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From Habitat to Wilderness: Tasmania’s Role in the Politicising of Place
Citation
Haynes, R, From Habitat to Wilderness: Tasmania's Role in the Politicising of Place, Disputed Territories: Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies, University of Hong Kong Press, D Trigger and G Griffiths (ed), Hong Kong, pp. 84-110. ISBN 978-962-209-648-6 (2017) [Research Book Chapter]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2003 Hong Kong University Press
Official URL: http://www.hkupress.org/
Abstract
In wildness is the preservation of the world'. Thoreau's much quoted
words, delivered at the Concord Lyceum in 1851, raise
complex questions of particular relevance to Tasmania, the
southernmost state of Australia. The terms 'wildness' and the now
more fashionable 'wilderness' do not define a fixed entity 'out there',
but represent a dynamic construct fashioned by socio-political and
ideological factors and by the discourse of power, which gives them
currency. Once established in a particular context, each 'wilderness'
paradigm resists new interpretations for a time and can be used as
a political tool to silence dissenting views and alternative discourses
before it, in turn, is overthrown. Over the last 200 years, Tasmania
has had attributed to it a series of diverse, even contradictory,
cultural constructions of wilderness. In most cases, these have been
naturalised and legitimised by art, literature and photography, as well
as by political rhetoric, and their successive overthrow has usually
been painful and divisive for supporters and opponents alike.
Item Details
Item Type: | Research Book Chapter |
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Keywords: | aboriginals, Australia, disputed territories, Tasmania |
Research Division: | Indigenous Studies |
Research Group: | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, language and history |
Research Field: | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history |
Objective Division: | Culture and Society |
Objective Group: | Understanding past societies |
Objective Field: | Understanding Australia's past |
UTAS Author: | Haynes, R (Dr Roslynn Haynes) |
ID Code: | 121756 |
Year Published: | 2017 (online first 2003) |
Deposited By: | Office of the School of Humanities |
Deposited On: | 2017-10-13 |
Last Modified: | 2017-11-06 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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