Wilderness as a Place

In our class today, I was wondering how the American ideal of wilderness fits into Mark Sagoff’s concept of “place”. He argues that place is defined by a connection between people and the land, and that a sense of place is a vital part of protecting natural resources. In Economy of the Earth, Sagoff writes, “A natural landscape becomes a place when it is cultivated, when it constrains human activity and is constrained by it, when it functions as a center of felt value because human needs, cultural and social as well as biological, are satisfied in it”. By this argument, a landscape that does not play a role in human society is not actually a place.

The concept of wilderness has been an important part of American cultural history, exemplified in the “frontier” mindset and the creation of the National Park system. One can say that wilderness in the United States, especially within Parks, is a “place” and has value because it satisfies a cultural and social need. This argument implies that the wilderness itself is not valuable—it is only valuable because it has a role in human culture.  I think that this view once again defines humanity as completely separate from nature, which is what Sagoff was trying to avoid by classifying the environment in terms of place.

The question of why wilderness is valuable—whether it is because of how humans value the ideal of untouched land, or because it has value in itself—circles back to the fundamental argument of conservation vs. preservation. Sagoff’s claim that a sense of place makes humans care about environmental preservation works well in some of his examples, but I think it falls short in explaining the value of undeveloped, “wild” landscapes.