Rethinking "Wilderness": The Environmental Thoughts Of William Cronon

This essay aims at analyzing and criticizing William Cronon’s idea ofenvironmental history. William Cronon is a very important figure in the developmentof American environmental history. He studies previous outcomes, and inspires lateranalyses with profound thoughts and books. His idea of environmental history is ahuge and profound system, including not only the critical thinking about thecapitalized culture, but also the discussions about the relationship between human andecological order, about economic activities, about the employment of wastelands, andabout the environmental evolution. He offers a macro-description of historicaldevelopment tendency. On the one hand, these achievements enrich the materials,contents, and research methodologies of American environmental history studies. Onthe other hand, they reflect environmental historians’ close attention to environmentalcrisis, their pursuit of natural harmony and their thinking about humans’ fate in thefuture. Discussing Cronon’s idea of environmental history and his methodologies ishelpful for the analysis of American environmental history from a concreteperspective.The introduction part will briefly present Cronon’s academic life and outcomes,offer a literature review, and show the main content of this essay.Part One will go deep into the core of Cronon’s idea of environmental history.His idea of "nature and culture", which is a part of his idea of environmental history,is based on the correct understanding of the capitalized culture and the Indian culture.On the one hand, it inherits western historians’ views that there are close relationsbetween the capitalized culture and the Indian culture, and that the old capitalizedculture model should be criticized. On the other hand, it presents its own opinion, as itis, the nature should not been interpreted in the light of fixed or frozen models, but ofknowers’ personal understandings.Part Two will further discuss the idea of "nature and culture". In the study of therelations between nature and culture, wilderness is an important object. The idea ofwilderness has experienced great changes from the ancient times to the modern times.Criticizing the preservation of environmentalism, Cronon advocate that the wildernessis not beyond people’s achievements or used freely by people. The traditional idea ofwilderness, which forms the binary opposition between nature and humans, needs tobe reconstructed by culture.Part Three will rethink Cronon’s idea of "nature and culture" and idea of "wilderness". As for the study of the former, he tends to take an attitude of the historicnon-determinism. As for the study of the later, the author of this essay casts somedoubt upon some details. The author will analyze the inter-discipline consciousnessfrom both positive and negative viewpoints, and extend to the effect made bylandscape ecology approach on the study of environmental history in China.The last part is the conclusion. It offers a brief overview of this study. The idea of"wilderness" results from the refinement of the idea of "nature and culture". Cronon’sidea of wilderness emphasizes the understanding of wilderness from the perspectiveof "cultural reconstruction". He interprets the relations between nature and culturewith the method of cultural construction. Following Cronon’s studies, the author willevaluate the advantages and disadvantages of his theory in general.