Public Understandings of Environmental Quality: A Case Study of the Jefferson National Forest Planning Process

Environmental decision-making is a tournament of competing conservation agendas in which some values and beliefs are held up and exalted, others are dismissed and ignored, and still others are implicit and unnoticed. Stakeholders compete in the tournament to advance their value systems through the science they advocate or practice, through the constructs of environmental quality they use or study, and through the management goals they champion. It is our contention that participants who hope to compete successfully in this tournament should understand the rules of the game, which includes recognizing the values and ambiguities of the language used to discuss and describe nature - in particular the terms used to describe ecological conditions that become the goals and policies of forest management - and acknowledging the "middle nature".

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Forestry

Department dc:contributor.department

Forestry

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Seekamp, Erin Lynn

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Hull, Robert Bruce IV

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Berkson, James M.
• Hall, Troy E.

• Social Construction of Nature

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-11022000-14260019

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/35567