In the Name of Profit: Canada’s Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve as Economic Development and Colonial Placemaking

Authors

Richard M. Hutchings, Institute for Critical Heritage and TourismFollow
Marina La Salle, Vancouver Island UniversityFollow

Abstract

Taking a critical heritage approach to late modern naming and placemaking, we discuss how the power to name reflects the power to control people, their land, their past, and ultimately their future. Our case study is the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve (MABR), a recently invented place on Vancouver Island, located in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Through analysis of representations and landscape, we explore MABR as state-sanctioned branding, where a dehumanized nature is packaged for and marketed to wealthy ecotourists. Greenwashed by a feel-good “sustainability” discourse, MABR constitutes colonial placemaking and economic development, representing no break with past practices.

Author Biography

Richard M. Hutchings and Marina La Salle codirect the Institute for Critical Heritage and Tourism, British Columbia, Canada. Their recent publications include “Archaeology as State Heritage Crime” (Archaeologies, 2017), “Resource Management and the McDonaldization of Heritage Stewardship” (Human-Centered Built Environment Heritage Preservation, 2018), “Collaboration in Colonial Contexts” (The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Theory and Practice, 2018), and “Is Canadian Heritage Studies Critical?” (Journal of Canadian Studies, 2018). Hutchings is the author of Maritime Heritage in Crisis: Indigenous Landscapes and Global Ecological Breakdown (Routledge, 2017).

Recommended Citation

Hutchings, R. M., & La Salle, M. (2019). In the Name of Profit: Canada’s Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve as Economic Development and Colonial Placemaking. Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language, 9(1).
Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/landscapes/vol9/iss1/4