The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture, and Power on Canada's West Coast Book

Focuses on Clayoquot Sound, on Vancouver Island's west coast. Braun is a geographer, but he employs a very wide range of critical techniques to analyze the cultural production of the wild and pristine forests of BC. Each chapter centers on a different way in which this region is mediated to the public: ecotourism, artistic representations (Emily Carr, especially), the logging industry, the environmental movement, the discourses and debates surrounding First Nations identity and rights, etc. I was especially impressed by how Braun makes use of just about every major cultural theorist of the last few decades, from Deleuze and Derrida to Judith Butler and Bruno Latour. He brings all these voices to bear directly on a very particular forested region of BC. Sometimes I think his arguments are stretched too thin -- perhaps he should have narrowed his critical approach -- but it's quite refreshing to see critical theory applied in this way.