Rewilding: An emotional nature

Abstract

Rewilding is an emotional subject. It inspires passions and argument in spades. As a form of conservation, rewilding offers exciting possibilities to address ecological crises but it is also a threat for many people, leading to dispute and impasse. This paper explores the role emotions play both to inspire rewilding and in the ensuing conflicts. Informed by emotional geographies and feminist political ecology, the analysis attends to the socio-cultural differences underpinning emotional response and argues that emotions need to be taken seriously to better understand the socio-natural processes underway. Unravelling the work that emotions do, the experience of joy, arising from time spent in nature, is seen to initiate a desire for rewilding amongst activists. By contrast, for opponents, rewilding prompts a sense of anger, which arises in response to a perceived threat to their identity as farmers and associated feelings of vulnerability. Critically, this vulnerability often remains occluded by the dominance of anger within debates, which explains why conflict has become so intractable. However, by attending to the full register of emotions at work, including those that are not always surfaced, and by better understanding the basis of such emotions, an avenue towards greater empathy is proposed.