ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of components of the frontier myth. The chapter reviews frontier thinking as a means by which we have reified and sought to divide up units of social organisation internally and to distinguish them from nature, generally ascribing lower value to humans whom we see as related to nature. In such a conceptualisation, nature and the environment are separated from, or ‘Othered’ vis-à-vis, humankind. The chapter highlights the foundational distinction between ‘civilisation’ and a pure ‘wilderness’ or ‘nature’, whereby groups already inhabiting these spaces are seen as devalued and defined by limited resource use and ‘apartness’ from ‘civilisation’.
