Rugged Consumers: Americans Consumption of Outdoor Gear Alicia Leupp American Studies Senior Thesis

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Rugged ConsumersAmericans Consumption
of Outdoor GearAlicia LeuppAmerican Studies
Senior Thesis
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• For many Americans, wilderness stands as the
  last remaining place where civilization,
• that all too human disease, has not fully
  infected the earth. It is an island in the
  polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the
  one place we can turn for escape from our own
  too-muchness. Seen in this way, wilderness
  presents itself as the best antidote to our human
  selves, a refuge we must somehow recover if we
  hope to save the planet.
• - William Cronon,
• The Trouble with Wilderness

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Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden, 1964
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The American Frontier and the Native Epic of
Rugged Individualism
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The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook and
Game
High Noon, 1952
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Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir
We are dressed about as badly as mortals can
be unshaven faces, dirty gray shirts, still
dirtier yellow trousers.
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American Wilderness?
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Inspiration Mountain
Cabelas The Worlds Foremost Outfitter Buda,
Texas
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Gun Library
Pressed Penny Souvenir
General Store
Longhorn Cantina
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Big Game Country
In Store Display
Aquarium
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L.L. Bean Freeport, Maine
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Get Outside Yourself
The greatest gift is the outdoors.
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The North Face McMurdo Parka
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The North Face Denali Fleece Jacket
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Rugged ConsumersAmericans Consumption
of Outdoor GearAlicia LeuppAmerican Studies
Senior Thesis