Contemporary Criticisms of the Received Wilderness Idea

Names are important. The name "wilderness" is fraught with historical baggage obfuscating the most important role of wilderness areas for contemporary conservation. The received wil- derness idea has been and remains a tool of androcentrism, racism, colonialism, and genocide. It privileges virile and primitive recre- ation, because the main reason wild lands were originally preserved is for such utilitarian purposes. The wilderness idea is associated with outmoded equilibrium ecology and ignores the ecological im- pact of at least eleven thousand years of human inhabitation of the Americas and Australia. Finally, the wilderness idea perpetuates a pre-Darwinian separation of "man" from nature. The alternative concept of "biodiversity reserve" more clearly expresses the most important role of so-called wilderness areas for contemporary con- servation: habitat for nonhuman species that do not coexist well with Homo sapiens. In one of the most ancient and venerable sources of Chinese philosophy, the Analects, his disciple asks Confucius what he would do first were he to become the prime minister of the State of Wei. Without question, Confucius replies, first I would rectify names (Hall and Ames 1987). His disciple was puzzled by this saying; and for a long time so was I. No more, for here my project is precisely to rectify one domain of names—the wild domain. The answer to Juliet's question, "What's in a name?" in Shakespeare's play, is "Really, quite a lot." Consider, by way of analogy, a different domain of names: various names for women—chicks, babes, broads, ladies. The feminist move- ment has made us keenly aware that what we call someone or something—what we name him, her or it—is important. A name frames, colors and makes someone or something available for certain kinds of uses...or abuses. The feminist project in the domain of names for women also makes us keenly aware that someone who criticizes a name is not necessarily critical of what the name refers to. Indeed, often quite the contrary. Women themselves have, of course, taken the lead in purging polite and respectful discourse of such names as "chicks," "babes" and "broads." Even the name "lady" is freighted with so much baggage that it is not worn comfortably by many women. Just as the women who criticize some of the names they are called do not intend to criticize themselves or other women, I want to note here at the outset, in the most direct and emphatic way I can, that I am not here criticizing the