In this book, a celebration of the work of the sociologist Peter Dickens serves as the catalyst for exploring the relationship between human ‘internal nature’ (our health and psychological well-being) and ‘external nature’ (the environment on which we depend and which we collectively transform). Across contributions from Ted Benton, James Ormrod, Kate Soper, John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, Graham Sharp, James Addicott, Kathryn Dean and Peter Dickens himself, the book draws attention to alienation associated with the promotion of different knowledges in late capitalist production. But it also highlights the possibilities for generating less alienated relations with our environment in the future. As well as discussing the philosophical and theoretical issues involved, the book contains contemporary case studies of ultra-processed food, satellite farming, computerised thinking and dark tourism.
Table of Content
– Introduction: Changing our environment, changing ourselves.- PART I: THE WORK OF PETER DICKENS.- 1. Peter Dickens: Late capitalism, nature and mental life.- 2. Defragmenting nature: Themes in Peter Dickens’s work.- PART II: PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEORETICAL DEBATES.- 3. Environmental alienation.- 4. Marx’s universal metabolism of nature and the Frankfurt School: Dialectical contradictions and critical syntheses.- PART III: EMERGING ISSUES.- 5. Metabolic rift theory and the crisis of our foodways.- 6. Satellite farming, food and human wellbeing.- 7. Computers and the alienation of thinking: From Deep Blue to the Googlemobile.- 8. Society, nature and experience: Jouissance on the margins.
About the author
James S. Ormrod is a Principal Lecturer in Sociology, University of Brighton, UK. His research interests are in social movements and the relationships human beings have with their environment and the universe in general. He is the author of
Fantasy and Social Movements (2014) and, with Peter Dickens,
Cosmic Society (2007).
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