Customizing nature: Between wild and domesticated nature in game management in Finland and Norway

We explore the fluidness of the nature-culture dichotomy related to game management in a Nordic context. Studies have explored the problems of seeing wilderness lying outside human influence, with a focus on nature conservation, endangered species and climate systems. Our focus is not so much on wilderness as a separate spatial category but on wildness and its opposite pole, that which is not wild but tame, and the challenges that this dichotomy brings about. On the one side of the conceptual dividing line there is wild nature, on the other side notions such as tame and domesticated prevail, denoting a condition of an entity – land, animals – being non-wild. We investigate how this view of nature as wild and separate of humans is related not only to nature conservation but extends to nature that is used and exploited by humans. In addition to a social constructivist approach there is the ontological question if there is something that could be called nature that is entirely external to the human sphere of influence. The results illustrate how there is an ongoing societal process of defining the categories for what is wild and what is not, yet this does not match neatly with the social and cultural practices that are undertaken in game management on the ground. Our contribution to this debate is that we suggest a new concept of customized nature to describe a situation in which aspects of wild and non-wild merge. • The view of nature as wild and separate of humans is related to nature conservation and to nature that is exploited by humans • An ongoing societal process defines the categories for what is wild in nature and what is not • This process does not match neatly with the social and cultural practices that are undertaken in game management on the ground • A new concept of customized nature describes a situation in which aspects of wild and non-wild merge