Scales of Eden

Conservation and Pristine Devastation on Bikini Atoll

Bibliographic Data

ID4476806
AuthorsJeffrey Sasha Davis (Department of Geography, University of Vermont, 200 Old Mill, 94 University Place, Burlington, VT 05405-0114, USA)
Year2007
Volume25
Issue2
Pages213-235
Publication date2007-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1068/d1405
OpenAlexW2100401868
LanguageEN
Citations received23
References cited25

Landscapes are often discursively constructed as wildernesses through an erasure of the histories of people in the landscape. Current representations of Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands as an Edenic wilderness are no different. What is unusual about conceptualizations of Bikini Atoll as a pristine wilderness is that it is the site of a recent history of colonial appropriation and massive landscape transformation through nuclear-weapons testing. Although people both outside and within the Bikinian community regularly represent the atoll as a kind of paradise, there are strong differences of opinion regarding what the future uses of the atoll should be. This is because there is a sharp division between representations of the atoll as a pristine wilderness with visually pleasing landscapes and seascapes that need to be preserved and locally produced representations of the atoll as an Eden with an abundance of useable natural resources

Appropriation · Archaeology · Atoll · Geography · Natural (archaeology · Wilderness · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies · Ecology · Geology · Oceanography

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