Nature, Technology and the Sacred - Softcover

Szerszynski, Bronislaw

Softcover

ISBN 10: 063123604X ISBN 13: 9780631236047

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005

Synopsis

This provocative and timely book argues that contemporary ideas and practices concerning nature and technology remain closely bound up with religious ways of thinking and acting. Using examples from North America, Europe and elsewhere, it reinterprets a range of 'secular' phenomena in terms of their conditioning by a complex series of transformations of the sacred in Western history. The contemporary practices of environmental politics, technological risk behaviour, alternative medicine, vegetarianism and ethical consumption take on new significance as sites of struggle between different sacral orderings.

Nature, Technology and the Sacred introduces a radically new direction for today's critical discourse concerning nature and technology – one that reinstates it as a moment within the ongoing religious history of the West.

About this title

Book Description

In a critical reinterpretation of the idea of the "disenchantment of nature," this provocative and timely book argues that contemporary ideas and practices concerning nature and technology remain closely bound up with religious ways of thinking and acting. Using examples from North America, Europe and elsewhere, many derived from original research, it reinterprets a range of "secular" phenomena in terms of their conditioning by a complex series of transformations of the sacred in western history. The contemporary practices of environmental politics, technological risk behavior, alternative medicine, vegetarianism, and ethical consumption take on new significance as sites of struggle between different sacral orderings. The book introduces a radically new direction in contemporary debates about nature, technology, and society. By demonstrating that the history of religion and that of our practical and theoretical relationship with nature cannot be wholly separated, it points towards a new framing for today's critical discourse concerning nature and technology, one that reinstates it as a moment within the ongoing religious history of the West.

About the Author

Bronislaw Szerszynski is Lecturer in Environment and Culture at the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change and the Institute for Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy at Lancaster University. He is the co-editor of Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance (Blackwell, 2003), Re-Ordering Nature: Theology, Society and the New Genetics (2003) and Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology (1996).

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 063123604X
• ISBN 13: 9780631236047
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240