Although modernity's understanding of nature and culture has now been superseded by that of environmentalism, the power to define the meaning of both, and hence the meaning of the world itself, remains in the same (Western) hands. This bold argument is at the center of this provocative book that challenges the widespread assumption that environmentalism reflects a radical departure from modernity. Our perception of nature may have changed, the author maintains, but environmentalism remains a thoroughly modernist project. It reproduces the cultural logic of modernity, a logic that finds meaning in unity and therefore strives to efface difference, and to reconfirm the position of the West as the source of all legitimate signification.

Vassos Argyrou lectures in social anthropology at the University of Hull. He has also taught at Intercollege in Nicosia and several universities in the US, including Indiana State University, Reed College, Holy Cross College and Colgate University. Research interests include social and cultural theory, postcolonialism, ritual and myth, southern Europe

Prelude

Chapter 1. First Change

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  'The Idea of Nature'


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  'If we have no rivers, we make canals'


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  'Europeans are devotees of power'


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  'The Leap Across the Centuries'

Chapter 2. Second Change

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  'Only One Earth'


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  'This Sacred Earth'


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  'Our Debt to the Savage'

Chapter 3. The Logic of the Same

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  The Phenomenology of Change


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  'The Age of the World Picture'


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  Pure Humanity

Chapter 4. 'Beyond Humanism': and further to the other side

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  'The Religion of Humanity', the Religion of Gaia and other Homologies


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  Pure Being

Chapter 5. No Change

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  On Hegemony


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  The Double Bind

Bibliography
Index