazz" (a clever though overworked metaphor), to improvise and keep attuned to the planet's variability. The World and the Wild celebrates the wonder of wild places and those cultures that live within them. But if understanding both cultural and biological differences is crucial to dealing with the uniqueness of wild areas, then it is also necessary to remember that culture is political and politics is spatially and temporally specific. We are given numerous examples of conflicts over resources and indigenous peoples' beneficial practices, but these should be placed within an analytical framework such as political ecology. Whitesell touches on this when he states that "the idea of wilderness centers on the geographic concept of the power exercised by humans over the rest of nature in a particular place" (p. 190), but he is careful to make a distinction between this "geographic" conception and the sociological and political study of power relations among human groups.

The volume dwells on distant policy-makers at odds with locally affected peoples, but there is an unfortunate omission concerning power relations within local groups and their impact on wilderness ideas. Gender influences (Rocheleau et al. 1996), culturally specific negotiations over livelihood choices (Arce et al. 1994) and societal hierarchies that affect policy outcomes (Agarwal 1998) are noticeably absent. Yet, a volume dedicated to advancing environmental thought and policy should create space for some mention of power. For instance, it is worth exploring "a new politics of sustainability" (Keil et al. 1998: 13) that takes into account knowledge systems already at work in the locations of resource use and conflict, and how they compete with and/or complement economic considerations at international, national and local scales.

For the converted, the World and the Wild reconfirms our convictions and provide further evidence that rigid adherence to biocentric or anthropocentric approaches is unproductive. For the unconverted, it serves as an introduction to the range of thought and approaches to environmental philosophy and environmental management, and thus will expand the concept(s) of wilderness for some. As a bonus, it happens to be very well written.

References

Agarwal, B. (1998). The gender and environment debate. In R Keil, et al. (Eds.), Political Ecology: Global and Local. 193-219. London and New York: Routledge.

Arce, A. et al. (1994). The social construction of rural development: Discourses, practices and power. In D Booth (Ed.), Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Research and Practice. 152-171. Harlow, Essex: Longman.

Keil, R. et al. (1998). Editors' introduction: Perspectives on global political ecology. In R Keil, et al. (Eds.), Political Ecology: Global and Local. 1-16. London and New York: Routledge.

Rocheleau, D. et al., Eds. (1996). Feminist Political Ecology: Global issues and local experiences London and New York: Routledge.