Does Nature Have to Be Natural? The Question of Wetland Interpretation

Abstract

Through a study of modified natural landscapes, particularly cranberry bogs, this article investigates the broad understandings of nature and wilderness. In relying on a nature as wilderness paradigm to identify what is ecologically valuable, the potential exists to disregard altered nature as ecologically damaged. This approach to understanding nature discounts the value of agricultural sites that demonstrate another way of seeing nature, one that appreciates its resilience. This article strives to understand how current metaphors that define nature as pristine fail to consider how altered nature can and does have significant ecological value. [wetlands, cranberry bogs, New Jersey, Massachusetts, metaphors]

Cosmovisions and Farming Praxis: An Investigation of Conventional and Alternative Farmers along the Willamette River

“…While worldview and ethical constructs are not allencompassing or mutually exclusive, they are useful for assessing relative differences among individuals, such as differences in environmental discourses and beliefs about land use and nature (Jones 2011). Because farmer land use decisions have significant environmental impact, scholars have argued for the adaptation of agriculturalists' ethics to enhance sustainability (Comstock 1995).…”