Book dossier

Modern environmentalism

by David Pepper

Modern Environmentalism presents a comprehensive introduction to environmentalism, the history of attitudes to nature and environment, and how these ideas relate to modern environmental ideologies.Examining key environmental ideas within their social and historical context, the book outlines radical environmentalist approaches to valuing nature, to economics, third world development, technology, ecofeminism and social change. This entirely new account interprets and synthesises 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 nineteenth and twentieth 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 and scientific 'truths' about nature have become divorced from their social and ideological context. Modern Environmentalism offers a greater understanding of environmentalism and the environmental debate, and the different approaches to establishing the desired ecological society.