One of the main features of the contemporary environmental crisis is that no one has a clear idea of what is going on. The author uses an extension of Marx's theory of alienation to explain why people find it so difficult to relate their different knowledges of the natural and social world.
He argues that nevertheless it is possible to relate these to the abstractions of ecological discourse. Emancipation can come only through embracing science and rationality rather than rejecting them and, in the process, humanity as well as the non-human world will benefit.

Sociological Theory and the Environment is a comprehensive survey and assessment of sociological theories of the relations between societies and their "natural" biophysical environment. This book touches on and addresses virtually all of the major perspectives, focal points, and debates in environmental sociology today--classical and twentieth century social theories, macro-micro linkage issues, globalization and development, reflexive modernization, ecological modernization vs. "limits" viewpoints, modernity and post modernity, risk society, constructionalism-realism, environmental...

Society and Nature is a lively and highly accessible introduction to the sociology of the environment. The book provides a comprehensive guide to contemporary issues and current debates - including society, nature and the enlightenment, industry and environmental transformation, commodification, consumption, the network society and human identity, human biology, citizenship and new social movements.


Combining insights from contemporary sociology, politics, developmental biology and psychology, Peter Dickens suggests that environmental degradation is largely due to...

Society and Nature is a lively and highly accessible introduction to the sociology of the environment. The book provides a comprehensive guide to contemporary issues and current debates - including society, nature and the enlightenment, industry and environmental transformation, commodification, consumption, the network society and human identity, human biology, citizenship and new social movements.


Combining insights from contemporary sociology, politics, developmental biology and psychology, Peter Dickens suggests that environmental degradation is largely due to...

An original vision and a pedagogical text on a major issue of our time and, even more, of our childens.

Goran Therborn is University Professor of Sociology at Uppsala University, Sweden, and Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Arguably the most important and certainly the most ambitious book of recent sociology.

Bryan Turner, Editor of the Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology.

Space weaponry, satellite surveillance and communications, and private space travel are all means in which outer space is being...