A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness

What does Wilderness Mean in Your Language? Listen to words for “wilderness” and learn about their political and historical meanings in different regional contexts.

Wilderness Babel: What Does Wilderness Mean in Your Language?

What does wilderness mean in your language? Listen to words for “wilderness” and learn about their political and historical meanings in different regional contexts. “Wilderness Babel” is a collaboration with the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, edited by Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg. Its international contributions are still growing.

This version 2, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition (view PDF here) and applies the Environment & Society Portal’s responsive layout.

Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, eds.

About the author

Hall, Marcus

University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland

Marcus Hall has written about the wild, wilderness, and rewilding in his books, Earth Repair: A transatlantic history of environmental restoration (2005), and Restoration and History: The Search for a Usable Environmental Past (ed., 2010). In pursuing these and other research projects, he has now lived in Europe (mostly Italy and Switzerland) almost as many years as he has lived in the United States, where he has become even more appreciative of how environmental messages depend on the languages in which they are expressed. Trained in biology, history, and environmental studies (Stanford, BS; Wisconsin MA, PhD), he teaches at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies.

Hardenberg, Wilko Graf von

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg is a modern historian focusing on socio-political aspects of nature perception and management in Europe and the history of the environmental sciences. He holds a degree in history from the University of Torino, Italy, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Cambridge. He was a postdoc, funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento, at the University of Trento, Italy, a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, Germany, and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. His most recent research projects focus on the history of nature conservation, management, and rhetoric in the Alps and on the development of the idea of mean sea-level.

orcid.org/0000-0002-8704-6997

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Aims, Methods, and Mapping

This exhibition collects wilderness-equivalent terms and describes them in a few short paragraphs, discussing how they may be similar to or different from the wilderness that native English speakers know and admire. The subtleties of meanings encompassed by the above terms, say, between human presence or absence, or between love and fear for the wild regions, is what we hope to explore. The exhibition is coordinated and edited by environmental historian Marcus Hall.

Wilderness Babel: What Does Wilderness Mean in Your Language?

What does wilderness mean in your language? Listen to words for “wilderness” and learn about their political and historical meanings in different regional contexts. “Wilderness Babel” is a collaboration with the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, edited by Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg. Its international contributions are still growing.

This version 2, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition (view PDF here) and applies the Environment & Society Portal’s responsive layout.

Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, eds.

About the author

Hall, Marcus

University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland

Marcus Hall has written about the wild, wilderness, and rewilding in his books, Earth Repair: A transatlantic history of environmental restoration (2005), and Restoration and History: The Search for a Usable Environmental Past (ed., 2010). In pursuing these and other research projects, he has now lived in Europe (mostly Italy and Switzerland) almost as many years as he has lived in the United States, where he has become even more appreciative of how environmental messages depend on the languages in which they are expressed. Trained in biology, history, and environmental studies (Stanford, BS; Wisconsin MA, PhD), he teaches at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies.

Hardenberg, Wilko Graf von

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg is a modern historian focusing on socio-political aspects of nature perception and management in Europe and the history of the environmental sciences. He holds a degree in history from the University of Torino, Italy, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Cambridge. He was a postdoc, funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento, at the University of Trento, Italy, a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, Germany, and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. His most recent research projects focus on the history of nature conservation, management, and rhetoric in the Alps and on the development of the idea of mean sea-level.

orcid.org/0000-0002-8704-6997

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Wilderness Babel: Copyright Information

This exhibition collects wilderness-equivalent terms and describes them in a few short paragraphs, discussing how they may be similar to or different from the wilderness that native English speakers know and admire. The subtleties of meanings encompassed by the above terms, say, between human presence or absence, or between love and fear for the wild regions, is what we hope to explore. The exhibition is coordinated and edited by environmental historian Marcus Hall.

Wilderness Babel: What Does Wilderness Mean in Your Language?

What does wilderness mean in your language? Listen to words for “wilderness” and learn about their political and historical meanings in different regional contexts. “Wilderness Babel” is a collaboration with the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, edited by Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg. Its international contributions are still growing.

This version 2, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition (view PDF here) and applies the Environment & Society Portal’s responsive layout.

Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, eds.

About the author

Hall, Marcus

University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland

Marcus Hall has written about the wild, wilderness, and rewilding in his books, Earth Repair: A transatlantic history of environmental restoration (2005), and Restoration and History: The Search for a Usable Environmental Past (ed., 2010). In pursuing these and other research projects, he has now lived in Europe (mostly Italy and Switzerland) almost as many years as he has lived in the United States, where he has become even more appreciative of how environmental messages depend on the languages in which they are expressed. Trained in biology, history, and environmental studies (Stanford, BS; Wisconsin MA, PhD), he teaches at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies.

Hardenberg, Wilko Graf von

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg is a modern historian focusing on socio-political aspects of nature perception and management in Europe and the history of the environmental sciences. He holds a degree in history from the University of Torino, Italy, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Cambridge. He was a postdoc, funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento, at the University of Trento, Italy, a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, Germany, and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. His most recent research projects focus on the history of nature conservation, management, and rhetoric in the Alps and on the development of the idea of mean sea-level.

orcid.org/0000-0002-8704-6997

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Titoqanót Wétes—Nez Percé

This chapter of the “Wilderness Babel” exhibition, written by historian Teresa Sabol Spezio, investigates the Nez Percé language.

Wilderness Babel: What Does Wilderness Mean in Your Language?

What does wilderness mean in your language? Listen to words for “wilderness” and learn about their political and historical meanings in different regional contexts. “Wilderness Babel” is a collaboration with the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, edited by Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg. Its international contributions are still growing.

This version 2, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition (view PDF here) and applies the Environment & Society Portal’s responsive layout.

Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, eds.

About the author

Sabol Spezio, Teresa

University of Houston, USA

Teresa Sabol Spezio is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Public History, Energy Management, and Policy Program at the University of Houston.

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Wilderness as an Adjective—Latin American Spanish

This chapter of the “Wilderness Babel” exhibition, written by geographer María José Barragán-Paladines, highlights the immense spectrum of variations of wilderness within the Spanish-speaking world that make the term a rich and complex source for semantics.

Wilderness Babel: What Does Wilderness Mean in Your Language?

What does wilderness mean in your language? Listen to words for “wilderness” and learn about their political and historical meanings in different regional contexts. “Wilderness Babel” is a collaboration with the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, edited by Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg. Its international contributions are still growing.

This version 2, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition (view PDF here) and applies the Environment & Society Portal’s responsive layout.

Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, eds.

About the author

Barragán Paladines, María José

Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research GmbH (ZMT), Germany

María José Barragán-Paladines obtained a PhD in Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada. After her bachelor’s degree in biological sciences, she pursued a MSc degree in Sustainable Resource Management at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, where she addressed Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and wildlife management. Later, a shift in her interests and research focus took her to Canada where she brought together the human dimensions perspective and the interactive governance approach, applied to marine resources governance and protected areas settings. In past years she conducted research about MPAs governance (e.g., Galapagos Marine Reserve) in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, integrating small-scale fisheries, tourism, and coastal-marine resources and communities. She was formerly involved with the Too Big to Ignore (TBTI) Project–Global Partnership for Small-scale fisheries Research. Currently, she is a Post-Doctoral researcher in the “Development and Knowledge Sociology” Working Group at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, ZMT, in Bremen, Germany. Her current research focus concerns governance of coastal-marine resources in Latin America, with special attention to the small-scale fishing resources and fishing communities. She can be reached at mariaj.barraganp@leibniz-zmt.de.