What is Nature?

Kate Soper is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of North London. She has worked as a journalist and translator, and has written extensively on politics, philosophy and feminist issues. During the eighties, she was a prominent activist in the END movement. She is a longstanding member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective. Her previous publications include On Human Needs, Humanism and Anti-Humanism, and Troubled Pleasures.

• Acknowledgements viiiIntroduction 11 The Discourses of Nature 152 Nature, Human, and Inhuman 373 Nature, Friend and Foe 714 Nature and Sexual Politics 1195 Nature and ‘Nature’ 1496 The Space and Time of Nature 1807 Loving Nature 2138 Ecology, Nature and Responsibility 249Index 283

"This is an excellent book. It addresses what, in both conceptual and political terms, is arguably the most important source of tension and confusion in current arguments about the environment, namely the concept of nature; and it does so in a way that is both sensitive to, and critical of, the two antithetical ways of understanding this that dominate existing discussions." Russell Keat, University of Edinburgh "Pondering the related issues of environmental crisis and sustainability, readers will benefit greatly from close study of Kate Soper's extended essay on the discourse of nature and 'nature'." W. Lukin, University of London