Environment and Society (eBook)

This short book sets out to explore the concept of nature in the context of a changing reality, in which the extent of our transformation of the environment has become evident: What is nature and to what extent has humanity transformed it? How do nature and society relate to one another? What does the idea of a sustainable society entail and how can nature be understood as a political subject? What is the Anthropocene and how does it affect nature as both an idea and a material entity? Has nature perhaps 'ended?' In addressing these questions, the author delivers a concise but meaningful study of contemporary understandings of nature, one that goes beyond the limits posed by a single discipline. Adopting a truly comprehensive perspective, the work incorporates classical disciplines such as philosophy, evolutionary theory and the history of ideas; new and mixed approaches ranging from environmental sociology to neurobiology and ecological economics and the emerging area of the environmental humanities and represents a growing branch of political thought that views nature as a new political subject.

Manuel Arias Maldonado (1974) is Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Malaga, Spain. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in the University of Berkeley, a research associate at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich and has researched in places such as Keele, Oxford and Siena. He has worked extensively on environmental issues, from a sociopolitical as well as from a philosophical standpoint. Other research topics include, political liberalism, deliberative democracy, as well as Wikipedia and the social implications of information technologies. His last book is Real Green. Sustainability after the End of Nature (Ashgate, London, 2012). He is a regular book reviewer in the academic journal Environmental Politics. Finally, he publishes regularly in several Spanish cultural journals, such as Revista de Libros, Letras Libres, Revista de Occidente and Lettre International Deutschland.