Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction

This volume presents an introduction to environmentalism, the history of attitudes to nature and the environment, and how these ideas relate to modern environmental ideologies. Examining key environmental ideas within their social and historical context, it outlines radical environmentalist approaches to valuing nature, to economics, Third World development, technology, ecofeminism and social change. This account interprets and sythesises the explosion of writing on the environment since the appearance of Pepper's earlier work, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism. Pre-modern ideas about nature and humankind's relationship to it, the developments in science, and the roots of radical environmentalism in 19th and 20th century movements are surveyed. The main influences include Malthus, Darwin and Haeckel, utopian socialism, romanticism, and organic and holistic systems thinkers. Science is placed at the heart of the society-nature debate as the major constituent of our cultural filter, explaining how postmodern ideas of subjectivity and the breakdown of scientific authority have developed.