Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Protected Places: Comparing Valuations Of Public Lands In U.S. Conservation Legislation, Bergen Schmidt

Sociology Honors Projects

Across American history, the federal government has chosen to protect over 600 million acres, nearly a quarter of the country’s total land acreage, as public lands. This paper considers the process of valuation — where institutions organize competing value frameworks to determine worth — and how new cultural formations prompt a new process of valuation. Through a comparative study of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the Great American Outdoors Act of 2020, this paper analyzes which values justify the protection of public lands. I find that public lands are valued in their use for humans, which stems from their …