Ketil Skogen

A Wolf at the Gate: The Anti-Carnivore Alliance and the Symbolic Construction of Community

Controversies over the return of large carnivores (e.g. wolves) are often interpreted as clashes between rural traditionalism and urban modernity. Rural communities, however, have never been culturally monolithic, and modernization increases their diversity. However, the popular image is one of rural communities united against vermin and urban romantics. An important reason for this is probably the successful construction of the anti-carnivore front as a last line of defence against destructive forces threatening rural life. Drawing on examples from a study in Osterdalen, Norway, the struggle against wolf protection is discussed as an instance of symbolic construction of community. Images of a threatened community are vital to the self-understanding of the wolf adversaries, but cleavages run through the alliance. Three principal groups may be identified: sheep farmers, landowners who lease hunting, and people with strong ties to traditional land use practices (primarily hunting) and a rural working-class culture. These groups have not always been allies, and conflicts of interest run through the ‘resistance front’. The task here is to identify the social forces that now bring them together, and to explain why the carnivore issue is well suited as a significant component in their symbolic construction of community.

Cry Wolf!: Narratives of Wolf Recovery in France and Norway*

Due to strict protection through the last decades, wolves have returned to many areas from which they have been absent for a long time. This is a conservation success story, but the wolves also cause conflicts wherever they arrive. We have studied the situation in South-Eastern Norway and in the French Alps, where the conflict patterns are similar. Diverging interpretations of the situation are supported by narratives, and two varieties have become increasingly significant in both countries. Rumors about the secret reintroduction of wolves are common among wolf adversaries. Another narrative, important to the pro-wolf camp, is based on the notion that particular sheep husbandry practices (unattended rough grazing) are unique to either Norway or France - whereas there are in fact more similarities than differences. Yet, while the reintroduction-conspiracy rumors are ridiculed, the notion of unique national conflict patterns has achieved a status almost of official truth. Furthermore, the story about natural wolf recovery is itself a value-laden narrative, and not only “scientific fact”. The different status of these narratives tell us something about power relations: Given their different social basis, it seems relevant to consider the national uniqueness image and the natural recovery theory as tightly interwoven with symbolic power, and the reintroduction conspiracy rumors as similarly interwoven with patterns of cultural resistance.

Wolves in Context: Using Survey Data to Situate Attitudes Within a Wider Cultural Framework

Studies of public attitudes toward wolves tend to be descriptive in nature, and few sophisticated analyses of complex attitude patterns have been conducted. Drawing on findings from qualitative studies, the present study analyzed nationally representative survey data from Norway in order to probe the relationships between attitudes toward wolves and such factors as education, urban/rural place of residence, cultural capital, and various value orientations: environmental orientation, general political values, and trust in formal or informal information sources. Structural equation modeling confirmed that attitudes are embedded in more general cultural patterns. Although the cultural level is influenced by structural factors, effects of the background variables were reduced or disappeared in a model that included value orientations. This finding demonstrates that in order to access the level of meaning by means of survey methods, carefully constructed instruments and causal models must be employed.

People and Wildlife: Zoning as a means of mitigating conflicts with large carnivores: principles and reality

ZONING: A CONCEPTUAL INTRODUCTION Conflicts in land use are an inevitable consequence of the presently high human population densities living on a planet of finite size. Within this finite space, land use planners struggle to integrate as many potentially conflicting elements as possible using two approaches: the multi-use concept where compatible land uses can occur in the same area, and zoning. Zoning is any form of geographically differentiated land management where different forms of potentially conflicting land use are given priority in different areas. For example, in modern town planning some areas are zoned as residential, others as commercial, industrial, agricultural or recreational. Zoning has been widely used in biodiversity conservation in the creation of national parks, nature reserves and other protected areas. The focus of this chapter is to examine how zoning can be applied to the conservation of large carnivores. This requires balancing the twin goals of conserving viable populations of large carnivores, and minimizing conflicts with humans, which is proving to be an exceptional challenge in our crowded world. LARGE CARNIVORES AND HUMAN ACTIVITY: CONFLICTS, COMPATIBILITY AND CONTEXT Conflict Zoning is only an issue because large carnivores cause conflicts with some human activities and interests throughout the world. These conflicts have been described in detail elsewhere (Woodroffe et al ., Chapter 1, Thirgood et al ., Chapter 2) but here we shall list the most important conflicts relevant for the discussion on zoning.

Young environmentalists: Post-modern identities or middle-class culture?

The dominance of certain fractions of the ‘new middle class’ within the environmental movement seems beyond dispute. As regards youth, on the other hand, involvement in ‘new social movements’ is often interpreted as part of identity-formation processes typical of the ‘postmodern’ era, where class background allegedly do not have the same impact as before. However, the latter position seems somewhat lacking in empirical foundation. A study of 5,624 Norwegian 13–19 year olds demonstrated that youth with a background in the humanistic-social intermediate strata were particularly over-represented in environmental organizations (EOs) and gave the highest political priority to environmental issues (EIs). Youth whose parents were manual or clerical workers were under-represented in EOs, and they attached less importance to EIs. A similar pattern was discerned in youth choosing academic and vocational subjects respectively, and there was a strong relationship between background class and choice of subjects. Number of books in childhood home (an indicator of cultural assets, itself strongly related to class) was also correlated with environmental orientation. It is suggested that the findings should be interpreted along four dimensions: a cultural polarization between abstraction and production, proximity to production and market, proximity to nature, and cultural dominance vs. subordination.

When the lads go hunting: The ‘Hammertown mechanism’ and the conflict over wolves in Norway

Rural communities are changing. Depopulation and unemployment is accompanied by the advance of new perspectives on nature, where protection trumps resource extraction. These developments are perceived as threatening by rural working-class people with close ties to traditional land use – a situation they often meet with cultural resistance. Cultural resistance is not necessarily launched against institutionalized power, nor does it necessarily imply a desire for fundamental social change. It should rather be seen as a struggle for autonomy. However, autonomy does not entail influence outside the cultural realm. Struggles to uphold traditional rural lifestyles – for example by denouncing the current nature conservation regime – could be understood in much the same conceptual framework as Willis employed in ‘Learning to labour’. Based on an ethnographic study of the conflicts over wolf protection, we demonstrate that ‘the Hammertown mechanism’ is of a more general nature than often implied in the discussion of Willis’ work.

Reflexive tradition Young working–class hunters between wolves and modernity

This article is based on a qualitative study of young working–class men who are dedicated hunters and hardcore wolf adversaries. Our aim is to make sense of their attitudes and practices regarding the re–appearance of wolves. They see the wolves as impeding their life projects: being hunters and outdoorsmen. Therefore, we discuss attitude formation in the light of theories of identity, paying special attention to the idea that identity formation is strongly affected by individualization in ‘late modernity’. Norwegian media tend to depict rural ways of life as rooted in traditionalism, implying an antagonism between the modern and the traditional along an urban–rural axis. Yet, even if important choices made by the young men include distinct elements of local tradition, these choices are no less reflexive than those made by more mobile peers. The article argues that the young hunters are simultaneously traditional and modern and that they transgress such artificial antagonisms through their everyday practices.

Don't forget to look down - collaborative approaches to predator conservation

Finding effective ways of conserving large carnivores is widely recognised as a priority in conservation. However, there is disagreement about the most effective way to do this, with some favouring top‐down ‘command and control’ approaches and others favouring collaboration. Arguments for coercive top‐down approaches have been presented elsewhere; here we present arguments for collaboration. In many parts of the developed world, flexibility of approach is built into the legislation, so that conservation objectives are balanced with other legitimate goals. In the developing world, limited resources, poverty and weak governance mean that collaborative approaches are likely to play a particularly important part in carnivore conservation. In general, coercive policies may lead to the deterioration of political legitimacy and potentially to non‐compliance issues such as illegal killing, whereas collaborative approaches may lead to psychological ownership, enhanced trust, learning, and better social outcomes. Sustainable hunting/trapping plays a crucial part in the conservation and management of many large carnivores. There are many different models for how to conserve carnivores effectively across the world, research is now required to reduce uncertainty and examine the effectiveness of these approaches in different contexts.

Property and possession: hunting tourism and the morality of landownership in rural Norway.

As forest areas have become increasingly relevant to the public as recreational landscapes, and outdoor recreation is increasingly diverse and specialized, we explore how notions of property and issues of public access are made relevant in controversies over hunting rights in Norway. Focusing on responses of local hunters to landowners’ recent promotion of hunting tourism, one central finding is that the hunters tend to engage with the hunting grounds as part of landscapes they identify strongly with. While recognizing the principle of private ownership to hunting rights, local hunters raise moral and political objections to how the ownership is performed. We conclude that taking the contextual nature of property relations into account is important when considering controversies over access to land and resources, not least in connection with development of nature-based tourism.

Public perceptions of biodiversity in Norway: From recognition to stewardship?

ABSTRACT The authors surveyed a representative sample of the Norwegian population (N = 4077) to examine perceptions of biodiversity loss and management, the relative importance of biodiversity loss to other environmental issues, and perceived implications of biodiversity loss. The results showed that 50% of the sample population saw biodiversity as a reality and major environmental issue, and 75% recognized that biodiversity loss occurs. Biodiversity loss was perceived as a lesser global environmental problem than environmental toxins, climate change, air and water pollution, and loss of rainforest, despite the fact that these topics can be difficult to separate since biodiversity loss is a function of other environmental problems. Loss of biodiversity was seen to have negative impacts on peoples relationship to the natural environment, to impact environmental resilience, to be at least partly human-induced, and to be an issue of importance and relevance to the general public, not merely to the scientific community. Self-reported levels of knowledge of environmental topics were associated with increasing concern about consequences of reductions in species diversity. The authors conclude that efforts to increase public support for biodiversity conservation can be strengthened by increased emphasis on aesthetic, emotional and cultural aspects of biodiversity.