The nature of protest

Constructing the spaces of British Columbia's rainforests

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2427136
AutoresDavid Rossiter (York University), David A Rossiter (York University, autor correspondente)
Ano2004
Volume11
Fascículo2
Páginas139-164
Data de publicação2004-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCultural Geographies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1474-4740 • E-ISSN: 1477-0881
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1191/14744744004eu298oa
OpenAlexW2074958727
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas18

This paper examines the representations of nature circulating in a Greenpeace anti-logging campaign in British Columbia, Canada. The effort to stop industrial logging in a region of the central coast named 'the Great Bear Rainforest' is presented as a case study through which nature's social production can be glimpsed. Part of the larger 'war in the woods' that gripped British Columbia throughout the 1990s, the campaign considered here pitted Greenpeace and other environmental non-governmental organizations and their grassroots supporters against the forestry industry and many members of resource-producing communities. Through an analysis of campaign literature, newspaper coverage and 'letters to the editor', it is argued that the preservationist position advanced by Greenpeace visually and discursively constructs a concept of pristine nature which appeals to urban populations, employs a neocolonial representation of First Nations peoples and the nature within which they are situated, and finds authority and legitimacy in ecosystem discourse. Drawing both on work by Matthew Sparke concerning mapping and the narration of the nation and on Haripriya Rangan's identification of regionality as a key concept in understanding nature's production, it is suggested that the construction of nature considered in this case study needs to be understood as part of an articulation of a particular west coast metropolitan identity

Aesthetics · Articulation (sociology · Environmentalism · Geography · Grassroots · Identity (music · Legitimacy · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Rainforest · Representation (politics · Situated · Sociology · Sound (geography · Soundscape · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law · Ecology