Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 45 p. : ill. (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 22-27).

In the wake of Lynne White's 1967 thesis contending Christianity is the historical root of our environmental crises, theologians have struggled to articulate an environmentally friendly theology. These efforts, while substantive, have proven insufficient to reorient Christian environmental ethics and practice en mass. Pope Francis argues in Laudato Si, that dogma, doctrine, and arguments are always insufficient for redeeming human relations and instead calls for an ecological conversion via a wild spirituality. I answer this call by offering a phenomenological theology of wilderness spirituality that grounds environmental ethics in the experience of encountering God in the wilderness. I use the existential phenomenology of American philosopher Henry Bugbee and Czech phenomenologist Erazim Kohák to map phenomenological practice as spiritual discipline. By engaging in lived, practical, and embodied practices bracketing one's intellectual and physical common-sense attitudes, the practitioner is opened to and made receptive to the redeeming work of God. This topology of phenomenology as spiritual discipline illustrates how wilderness functions in scripture. In conversation with Dietrich Bonhoeffer's reading of the Genesis 3 curse as both curse and promise I argue that wilderness functions by killing sicut-deus-humanity and thereby becomes the site of redemption, healing, and benediction. This spiritual and ethical function of wilderness is also evident in the early desert monks and grounds their praxis and ethical development. Ultimately, it is by being made vulnerable and receptive in the wilderness that the early desert monks were able to participate in the reestablishment of the paradisaical innocence. This suggests that redeemed relations between humanity and the non-human world is dependent upon the sanctifying experience of wilderness deconstruction and encounter and thus the efficacy of environmental ethics depends upon the invitation to practice a wilderness spirituality.

Environmental restoration is emerging as a major driver in the repair and reversal of some of the world’s most severely degraded landscape systems, with growing interest in the status and composition of restoration efforts. Although much has already been written about the theory and practice of environmental restoration, both positive and negative, hitherto the literature has tended to overlook the complexity bound up in defining restoration discourses, and perhaps more importantly, the physical, material consequences instilled through such human choice. The mutability of discourses of environmental restoration means that it can be moulded and (re-)shaped by different actors and contexts, with different values and meanings attached to ‘nature’. There exist multiple and contested natures of environmental restoration - nature(s) both in the sense o f the properties of restoration, and also that which is restored to a site. In this doctoral thesis, I demonstrate how discourses of environmental restoration are defined and interpreted, which discourses (if any) appear to dominate, and how these are mobilised to produce ‘restored nature’. Attention is also awarded to the environmental implications incurred when such discourses are played out on the ground. The research is grounded empirically through reference to the case studies o f the Eden Project (Cornwall, UK), the National Forest Company (Derbyshire, UK), and the Walden Woods Project (Lincoln, MA) and their adoption of restoration practices. Analysing the processes and practices of environmental restoration within a framework of social nature and cultural landscapes serves to destabilise the dualism distancing nature from society - a preserve of environmental ethics and philosophy - for such synergy not only highlights how ideas of (restored) nature are socially constructed, but also addresses the material production of nature, reinforcing the interactions between natural and societal actors.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Zürich, 2001/2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [229]-242).