KATE SOPER is a Professor of Philosophy in the Institute for the Study of European Transformations at London Metropolitan University, UK. She is well known for her work on the philosophy of nature and as a theorist of need and consumption, and has recently completed a research project on 'Alternative hedonism' in the ESRC/AHRC 'Cultures of Consumption' Programme. In addition to this volume, she is a co-editor (with Lyn Thomas and Martin Ryle) of Counter-Consumerism and its Pleasures (forthcoming). FRANK TRENTMANN is Professor of Modern History at Birkbeck College, University of L