Re-Thinking Nature: Towards an Eco-Pluralism. (1st August 2003)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Curry, Patrick
• Is Part Of: Environmental values. Volume 12:Number 3(2003:Autumn)
• Page Start: 337
• Page End: 360
• Publication Date: 2003-08-01
• Subjects: Environmental ethics -- Periodicals; Environmental policy -- Periodicals; 179.105
• DOI: 10.3197/096327103129341351
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0963-2719

Abstract

Both scientific realism and social constructionism offer unpromising and even destructive ways of trying to understand nature and human-nature relations. The reasons include what these apparent opponents share: a commitment to the (latterly) modernist division between subject/culture and object/nature that results from what is here called 'monist essentialism'. It is contrasted with 'relational pluralism', which provides the basis of a better alternative - ecopluralism - which, properly understood, is necessarily both ecocentric and pluralist.