The Social Creation of Nature

by Lorne Leslie Neil Evernden and Neil Evernden

Book Overview

One reason for our failure to save the earth, argues Neil Evernden, is our disagreement about what nature really is--how it works, what constitutes a risk to it, and even whether we ourselves are part of it. Nature is as much a social entity as a physical one. In addition to the physical resources to be harnessed and transformed, it consists of a domain of norms that may be called upon in defense of certain social ideals. In exploring the consequences...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801845483
• ISBN13: 9780801845482
• Release Date: October 1992
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent

This book is excellent both as an introduction to the subject of radical ecology and as a thought-provoking collection of ideas for those already familiar with deep ecology and other radical environmental thought.Evernden argues that the conception of "nature" is a social construction. Nature as we conceive of it is simply a name given to a collection of entities and webs with no direct correlation. The problem is that such naming of complex natural events, lives, beings, etc. reduces, even eliminates, our ability to interact with what truly is natural.The central manifestation of this dilemma Evernden refers to is the obsession our culture has created with the idea of saving nature, saving endangered species, etc. It is precisely the conception of nature which presumes that humans can identify certain "endangered species," name them, categorize them, rank them (save the whales, but don't save the rats? why? well, whales are cuter, right?) only re-inforces the attempt to dominate and control which is at the root of the environmental crisis.Evernden advocates the shattering of what we assume nature to be, and such movement away from commonplace thinking comes from the words we speak. When we can stop thinking of certain species in need of being "saved," we may finally be able to simply wonder at the beauty of that which we can't name.

Complicated vocabulary, convoluted ideas, very interesting

overall I liked this book quite a bi