Search results for "wilderness"

A global baseline for ecosystem recovery

2016

Re-giardinieri e Natura selvaggia. Implicazioni politico-simboliche dello sradicamento, taglio e trasporto in città degli alberi nella Mesopotamia de…

2022

In Sumerian mythological literature, as in coeval Akkadian one, between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 2nd millennium, the ruler, foremost among them Gilgameš, on several occasions uproots and/or cuts down trees. These trees should be understood as elements of a wider ‘Wilderness’, with which they share a powerful and ambiguous ontological otherness compared to the city and, more generally, to the land of Sumer. The action of the king on the tree, like that of a farmer or gardener, with the consequent realization of ‘artefacts’, allows, through a cultural organization of the power of the tree, the renewal of the relationship, always subject to crisis, between the human communit…

Un dilettantismo felice: ricostruzione testuale di Tvergastein

2023

For the past few years - few compared to the long historical duration of the human species on Earth - we have been witnessing a profound cultural revolution, perhaps even an anthropological one. Cultural because, after all, this revolution concerns first and foremost knowledge - and before that, belief, and after that, everyday life, human and social experience, and widespread sensitivity. Anthropological because this knowledge is essentially ethnological, of an ethnology that, however, denies itself in order to embrace the totality of things, or, better, to allow itself a holistic look that is not only aimed at homo, in order to attribute to itself an object of study, a much broader field …

Reframing belonging : affective localism and the early fiction of Reino Rinne

2017

ABSTRACTThe early fiction of a novelist and journalist born in the north of Finland, Reino Rinne (1913–2002), is illustrative of the post-war interest in a redefinition of cultural belonging. The aim of this article is to offer a reading of Rinne’s works that throws light on the way they exemplify a post-war articulation of affective localism. What is especially characteristic of the affective localism produced in Rinne’s early fiction is the deployment of certain narrative elements, realism as an aesthetic regime, tropes of spatial belonging and historical myths that are endowed with affective charge. A comparison between Rinne's first novel Tunturit hymyilevat. Kuvaus Lapista 1900-luvun a…

Cities facing the Wild

2021

Untamed ecosystems and plots of wild nature increasingly constitute large parts of contemporary urban spaces. They are often the unbidden result of a long-standing lack of maintenance as well as of the uncontrolled flourishing of weeds produced by the pesticide absolute ban. But they are also something more. Many recently implemented urban open spaces deal with wild nature to solve some of the most urgent tasks of the contemporary cities: reclaiming areas fallen into disuse, designing sustainable infrastructures, revitalizing valuable public spaces, enhancing the ecological footprint of new developments, suggesting new practices and social ritual, reducing management costs, fighting climate…

Constitutions of Site and Visitor at the Swarbrick Wilderness Discovery Site

2013

Located just off the North Walpole Road, the Swarbrick Wilderness Discovery Site can be seen as a node of several different historical trajectories which are – to different extents – documented in the artworks which frame, or decorate, the site. My account draws on my own biography and probes the investments I have in my various post-settler entanglements with the area. I critique, in particular, the idea of ‘wilderness’ as one formative to post-settler narrations and myths at the same time that it places indigenous practices of belonging under erasure. For, most recently, Swarbrick stood metonymically for the campaign to preserve ‘old growth forests’, culminating at the end of the 1990s, a…

Therapy the Natural Way: A Realist Exploration of the Wilderness Therapy Treatment Process in Adolescent Mental Health Care in Norway

2018

Wilderness therapy has the potential to meet the specific needs of the current adolescent population by providing a rather unique outdoor group treatment. Wilderness therapy is not a new approach to mental health treatment, but its theoretical basis is not yet clearly delineated, in part because of the diversity found across programs and contexts. This article presents a critical realist exploration of a wilderness therapy program that was recently implemented as part of adolescent mental health services in Southern Norway. In this study, we combine fieldwork and interviews for an in-depth investigation of the treatment process, where the objective was to acquire a deeper understanding of t…

Ecological Network, Application of a Model in Sicily

2017

Since the Tertiary period, Sicily (Italy) has been major reservoir of biodiversity. The abundance of these resources, however, is not reflected by developing an effective system of planning and management of wilderness areas. This work analyzes the regional territorial features, referring to the fragmentation process of natural systems, closely related to the phenomenon of soil consumption on wilderness areas that, since the sixties, has strongly contributed to shape the regional territory both from the physical and from the functional point of view. For these characteristics Sicily is particularly suitable for becoming a reflection field where the new perspectives on ecological networks co…

MANAGEMENT OF SEMI-WILD LARGE HERBIVORES’ GRAZING SITES IN LATVIA

2019

Large herbivores were a common part of European nature in the pre-agrarian times. With the development of farming and over-hunting, the number of wild large herbivores rapidly decreased. Wild horses and cattle became extinct. In the 1920-30’s, scientists created two new herbivore breeds that resembled the extinct aurochs and tarpans - Heck cattle and Konik horses. Nowadays the introduction of Heck cattle, Konik horses and other similar large herbivore breeds is widely used in specially protected nature territories (SPNT) as a strategic answer to the question – what should we do with the agricultural lands that have lost their economical meaning. Since 1999, semi-wild large herbivores are in…

Water quality in cutaway peatland lakes in Seda mire, Latvia

2011

Remediation of industrially-milled peatland is an important task in the sustainable management of natural resources. Several approaches for wetland restoration, depending on local climatic and hydrological conditions, topography, physico-chemical properties of peat, as well as peat mining techniques, have been developed worldwide. However, most of the restoration activities include regulation of hydrological regime and surface topography in order to reintroduce typical bog vegetation, especially, Sphagnum cover, and to restore the peatland’s ecosystem close to its original conditions (Gorham and Rochefort, 2003; Farrell and Doyle, 2003; Lamers et al., 2002). In many countries, a significant…