Hayes, Alexander (2021) Where is the Wild? Master thesis.
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Abstract
Rewilding has moved from fringe concept to broadly discussed topic, both in academia and the public domain. However, its definitions are often contradictory, overlapping, or vague. Rewilding eludes precise categorisation, refusing to fit into current environmental management models. As rewilding moves into UK institutional frameworks, particularly with near-future changes to farming subsidies; exploring what media sources highlight in its presentation is valuable. Using a critical discourse analysis approach this research looks at articles from two digital, UK-based newspapers, The Guardian and the MailOnline, to explore different aspects of rewilding highlighted in media narratives. Analysis illustrates questions of wealth, landownership, and inequality, rewilding has failed to address. Rewilding must be approached as the result of past changes, and a structuring force for current changes, in the relationship between the human and the non-human. Through rewilding’s presented commitment to ecological function as its foundation, it fails to recognise the sociality and politicality of itself and nature. Using the analysed discourse, a model for comparing value based on enchantment, aestetics, and function is introduced. This model illustrates patterns of value within four visions of environmental management. It develops a framework for viewing these visions set between two axes: wilderness, or the presence of the non-human; and wildness, or the autonomy of the non-human. Rewilding asks us to re-evaluate our reasons for managing the environment, and demonstrates the need to build it into the everyday. Rewilding is a commitment to taking the non-human seriously, not a total management solution.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Degree programme: | Environmental & Infrastructure Planning |
| Supervisor: | Turhan, E. |
| Date Deposited: | 28 Jul 2021 09:51 |
| Last Modified: | 28 Jul 2021 09:51 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3618 |
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