The Problem of Nature: Environment and Culture in Historical Perspective / Edition 1

by David Arnold

Overview

This book considers how nature - in both its biological and environmental manifestations - has been invoked as a dynamic force in human history. It shows how historians, philosophers, geographers, anthropologists and scientists have used ideas of nature to explain the evolution of cultures, to understand cultural difference, and to justify or condemn colonization, slavery and racial superiority. It examines the central part that ideas of environmental and biological determinism have played in theory, and describes how these ideas have served in different ways at different times as instruments of authority, identity and defiance. The book shows how powerful and problematic the invocation of nature can be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780631190219
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	09/30/1996
Series:	New Perspectives on the Past
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.03(w) x 8.96(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

David Arnold is Professor of South Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. His previous books include Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change and Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth Century India.

Table of Contents

Foreword.

1. Introduction.

2. The Place of Nature.

3. Reappraising Nature.

4. Environment as Catastrophe.

5. Crossing Biological Boundaries.

6. The Ecological Frontier.

7. The Environmental Revolution.

8. Inventing Tropicality.

9. Colonizing Nature.

Conclusion.

Guide to Further Reading.

Index.