Nature Wars: Essays Around a Contested Concept (Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology, 27)

Organized around issues, debates and discussions concerning the various ways in which the concept of nature has been used, this book looks at how the term has been endlessly deconstructed and reclaimed, as reflected in anthropological, scientific, and similar writing over the last several decades. Made up of ten of Roy Ellen’s finest articles, this book looks back at his ideas about nature and includes a new introduction that contextualizes the arguments and takes them forward. Many of the chapters focus on research the author has conducted amongst the Nuaulu people of eastern Indonesia.

Roy Ellen is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Human Ecology at the University of Kent, where he initiated the programmes in environmental anthropology and ethnobotany, and founded the Centre for Biocultural Diversity.  His recent books include On the Edge of the Banda Zone (2003), Nuaulu Religious Practices (2012), and Kinship, Population and Social Reproduction in the 'New Indonesia' (2018).