The Social Creation of Nature

Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking
Review: Hard to understand language, interesting ideas

Rating:
Summary: Complicated vocabulary, convoluted ideas, very interesting
Review: overall I liked this book quite a bi

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: 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.