Creating Wilderness : : A Transnational History of the Swiss National Park / / Patrick Kupper.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Kupper, Patrick,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Environment in History: International Perspectives ; 4
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (276 p.)

The history of the Swiss National Park, from its creation in the years before the Great War to the present, is told for the first time in this book. Unlike Yellowstone Park, which embodied close cooperation between state-supported conservation and public recreation, the Swiss park put in place an extraordinarily strong conservation program derived from a close alliance between the state and scientific research. This deliberate reinterpretation of the American idea of the national park was innovative and radical, but its consequences were not limited to Switzerland. The Swiss park became the prime example of a “scientific national park,” thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- CHAPTER 1 Global Parks: National Parks, Globalization, and Western Modernism -- CHAPTER 2 National Natures: The Swiss National Park and the Conservationist Internationale -- CHAPTER 3 Local Landscapes: Political Spaces, Institutional Arrangements, and Subjective Attitudes -- CHAPTER 4 Total Protection: Philosophy and Practice of Freely Developing Nature -- CHAPTER 5 Ecological Field Laboratory: The Park as a Scientific Experiment -- CHAPTER 6 Wilderness Limits: Natural Dynamics and Social Equilibrium -- CONCLUSION Creating Wilderness -- Bibliography -- Index