Nature wars: essays around a contested concept

The title of this book is deliberately provocative and deliberately ambiguous. An obvious allusion for many will be to recent controversies in the politics of the environment, and indeed it is partly about this. However, these episodes in our recent and current history cannot be understood except in relation to parallel academic controversies of equal ferocity (though less open to public view) concerning 'nature' as an idea, both as apparent in public discourse and in science, between the sciences, and in philosophy and the humanities. This volume is organised around issues, debates and discussions concerning the various ways in which the concept of nature has been used, abused, endlessly deconstructed and reclaimed, as reflected in anthropological, scientific, and similar writing over the last several decades. It comprises ten chapters (mostly previously published), with a completely new introduction connecting the chapters and taking the arguments forward.