Abstract
This episode is part one of five of the lecture series [HTA 27] on “Part III_ The Upshot,” of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac_ And Sketches Here and There, illustrated by Charles W. Schwartz [1948].
Primary Source
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. London/Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.
Guiding Questions
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Explain the history of recreation; the types of modern recreationists; the relation between hunting and conservation; the esthetics of recreation; the economics of recreation; the ethics of recreation; the contradictory nature of recreation in different ways for different people; and photographs as trophies.
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Other than the material in number 1 above, list the five components of recreation and give examples of each.
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Leopold proposes that contact with “wild things” provides three distinct values. List these values produced by engaging with wildlife, and then critique Leopold’s underlying assumption about “primitive peoples,” as Cordova explains as a myth.
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Explain the challenges of husbandry using specific examples from the text.
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Explain Leopold’s relationship between wilderness, organically interdependent husbandry, managing predator populations via hunting, road-building, destruction of wilderness due to road-building, and the alternative: travel by packhorse.
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Explain each of the purposes for wilderness, which are listed as subsections in that chapter, i.e., wilderness for wildlife, science, and recreation.
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Why is wilderness a resource which can shrink but not grow? What does this finitude of the resource imply about husbandry and conservation reasoning?
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“The Land Ethic” begins with an uncomfortably nonchalant description of Odysseus killing slaves; how does Leopold use this to explain the change in how humans perceive moral personhood, i.e., where personhood is extension of the group who receives moral consideration, e.g., humans, animals, environments, land, ecologies, or even non-carbon-based matter, i.e., life-sustaining elements?
YouTube Lecture
YouTube: HTA 27.1; Leopold, A Sand County Almanac [1948]; Part III_ The Upshot; Part One.