ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the social conflicts within the debates that emerge around the return of wolves in Switzerland without reproducing the pervasive polarisation that divides the field into two antagonistic camps (e.g. wolf opponents vs. wolf supporters, Alpine countryside vs. lowland urban centres). It aims to theorise the ways of relating to and getting involved with the surroundings within the wolf debates by developing what the author wants to call ‘Modes of Involvedness’. Modes of Involvedness are strategically fabricated by actors, not given status, but always objects of active negotiation and performance. They comprise different modes of relationality, of being-in-the-world; through them, different wolves/wildernesses/natures/worlds might come into being. While stressing that, in practice, different modes always coexist and mix, the chapter draws the lines of two poles or ideal types of Involvedness: Corporal-Radial Involvedness and Global-Reticular Involvedness.
