Short description
A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, 'Politics of Nature' establishes the conceptual context for political ecology - transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned.
Long description
A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology - transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: "Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks." Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society - and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and non-humans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced. In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a re-description of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a "commonsense" division - which here reveals itself as distinctly un-commonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of "mononaturalism" and "multiculturalism," Latour develops the idea of "multinaturalism," a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by "diplomats" who are flexible and open to experimentation.
Review
Latour's politics is procedural and fluid, not driven by a desire to establish domains. If for no other reason than this, Politics of Nature is important for environmental philosophy. Environmentalism is in crisis partly because of its unexamined attachment to a declensionist narrative about humans and nonhumans. Philosophers too often fall into this trap as well. As we struggle with the question, What is to be done..., many of us expand this question to include the phrase .,. in a world at the tipping point of environmental disaster? We could do worse than allow Latour to remind us that we need to try to not start with what has been lost, but what can be gained. He urges us to make associations, work toward a more universal collective, create a genuinely progressive future, and build the attendant skills to assemble our demos into something better and more interesting than it is now. Isn't this what always must be done? -- Randall Honold Environmental Philosophy (01/01/2007)