By Eugenie van Heijgen -
In Dutch society, hunting has become a disputed activity. Recurrent debates focus on the morality of killing animals, raising questions about the future place of hunting. Legitimations of hunting have broadened from ‘wildlife management’ towards narratives that emphasize hunting as the ultimate free-range meat production. This reveals how hunting is a dynamic practice, the meanings of which change in relation to shifting societal views on food, landscape, animals and nature. In these hunting practices, new human-nature relationships and social orders –including conceptions of human/-non-human, wild/-domesticated and nature/-culture–are constantly negotiated. Many of today’s nature areas –their physical lay-out and resident wildlife populations– find their origin in hunting. Thus, hunting shapes the environment by constituting 'hunting landscapes’.