đ±Fieldnotes in Environmental Communication
Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement + Humor in Environmental Communication + More!
Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a bi-weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in environmental communication. If youâre new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
đ What Iâm reading
Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement. By Paul Sutter, University of Washington Press.
Paul Sutter is a Professor of Environmental History at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In his 2005 book, Driven Wild, Sutter explores how a uniquely American discourse and ideal of âroadless wildernessâ emerged in the early 20th-century environmentalism of four founding members of The Wilderness Society: Aldo Leopold, Robert Sterling Yard, Benton MacKaye, and Robert Marshall.
Iâve just started reading it, but below is an interesting excerpt from the bookâs foreword written by environmental historian William Cronon.
Here, Cronon talks about how the founding members of the Wilderness Society devoted an almost âsingle-mindedâ focus to advocating against cars and roads encroaching into wilderness areas in the U.S. in the 1920s and 1930s. This eventually led to language prohibiting cars and roads in wilderness areas being incorporated into the 1964 Wilderness Act (Section 4c), an Act which Cronon calls one of âthe benchmark environmental events of the twentieth centuryâ:
Sutter demonstrates that the movement to protect wild land reflected a growing belief among many conservationists that the modern forces of capitalism, industrialism, urbanism, and mass consumer culture were gradually eroding not just the ecology of North America, but crucial American values as wellâŠ
âŠWhat Marshall, Leopold, Yard, and MacKaye realized before most other Americans is that roads literally paved the way for all other threats to wilderness, so that by stopping them one might hope to fend off others as wellâŠFocusing on roadlessness, in other words, was a brilliantly simple and concrete way to embody and defend in law the less tangible qualities that must somehow be protected if wilderness is to survive in the modern world. The Wilderness Societyâs founders, in focusing with such single-minded conviction on cars and roads, knew precisely what they were up to all along.â
đ§Â What Iâm listening to
Remembering Nature Writer Barry Lopez: âLopez, who died Dec. 25, won the 1986 National Book Award for Arctic Dreams, an account of his travels in the far north over a period of four years. Originally broadcast in 1989 and 2013.â
âI don't think a reader comes to a writer in order to know what is right or wrong. I think the reader comes to the writer in order to learn what happened. My job is to say, I went to a place, and I tried to pay attention to what was going on in all its detail, and this is what I saw, and then turn to the reader as a member of the community in which I live and say, is this what we want? Is this how we want our world to be?"
đ What Iâm watching
Geo Takach on the role of art and humor in environmental communication: âRational appeals to science are failing us when it comes to environmental protection. So how can we motivate people to act? Laughter, arts-based methods and appeals to emotion are more effective at getting to the heart of the matter, says School of Communication and Culture Associate Professor Geo Takach.â
âWhat we think about the environment is shaped by what we say about the environment, and that in turn affects what we do, or what we donât do, about environmental concerns. Thatâs why for me communication is so important: itâs how we make meaning, how we share meaning, itâs how we motivate and inspire people to take action for positive change.â
â Geo Takach, Associate Professor of Communication and Culture, Royal Roads University
If youâre interested in arts-based approaches to environmental communication, especially in education, I recommend checking out Takachâs recent chapter in the book Environmental Communication Pedagogy and Practice: âArts-based research in the pedagogy of environmental communication.â
đ Communication Tool Iâm exploring
How to have difficult conversations from the MIT/GOV Lab: âA practical guide for academic & practitioner research collaborations. This interactive guide walks you through how to have difficult conversations question-by-question."
âFor practitioners, this guide sheds light on some of the common motivations and incentives in the academic world that can influence research projects. It should also help practitioners manage their partnerships in a way that boosts learning opportunities for their organizations. For academics interested in engaged scholarship, this guide is one way to start designing and implementing research with values of mutual respect and equity.â
đŹÂ Quote Iâm thinking about
âThe shortest distance between two people is not a straight line, but a comedic line. The power to engage people is something that Iâm working on harnessing in my research in an effort to get people to see the world in different waysâhumor being one of them.â
â Geo Takach, Associate Professor of Communication and Culture, Royal Roads University
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