PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen The following full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. http://hdl.handle.net/2066/183331 Please be advised that this information was generated on 2021-10-04 and may be subject to change. Not lawn, nor pasture, mead: INVITATION Not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead: Rewilding and the Cultural Landscape Rewilding and the Cultural Landscape Andrea Rae Gammon Include that there will be a reception in the Aula following the defense. Paranymhps: Mira Vegter Andrea Rae Gammon [email protected] & Jochem Zwier [email protected] Not Lawn, Nor Pasture, Nor Mead: Rewilding and the Cultural Landscape gammon-layout.indd 1 13/01/2018 15:28 On the cover: Treelines (2009) by Robert Hite. Used with the generous permission of the artist. ISBN 978-94-6295-843-2 © 2017, Andrea Rae Gammon Printing, layout and cover design by ProefschriftMaken | Proefschriftmaken.nl gammon-layout.indd 2 13/01/2018 15:28 Not Lawn, Nor Pasture, Nor Mead: Rewilding and the Cultural Landscape PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. dr. J.H.J.M. van Krieken, volgens besluit van het college van decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op maandag 19 februari 2018 om 12.30 uur precies door Andrea Rae Gammon geboren op 11 augustus 1985 te Portland, Maine, Verenigde Staten van Amerika gammon-layout.indd 3 13/01/2018 15:28 Promotoren Prof. dr. H.A.E. Zwart Prof. dr. F.W.J. Keulartz Copromotor Dr. M.A.M. Drenthen Manuscriptcommissie Prof. dr. J. P. Wils (voorzitter) Prof. dr. P.J.H. Kockelkoren (Universiteit Twente) Dr. E. Peeren (Universiteit van Amsterdam) gammon-layout.indd 4 13/01/2018 15:28 Here was no man’s garden, but the unhandselled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste-land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made forever and ever, —to be the dwelling of man, we say,— so Nature made it, and man may use it if he can. Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific, — not his Mother Earth that we have heard of, not for him to tread on, or be buried in, — no, it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie there, — the home, this, of Necessity and Fate. HENRY DAVID THOREAU gammon-layout.indd 5 13/01/2018 15:28 gammon-layout.indd 6 13/01/2018 15:28 For my parents, who have always encouraged me to pursue what moves me, and whose support has been inestimable. gammon-layout.indd 7 13/01/2018 15:28 gammon-layout.indd 8 13/01/2018 15:28 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 13 Overview 20 PART ONE: PLACE 25 1 SURVEYING PLACE 27 1.0 Introduction 27 1.1 Place in human geography 28 1.2 Attachment to place, home, & the local 31 1.2.1 Place attachment in social science 31 1.2.2 Place attachment in literature 32 1.3 Place in cultural geography 35 1.4 (Cultural) landscape 37 1.5 The cultural landscape in philosophy 43 1.6 Conclusion 49 2 PLACE AS EXISTENTIAL 51 2.0 Introduction 51 2.1 Heidegger & place 52 2.1.1 Dasein, Being-in-the-world, & existential spatiality 53 2.1.2 Dwelling 59 BUILDING & THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE 64 2.2 Developments with place in environmental philosophy 66 2.2.1 Place as how & what we know 67 2.2.2 Bioregionalism 70 2.2.3 Place & remedial ethics 72 2.3 Place & Hermeneutic Environmental Philosophy 74 2.3.1 Emplacement: Place, time, & identity 75 NATURE’S PARADOXES 76 EMPLACEMENT & HERMENEUTICS 77 2.3.2 Cultural landscape in hermeneutic environmental ethics 79 2.4 Conclusion: Place & placemaking 82 gammon-layout.indd 9 13/01/2018 15:28 3 BROADENING PLACE 85 3.0 Introduction 85 3.1 Place, position, & power 86 3.2 Place versus (?) wilderness 89 3.3 Place-specific criticisms 92 3.3.1 Relevance of place 92 3.3.2 Nostalgia & Place 95 3.3.3 Malpas: Dwelling misconstrued 96 3.4 Placemaking 98 3.5 Placemaking & remaining problems 100 3.6 Conclusion 103 PART TWO: WILDERNESS & REWILDING 105 4 WILDERNESS CONTEXT & MEANINGS 107 4.0 Introduction 107 4.1 Frontier & wilderness experience & ideas 108 4.2 Wilderness as ontologically separate 111 4.3 Wilderness as transcendent other 115 4.4 Debating wilderness 117 4.5 Engaging restoration 120 4.6 Conclusion 123 5 REWILDING’S MEANINGS 125 5.0 Introduction 125 5.1 Definitions of rewilding 126 5.1.1 North American rewilding 126 5.1.2 Pleistocene rewilding 127 5.1.3 Taxon replacement on islands 128 5.1.4 Captive breeding & release 128 5.1.5 Landscape restoration rewilding 128 5.1.6 Spontaneous rewilding 129 5.2 Rewilding as self-willed land 130 5.3 Rewilding broadened but not plastic 133 5.3.1 Emerging, secondary notions: Reflexive & Primitivist Rewilding 134 REFLEXIVE REWILDING 134 PRIMITIVIST REWILDING 135 5.4 A cluster conceptualization of rewilding 137 5.5 Conclusion 141 gammon-layout.indd 10 13/01/2018 15:28 PART THREE: REWILDING AS PLACEMAKING 143 6 WILDERNESS REWILDING 145 6.0 Introduction: rewilding versus place? 145 6.1 Wilderness rewilding: rewilding’s origins 148 6.2 The question of wilderness 152 6.3 Wolves in Yellowstone 154 6.4 Wilderness rewilding in Europe 158 6.5 Rewilding the Apostle Islands 162 6.6 Conclusion: empty places 166 7 PROVING GROUNDS: EXPERIMENTAL REWILDING 169 7.0 Introduction 169 7.1 Oostvaardersplassen, the Netherlands 170 7.1.1 Oostvaardersplassen as experiment 171 7.1.2 Shifting baseline syndrome 174 7.1.3 Terra ex nihilo 176 7.2 Pleistocene Park, Cherski, Siberia 178 7.2.1 The Mammoth steppe ecosystem 180 7.2.2 Climate mediation of the mammoth steppe restoration 181 7.3 Experimental rewilding & the recovery of “real” nature 183 7.4 Contrast case: North American Pleistocene rewilding 187 7.4.1 Justifications & closed questions 189 7.5 Conclusion 191 8 PLACE-REGENERATIVE REWILDING 193 8.0 Introduction 193 8.1 Critiquing the cultural landscape 195 8.2 Reappearing nonhuman agency: Missing & reintroduced species 200 8.2.1 The Scottish beaver trial 203 8.3 Limits in cultural landscape rewilding 206 8.4 A new cultural landscape: New nature in the Netherlands 210 8.4.1 Room for the River & nature development in the Netherlands 211 8.4.2 Reflexive placemaking 216 8.5 Conclusion 221 CONCLUSION 223 WORKS CITED 229 SAMENVATTING 251 SUMMARY 257 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 263 CURRICULUM VITAE 267 gammon-layout.indd 11 13/01/2018 15:28 gammon-layout.indd 12 13/01/2018 15:28 Introduction In July of 2017, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, widely known as UNESCO, added the first national park to its list of sites of outstanding universal value. England’s Lake District, already renowned for its impressive landscape of mountains and lakes, was inscribed as a World Heritage site for its “harmonious beauty,” its history of “vital interaction between an agro-pastoral land use system,” and its contribution, through the Romantic and Picturesque traditions, to a “deeper and more balanced appreciation of the significance of landscape, local society and place.”1 Not all were pleased with this inscription, however. Journalist George Monbiot called the designation “a betrayal of the living world” (Monbiot 2017), exemplary of the problems with contemporary conservation. Monbiot is no fan of the Lake District:2 where others see a spectacular and historic cultural landscape, he sees “a wildlife desert” (2013a); “an ersatz farm fantasy” (2017); “a treeless waste of cropped turf whose monotony is relieved only by erosion gullies, exposed soil and bare rock” (2017). Tensions also ran high in a debate concerning the future of a less famous landscape: the Hedwige Polder in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands. In 2010, the polder, which had been re-claimed from the sea in the early 20th century, was selected for declamation—to be relinquished back to the sea—to compensate for expansions to the nearby Port of Antwerp. With far greater stakes than Monbiot has in the Lake District, Zeelanders decried the decision publicly: “Land Declamation Affects the Zeeland Soul” one newspaper headline read,3 referring to their collective historical struggles against the sea. To Zeelanders, declamation would be a final capitulation. The tenor of both conflicts suggests that more is at stake than merely a difference in taste or aesthetic preference for one landscape over another. How is it that the preservation of a particular landscape, like the English Lake District, widely celebrated for its unique character and the evidence of centuries of human 1. See the UNESCO website for its entire assessment and for supporting documents: http://whc.unesco. org/en/list/422/ (UNESCO, 2017). 2. See Monbiot 2013; 2013a; 2017a. 3. Original Dutch headline: “Ontpoldering raakt de Zeeuwse ziel,” cited in Drenthen 2014a: 230. See Drenthen 2014a for a more detailed discussion of this case. gammon-layout.indd 13 13/01/2018 15:28 14 Introduction labor in its hedges, hills, and stonewalls, to Monbiot, amounts to “a betrayal of the living world”? Why is the Hedwige polder so important to the Zeeuwse ziel, the Zeelander’s soul? What is at stake in these conflicts revolves around what might be considered rewilding, or the returning of natural processes and the reemergence of self-willed land, as well as the human sense of place and identity that rewilding seems to forsake.