In search of the authentic nation: landscape and national identity in Canada and Switzerland

While the study of nationalism and national identity has flourished in the last decade, little attention has been devoted to the conditions under which natural environments acquire significance in definitions of nationhood. This article examines the identity-forming role of landscape depictions in two polyethnic nation-states: Canada and Switzerland. Two types of geographical national identity are identified. The first – what we call the ‘nationalisation of nature’– portrays zarticular landscapes as expressions of national authenticity. The second pattern – what we refer to as the ‘naturalisation of the nation’– rests upon a notion of geographical determinism that depicts specific landscapes as forces capable of determining national identity. The authors offer two reasons why the second pattern came to prevail in the cases under consideration: (1) the affinity between wild landscape and the Romantic ideal of pure, rugged nature, and (2) a divergence between the nationalist ideal of ethnic homogeneity and the polyethnic composition of the two societies under consideration

Part One: Nature, Home and Horizon in Cross-Cultural Perspective Reflections on the History of Western Attitudes to Nature

ABSTRACT: This paper explores some of the fundamental ideas which have shaped Western attitudes toward the natural world. Four vital sets of ideas about nature and humanity, still current today, are examined: the relationship of the human race to other forms of life; the study of the interrelationships in the natural world; the transformation of nature by human agency; and subjective, emotional and aesthetic reactions to nature. Most of these ideas, though transformed throughout human history, have their roots in the classical world. Both classical and biblical conceptions were hospitable to an anthropocentric view of the role of human beings with regard to nature. The broader conception of the human race as a custodian of other forms of life has been a powerful ingredient in modern movements for conservation. Since about the middle of the 18th century, there has been increasing concern with the interrelationships in nature, and here two developments can be noted: the persistent idea of man as a geographic agent and the realization that human transformations of nature have provoked unforeseen and often unintended changes