Product Description

A much-needed account of what has gone wrong in our thinking about the environment. Val Plumwood argues that we need to see nature as an end itself, rather than an instrument to get what we want.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #386950 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-20
• Released on: 2001-12-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
'This book is vintage Plumwood: clear, insightful, well-argued, compelling. Through stunning argumentation and vivid examples, Val Plumwood shows that the current ecological crisis is fundamentally a failure of Western conceptions and cultures of reason, and that what is needed is an ecological rationality strongly linked to social equality, communicative democracy, and nature-sensitive practices. Anyone interested in environmental, feminist, or political philosophy will want to read this book.' - Karen Warren, Macalester College, Minnesota, USA

From the Back Cover
Environmental Culture explores the master narratives of humanity, reason and nature that have so far pervaded western approaches to the environment as a result of ancient mind /matter dualism. Val Plumwood, in this intriguing and original book, investigates these predominant ways of thinking and explains why global relationships with nature are now failing basic tests of rationality and fitness for survival. As narrow political strategies falter, it is time for changing the culture. The historic tasks are to resolve the human/nature dualism, replace this with communicative human/nature relations, and create a place-sensitive culture that situates humans ecologically and nonhumans ethically.

Environmental Culture establishes directions for challenge to the systematic distortions of the dominant culture in the areas of rationality, spirituality, politics, ethics and science.

Customer Reviews

Eco-feminism and beyond
You may ask whether a man can be a feminist - but this book was recommended to me by the editor of a book called Animals and Women which identifies the necessity of equal rights for animals as a condition of Holistic philosophy. I agree. Does this make me a feminist? Read this book to decide what Equality means in terms of a culture of the environment.

Admittedly Plumwood is a kind of academic but the story of her surviving an attack by a crocodile leaves one with the impression that she knows. Unfortunately, so think most academics and the problem is to decide who is using language in the correct way. At times the structure and weight of her sentences require deep commitment, at others her mockery of other strains of green philosophy such as what she calls `deep-pocket ecology' evince more than a chuckle.

Essentially this is the book I should have written years ago, not for want of trying. It is supremely difficult to write a book which encompasses everything but with the tool of language which is admittedly limiting. I cannot think of anyone who makes a better stab at it. She manages this because she lives the reality she describes. The rhetoric and the descriptive prose reel off her pen with a slipperiness and impact which stimulates and yet gnaws at the base of the spine. To read this, digest it fully [I have not managed this yet after three years], and remain unmoved is impossible. The slightest brush with this great writer will leave the truly open-minded seeker for harmony with nature in an ecstatic trance.