Production and Consumption of Wilderness in Algonquin Park

Abstract

This article investigates Algonquin Provincial Park, a 7,600 square kilometer “wilderness” park, located just north of Toronto, Ontario. The park markets itself as a place where one can experience nature in a more or less primordial state, but things—even natural things—are not always as they appear. Rather, it is the appearance of things, and the processes through which they are made to appear, that are subject to critical analysis. Not only a concrete, ecological space, Algonquin Park is also a discursive geography: The landscape is “read” by its visitors. This article emphasizes three distinct but interrelated productive and consumptive processes and practices: material (ecologies), discursive (text), and touristic (experience). Spatial production of wilderness is enmeshed in late capitalist economics and politics, whereas its consumption is structured to reproduce class distinction.