This book provides a comprehensive account of Adorno’s philosophy of nature, focusing particularly on Adorno’s concept of ‘natural history’ to express the inextricable link between history and nature. Human history, Adorno emphasises, is grounded in the material forces of nature: ‘external’ nonhuman nature, and ‘internal’ human nature (particularly the instinct for self-preservation). Concomitantly, nature is ‘historical’, in that it evolves and changes, but also because it has been profoundly shaped by human history. By underscoring the entwinement of nature and history, Deborah Cook argues, Adorno’s concept of ‘natural history’ offers a ‘template for interpretative practice’ in philosophy. But it also functions as a thoroughly critical concept, by making visible the damage inflicted upon nature. Cook’s aim is thus to elucidate the dual role - interpretative and critical - that ‘natural history’ plays within Adorno’s work. Due to its admirable clarity, the book will be extremely useful to those unfamiliar with Adorno. At the same time, Cook’s meticulous analysis of Adorno’s texts and her discussion of secondary literature will also be of great interest to scholars well versed in Adorno’s work. She divides the book into five chapters: four expository, whilst the fifth brings Adorno into critical conversation with some key environmental philosophers.

Chapter 1 clarifies Adorno’s materialism. Cook’s main argument is that Adorno’s concept of ‘natural history’ supplements his thesis about ‘the preponderance of the object’ by demonstrating the dynamism of the subject/object relationship. Her second key point is that whilst our ‘affinity’ with nature is fundamental to Adorno’s philosophy of nature, he places an equal emphasis on non-identity. This, Cook contends, enables a more nuanced position regarding human freedom, distancing Adorno from the mechanistic position of Orthodox Marxism. She thereby lays the groundwork for explaining the possibility of transformation in Adorno’s philosophy later in the book. Chapter 2 continues with the themes of affinity and non-identity by exploring their epistemological implications. Like Kant, Cook explains, Adorno asserts that conceptual mediation constitutes a ‘block’ to our understanding of nature, and he postulates an objective residue that cannot be subsumed by the conceptual apparatus of the subject. Adorno’s notion of ‘affinity’, however, sets him apart from Kant, because it implies that this gap is not unbridgeable. On the other hand, Cook argues, Adorno’s ‘natural history’ thesis demonstrates how this affinitive bridge is blocked not only by conceptual mediation but also by the adversarial stance towards ‘external’ nature which has predominated through human history. She also explains how humans have adopted a similarly antagonistic stance towards our own ‘internal’ nature, outlining Adorno’s appropriation of Freud’s theory of instincts, and his speculative account of the development of human self-consciousness and reason. According to Adorno, the negation of internal instinctual nature has inculcated the deluded impression of subjective mastery over both internal and external nature, as something alien, to be conquered.

Chapter 3 sets out Adorno’s advocacy of ‘non-identity thinking’ as a means of transforming our destructive relationship with nature. By subsuming natural objects under concepts without remainder, ‘identity thinking’, (as Nietzsche similarly argues), seeks ‘to make all being thinkable, to force it to yield and bend to us’ (p. 70). Adorno’s ‘non-identity thinking’, aims, in contrast, at yielding to the object. However, Cook strongly emphasises Adorno’s warning against fetishising the object. Adorno understands all thought as an ‘act of negation’: therefore a simple immersion in nature or objectivity is impossible. ‘Non-identity thinking’ aims, rather, to use the negative movement of thought in a non-instrumental and critical way. Cook gives a detailed and illuminating account of how ‘non-identity thinking’ operates, involving ‘determinate negation’ of existing states of affairs, an ‘emphatic’ use of concepts that strives to unleash the potential of ‘damaged life’, and attending to ‘constellations’ of concepts to ‘unlock’ the object.

Having considered how we might think differently, in Chapter 4 Cook addresses the possibility of resistive action. She begins by outlining Adorno’s defence of the individual as a potentially resistive and critical force, and his understanding of the isomorphism between ‘identity thinking’ (which subsumes the particularity of natural things under universal concepts) and capitalistic exchange relations and labour processes (which subsume the particularity of individuals under abstract exchange value). The problem, as Adorno sees it, is that under the monopoly conditions of late capitalism, the critical force of the individual has been ‘emptied out’. Whilst the principle of individuation remains, individuals ‘no longer have any semblance of autonomy with regard to economic conditions’ (p. 95). This fosters the formation of weak, submissive and narcissistic egos, which damages the potential for interpersonal relations, and hence, collective action. Adorno claims, therefore, that whilst political action is urgently required, under the conditions of monopoly capitalism it must be deferred. Yet, whilst acknowledging Adorno’s scepticism towards forms of collective action, Cook attempts to counter the ‘tired charges of pessimism’ made against Adorno, by referring back to his account of ‘non-identity thinking’ as a transformative strategy.

The final chapter compares Adorno and three representatives of ‘radical ecology’ - Arne Naess, Murray Bookchin and Carolyn Merchant - and covers various themes within environmental philosophy, including anthropomorphism and the idea of intrinsic value. Whilst acknowledging the differences between Naess, Bookchin and Merchant, Cook argues that each ends up championing holistic accounts of nature, privileging unity to the detriment of natural diversity. She concludes that Adorno offers a more promising approach to the problem of unity and diversity, and suggests that his philosophy points towards new forms of solidarity that can accommodate differences between people whilst engendering a unity of purpose.

Cook thoroughly succeeds in demonstrating the relevance of Adorno to contemporary environmental philosophy. Her defence of his work as a strategic resource, and of his faith in the efficacy of reason, however, is perhaps less convincing. Her insistence that ‘the precondition for radical change is the sustained self-critical spirit of reason’ (p. 115) for example, arguably does not give enough space for experimental action. I also contest Cook’s deployment of ‘history’ in the collective singular throughout the book. At a couple of points, Cook does acknowledge criticisms of Adorno’s monolithic historicism, but in general, she rather uncritically repeats Adorno’s totalising claims about ‘human history’, which arguably contravene his own philosophy of heterogeneity. As such, Cook (like Adorno) overlooks the possibilities that alternative and heterogeneous histories can open up for conceptualising and engaging differently with human and nonhuman nature. Despite these reservations, however, I thoroughly recommend this lucid and engaging book, which arrives on the scene during a time of surging interest in materialism, ‘speculative realism’ and ‘object oriented philosophy’. Adorno’s work has much to offer contemporary philosophical debates regarding the ‘turn to the object’, and Cook’s exposition and analysis will greatly facilitate attempts to bring Adorno into the conversation.

VICTORIA BROWNE
Department of Philosophy
University of Liverpool

Based on the author’s fieldwork, this book presents interesting and informative material about attitudes to the natural environment amongst followers of the Swadhyaya movement in Rajasthan and Gujarat, the Bishnoi communities in Rajasthan and the Bhils who inhabit the same region. The communities (‘anonymous Greens’ who practice environmentalism unencumbered by a theory of environmental ethics) in question are rural ones, whose lives are obviously more entwined with the natural world than those of city-dwellers. Their respect for the flora and fauna with which they share a world is quite independent of the modern ideology of environmentalism, if that is understood as a reaction to the ‘development’ that is turning the planet into a smouldering junkyard. Professor Jain shows that environmental awareness (‘dharmic ecology’) – a sense of responsibility to the natural world – in the three groups arises from the values of traditional Hindu normative praxis (dharma). He differentiates the reverence and respect for the natural world that he finds amongst the Swadhyayis, Bishnois and Bhils from the ‘deep ecology’ that both sees human beings as nothing more than parts of the natural order and understands that realm as embodying intrinsic values regardless of human interests. Many of the environmental concerns portrayed here as rooted in the ‘traditional ecological awareness of these communities’ are connected with aspects of human welfare. The privileged status of the human (perhaps more specifically, caste Hindus) is expressed in the popular maxim (cited p. 106): ‘Food, sleep, shelter and sex are common to beasts and men. But dharma is the paramount distinguishing feature. Those without dharma are on a par with beasts.’ The concept of dharma (‘what is right’ – in a given context) is a commodious one. The notions of dharma and religion are so flexible that the author’s insistence on distinguishing them is pointless. While it is true that vegetarianism, non-violence and not sacrificing animals arise from dharma, it is also the case that it is the dharma of soldiers to fight and kill, and the dharma of predators to eat their prey. The assertion (p. 124) that ‘Dharma has rarely imposed a sort of discipline that exacts an obedience, which determines every significant decision that one makes’ is simply false. The higher up the caste hierarchy you are, the more exigent are the demands of one’s social and religious duties.

The author is at his strongest in the three chapters that are the informative nucleus of the book. Chapter Three illuminatingly describes the devotional Krishna cult called the Swadhyaya Movement, a little known ‘new religious movement’ founded by Pandurang Shastri Athavale (1920–2003). It has developed in Gujarat and Rajasthan since the 1940s and with the Hindu diaspora it now enjoys some presence in the USA, Canada and Western Europe. Swadhyayis think that the human world is divine because the Almighty dwells there. While they deny that they are environmentalists by conviction – natural resources are for the benefit of people and should be treated accordingly – some of their practices coincide with ecological concerns. The movement appears to be a humanist one. What is presented as Swadhyaya’s ‘arboreal dharma’ or ‘dharmic ecology inspired by the qualities of trees’ (p. 31) is basically anthropocentric rather than dendrocentric. What is of value are the sorts of attitudes and emotions that reverence for trees engender in us, and what the trees provide for us. Above all, responsible stewardship of divinely created natural things is a means of expressing devotion to the Almighty. Similar remarks apply to the Swadhyaya’s bovine and terrestrial dharmas, which are described here. As the author says (p. 35), environmentalism was neither the motive of the founder, nor of his followers.

Chapter Four deals with the Bishnoi community of Rajasthan, whose Vishnu-centred religious ethos is said to have developed into an ecological one. From the point of view of the social anthropology of religion, this community is of great interest since it contains both Hindu and Muslim elements. Indeed, in the 1891 census, the Bishnois were classified as Muslims (p. 55). What is characterised as their ‘environmentalist activism’ is inspired by the life and words of their guru, Jambhesvara (1451–1536). I have to say that Jambhesvara’s discourses (translated as Appendix A) neither inspire nor enlighten.

The Bishnois are especially protective of the khejari trees, which are crucial for the stabilisation of sand-dunes in the desert regions of Rajasthan. They are also concerned for the welfare of deer and other wild creatures. It might be said that we do not need to look for explanations of the practice of conservation and sustenance here other than an appeal to considerations of symbiosis. It might also be observed that the many examples of the Bishnois’ dislike of poaching, cruelty to animals and hunting for pleasure do not bespeak concerns that would be regarded as specifically ecological. And of course, vegetarianism and a ban on the needless killing of animals are features of the mainstream Hindu heritage and are not specific to the Bishnois. But if we are to try and understand the felt attitudes of these people, we need to remember that they belong to a religious tradition that sees the divinity Vishnu as immanent in both the human and the natural spheres. Apart from that point, I could not find any unambiguous and explicit evidence for Professor Jain’s assertion that ‘for the Bishnois, nature is intrinsically valuable for its own sake’, regardless of the benefits that it brings to the desert community. Similarly, the Sacred Groves of the Bhils (Chapter Five) are sacred because it is believed that deities dwell therein. (It should be added that this is actually an example of a separation of the sacred from the profane.)

Overall, this stimulating book demonstrates how certain rural Indian communities exercise a concern for aspects of the natural environment quite independently of any philosophical theorising about ecology. We can be grateful to Professor Jain for bringing so much information to light and for raising many interesting questions about Indian value-systems.

CHRISTOPHER BARTLEY
Department of Philosophy
University of Liverpool

Why are we so outraged by human neglect of domestic animals and not by human failure to remedy equal or greater animal suffering when it takes place in the wild? Whether a deer is shot by an incompetent hunter, or maimed and abandoned by hyenas, it is, after all, the same for the deer.

Clare Palmer takes as her starting point the ‘laissez-faire intuition’ (LFI) that we have moral duties to those animals in the first but not the second case, and develops a philosophical model to make sense of this. Hers is a relational account on which humans acquire positive duties to other animals because ‘we’ (taken very generally) have previously harmed or rendered them vulnerable to us in certain central ways. Its presentation represents an important move in a debate often hampered, in accommodating such a strong and widely-shared intuition, by a focus only on the experience and capacities of the harmed animal.

Palmer begins with her own example: comparing the strong indignation felt towards a British family convicted of failing to meet the welfare needs of 114 horses with the absence of any such indignation towards tourists and camera crews watching tens of thousands of wildebeest drown in the Mara River. She then takes two preparatory steps, in the process showcasing her admirably approachable handling of moral theory. The first is to defend the claim that many nonhumans merit moral consideration: they can feel pain and at least arguably experience aversive states such as fear or desire. The second is to highlight the gap between the LFI and mainstream philosophical attempts to fill out this consideration in terms of more duties (utilitarian, animal rights, capabilities).

Palmer then divides human relations with nonhuman animals into three broad categories: domestication, wildness (more properly, the lack of any relation), and the ‘contact zone’ between the two. She identifies three versions of the LFI: the strong version, on which the human should neither harm nor assist wild animals; the weak version, on which she should not harm them but it may sometimes be permissible to assist them; and the no-contact version, on which there is a duty not to harm and no presumptive duty to assist, but positive duties to assist are generated in certain circumstances. Palmer’s aim, in outlining her relational approach, is to offer a philosophical account of the LFI in general terms, and to pick out the no-contact version as particularly plausible.

She draws an analogy with Thomas Pogge’s approach to global justice, appealing to the existence of human institutions within which animals are rendered peculiarly vulnerable as grounding special duties to those individual animals over and above general duties not to harm. This vulnerability, she argues, is not only external, in that the animals are dependent on us for the satisfaction of their ‘natural’ interests (food, health, etc.) but is also internal: the process of domestication has created certain kinds of animals, with certain needs and traits, the satisfaction of which is of necessity dependent on human intervention. She also defends positive duties to those non-domestic animals rendered especially vulnerable by past harm. This thesis is explained through examples: duties to aid coyotes displaced by a human settlement, or to rescue pure-bred kittens (but not young wild rats) found helpless in a dumpster. The argument is defended against questions or problems, and in the process significantly expanded to include the possibility of special responsibilities acquired through group membership of a very broad kind: humanity, or a mixed community composed of all humans and some animals (but not those outside the contact zone). Finally, it is tested against some real life dilemmas: the plight of the polar bear as a result of climate change, for example, as compared with that of wild elk suffering from a painful disease not introduced by humans. This is a valuable, well researched contribution to a very current and significant debate. I see considerable mileage in the relational model, although there remain teething troubles to be worked through, only two of which I will highlight here. The first is a general point, and concerns rather the practical implications of Palmer’s account than its theoretical content. That is: to what extent can animals - any animals - be said truly to be ‘in the wild’, independent of human influence or past human harm, given the all-pervasive influence of climate change and other environmental impacts? In other words, to which animals, on Palmer’s two-pronged account, would we not have at least some positive duties?

Secondly, Palmer’s narrow focus on individual duties to aid in the context of collective (sometimes institutional) harms appears at times unhelpfully restrictive. If human institutions, or humans in some weakly collective sense, are harming nonhuman animals, then the primary duty would seem naturally to be a collective one: to put an end to the harm, with a correlative primary individual duty, at least arguably, to promote the reform of the relevant institutions or creation of new ones. Such positive duties as Palmer defends (to protect the polar bear against threats other than climate change; to save the kittens) are, however plausible, very much non-ideal world duties, arising only in third- or fourth-best scenarios. Beyond starkly drawn ‘emergency’ cases (for example, concerned individuals faced with footage of suffering polar bears, or Peter suddenly presented with a litter of dying kittens), a more general duty might be defended: to establish institutions which, on the one hand, prevent such harms to nondomestic animals and, on the other, protect against failure to fulfil positive duties to those rendered vulnerable by domestication. This would be more in line with Pogge’s conclusions in the human case. To reject this possibility in the polar bear example by appeal to the reluctance to change of the very collective membership of which is supposed to ground these positive duties (pp. 144-5), seems to me to neglect a very important potential set of duties to nonhumans. These cannot neatly be categorised as positive duties of members of existing institutions, or as negative individual duties, but are rather duties to establish institutions to ensure that negative duties are not collectively violated. To focus on Peter’s duty of rescue to these particular kittens, rather than also on his (and each and all of our) more general duty to promote institutional change to protect against the dumping of kittens by unscrupulous breeders, seems unnecessarily to narrow the scope of a potentially wide-ranging and fruitful model.

ELIZABETH CRIPPS
School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh

This edited collection of papers from the pages of the journals Environment and History and Environmental Values reminds us why the topic of bioinvasion is good to think with. Just as Hajer (1995) has described acid rain as an ‘emblematic environmental issue’, an issue that functions as a metaphor for the environmental problematique at particular times, this collection demonstrates that bioinvasion, nativism and associated biosecurity responses are emblematic issues for the twenty-first century. Across a wide variety of political concerns there are resonances with the problematisation of bioinvasion raised in its pages: the extension of security, selective territorialisations against ever-increasing mobility, questions of localism and cosmopolitanism, and concerns over managing uncertain futures. As such, the collection deserves to be read by those with wider interests in environmental values and philosophy. From stories of carp in Palestine, rhododendron in Britain and Ireland, tropical rainforest in Australia and mustelids in New Zealand, emerge issues of the contestable nature of science, of historically and geographically contingent natural values, of appropriate language and definition, of arbitrary nature/culture boundaries, and of natural and human agency, belonging and encounter. What we learn is that in this domain of investigation there is very little firm footing; holding onto the contested status of language and categories leads to an epidemic of apostrophes, as ‘native’, ‘alien’, exotic’, ‘indigenous’, ‘natural’, ‘national’ and even ‘nature’ are all brought into question.

The edited collection draws together general essays with specific case studies published between 1998 and 2010, and this is its clear strength. The juxtaposition is vital, as too often debates in this domain become oversimplified by ‘ideal case’ arguments (with brown tree snakes in Hawaii most frequently exemplifying why we should be concerned about bioinvasion, and Nazi nativist values exemplifying why we should be concerned about people who are concerned about bioinvasion). The collection begins with a useful publisher’s introduction by Sarah Johnson, but would also have benefitted from a discussant chapter to conclude. Much could have been done here in drawing the threads together, bringing some of the historical case studies up to the present (what happened next for the stoats, water hyacinth and carp?), as well as looking to the future for this area of scholarship and environmental management. This would particularly help as the case studies in environmental history rarely relate back to larger debates on bioinvasion, whereas the general ideas papers can gloss over the details of specific case studies in the presentation of idealised versions of values and events. As the collection in its entirety highlights, what is interesting and important in this domain of environmental concern is the messiness and complexity of the issues in practice.

Turning to some of the individual chapters, William Beinart and Karen Middleton’s chapter on ‘Plant Transfer in Historical Perspective’ deserves to have launched an academic research field in ‘plant geographies’. Taking enduring questions that remain from the seminal work of Crosby and Diamond as a starting point for marking out the coordinates of research needs in the area of global plant transfer, they examine the significance of human/plant agency, public/private practices and shifting environmental values, in the determination of global plant redistribution and acceptance.

Dehnen-Schmutz and Williamson’s piece on Rhododendron ponticum in Britain and Ireland is interesting for the link it succinctly draws between social values and the invasive process itself. Fashions for particular garden plants generate demand and greater use of particular plants in gardens, and this higher propagule pressure increases the likelihood that a plant will naturalise and become invasive. The garden industry also forms an excellent network for distributing new plants simultaneously over wide areas. In predicting which new species may become invasive then, it is not just plant physiology and behaviour that needs to be considered, but future cultural values and preferences. This is the challenge that the risk assessors and horizon scanners must grapple with. Elsewhere, Sanderson outlines in a fascinating discussion how the development of plate tectonic theory finally changed perceptions of the Australian rainforest as invasive, bringing new meaning to the oft repeated phrase ‘in time, invaders become the natives’. This shift from alien and invasive to ancient and Australian leads Sanderson (p. 139) to describe species as ‘mutable and historical entities’. What really emerges across the collection as a whole, however, is their own agency, as those valued species carefully geographically displaced turn and bite the hands that moved them. This exuberant behaviour then contributes to shifting environmental values towards native and alien species just as it alters ecosystems and landscapes themselves; with the radical effects of species’ displacement, as Clark (2003) highlights elsewhere, nothing is left unchanged.

Neil Clayton’s paper on ‘Weeds, People and Contested Places’ is rightfully reproduced, providing a tantalising attempt to trace the concept of ‘weed’ through the historical record utilising a range of literary sources and references, a project that deserves more scholarly attention. Clayton follows the concept from the old world into the new, reviewing changing explanations for the success of European weeds in New Zealand, and the cacophony of chemical, biological and mechanical measures for their control. Together with Beinhart and Middleton, and other authors in the collection, Clayton highlights gaps in the research field on species transfer and bioinvasion. The attention to botanical gardens, bold plant hunting expeditions and acclimatisation societies has taken precedent over the domestic garden and private histories of plant and animal transfer; of European species from the old world overpowering new world ecologies, rather than the impact of species from the ‘colonial periphery’ in the ‘metropolitan centre’ (Clark 2002); and of Antipodean post-colonial contexts, over invasive species issues in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Overall, a very useful collection; I would recommend reading it alongside a book on contemporary biosecurity practice such as ‘Biosecurity Interventions’ edited by Lakoff and Collier (2008), or ‘Networked Disease’ edited by Ali and Keil (2008).

References
Ali, S. Harris and R. Keil. 2008. Networked Disease: Emerging Infections in the Global City. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Clark, N. 2002. ‘The Demon-seed: bioinvasion as the unsettling of environmental cosmopolitanism’, Theory, Culture and Society 19: 101-125.
Clark, N. 2003. ‘Feral ecologies: performing life on the colonial periphery’, in B Szerszynski, W Heim and C Waterton (eds.), Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 163-180.
Hajer, M. 1995. The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kendle, A.D. and J.E. Rose. 2000. ‘The aliens have landed! What are the justifications for “native only” policies in landscape plantings?’ Landscape and Urban Planning 47(13): 19-31.
Lakoff, A. and S. Collier. 2008. Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question. New York: Columbia University Press.

KEZIA BARKER
Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies
Birkbeck, University of London.

In this book Richard Evanoff advocates a radical solution to our environmental problems: bioregionalism. The core idea of bioregionalism, familiar from such writers as Peter Berg and Kirkpatrick Sale, is that relatively small, and mostly self-sufficient, self-governing local communities can best meet the urgent needs for ecological sustainability and satisfying human life-styles which respect the planet’s natural limits and are in symbiotic harmony with the co-inhabited natural surroundings (bioregions). From the outset Evanoff develops the bioregional paradigm in opposition to the world’s present pursuit of globalisation and development ‘based on neoliberal economic principles and transnational forms of political coordination’ (p. 11).

His study provides ample empirical data showing that the current development model, which promises developing countries the (excessive) consumer lifestyles found in the rich developed countries, is neither ecologically sustainable nor socially just nor capable of fostering human well-being: in recent decades, the poorest 80 per cent of the world's population have gotten poorer, while the richest 20 per cent have gotten richer, consuming today about 80 per cent of the world's resources (pp. 144, 163). Hence Evanoff’s bioregional call for a massive reduction of consumption on the part of ‘developed’ countries, for a fairer distribution of resources, and a shift of power and control from global players including transnational companies and global organisations like WTO, the World Bank and IMF, as well as from small elite groups in developing countries, back to local populations. As an alternative economic model Evanoff favours economist Herman E. Daly’s ‘steady-state’ economy, which would limit production and consumption to ecologically sustainable levels (p. 130). In order to achieve these bioregional aims, Evanoff supports the building of ‘an international grassroots movement which unites not just the working class, but all non-elite and oppressed groups across racial, cultural, national, gender, and religious lines’ (p. 215). The aim of this new internationalism is nothing less than ‘the nonviolent overthrow of all current forms of domination, both capitalist and socialist’ (ibid.).

Whilst Evanoff’s analyses of the causes of today’s environmental problems and its strong interrelations with social matters are well-grounded and perspicuous, not to say fairly familiar, his conclusion that bioregionalism would provide a viable solution to all of these problems will certainly raise more doubts among his readers. Although the suggested tendencies towards decentralisation (‘local production for local consumption’), democratisation, a severe reduction of overconsumption and the attainment of more social justice are highly necessary, it is not clear how a full-fledged bioregionalist world-order could be installed and work in an already overpopulated planet with innumerable mega-cities, or how bioregions could, for example, better cope with conflicts surpassing their local level. Thus Evanoff’s bioregionalism remains vulnerable to criticisms that have already been raised against bioregionalism in the past.

As a theoretical foundation of his position, Evanoff proposes a ‘transactional’ approach which emphasises the strong interrelationships and interactions between individual, society and the natural environment, making it impossible to treat any of the three poles in isolation from the other two. In his view much of the debate in academic environmental ethics has therefore been too narrowly framed by questions concerning individual values on the one hand, and the preservation of wilderness and Nature on the other, thus (apart from environmental schools of thought like deep ecology, ecofeminism, ecoanarchism or ecosocialism) often neglecting social issues. He also criticises the strong divide between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism in debates which too narrowly turn around the attribution or non-attribution of intrinsic value towards Nature or natural entities as a precondition of their moral considerability. Evanoff’s transactional approach seeks to go beyond these and similar dichotomies and dualisms. Instead of e.g. preserving nature exclusively for anthropocentric or ecocentric reasons, he would point out that ‘biodiversity should be preserved both because of the benefits it affords humans and because the autonomy of nature should be respected’ (p. 86). His attempt to understand the relationships between self, society and nature in more relational and dialectical terms goes hand in hand with a (moderate) constructivist, communicative and rather pragmatic approach towards environmental ethics, which takes as its guiding objectives social justice, human well-being and ecological sustainability, attributing equal weight to all three of them. Bioregional ethics, as understood by Evanoff, would therefore refrain from embarking in theoretical discussions about ‘the right values’, ‘the true concepts’ etc., and rather focus on the consequences that constructed values and concepts have for the possibility of individuals and societies to coadapt themselves to their surrounding environments (p. 57 ff.).

Evanoff’s transactional approach certainly raises some questions. To mention just one: if all values are relative to the choices of individuals and local communities, and if they must be evaluated in terms of how they assist communities adapt to their respective environments and the flourishing of both societies and Nature, how would bioregionalism judge bioregional societies which choose to eliminate certain local species, or which indulge in killing members of other species for ’sport’, if these actions do not negatively affect the adaptedness of their relationships towards their environment in general? Nevertheless and despite such possible criticisms, Evanoff’s book is a valuable contribution to environmental ethics and philosophy. It offers a new in-depth treatment of bioregionalism, discusses at length its accordance and disagreements with other environmental schools of thought, and underlines the need for a yet wider, interdisciplinary debate on the causes and solutions to global environmental degradation, and probably also a debate on the relationship between environmental ethics and political philosophy. The book also provides an impressive and very valuable 63 page topical bibliography covering topics and subtopics from such diverse fields as development, economics, ethics and schools of ecological thought, geography, natural sciences, quality of life and social science. It should therefore be of interest to both its critics and supporters, as well as to those interested in getting a good overview of the current debates in environmental philosophy.

UTE KRUSE-EBELING
School of Philosophy
Potsdam University

The importance of this book follows from two things. One is the set of conditions in which it appears, marked by the alarming conjunction of two facts of world-historical status: the quickening and deepening of global climate change, which most relevant experts believe is, to a significant extent, anthropogenic; and the equally striking failure of governments and businesses to take steps necessary to stabilise, let alone reduce, carbon emissions. The other central fact is the quality of the book itself, which is of the very highest. Gardiner’s sober, thorough and clear analysis should be included in any serious discussion of climate change. That includes scientific, economic and, of course, political discussions, because part of his analysis shows the presence of ethical considerations at the heart of even the most technical and theoretical discourse. Furthermore, such discourse as such leaves untouched the crucial problem of how to illuminate, motivate and instantiate appropriate moral concern.

The book’s guiding metaphor is climate change as ‘a perfect moral storm’. That storm has three dimensions. The first two involve significant asymmetries of power: a global storm – the power of affluent over poor nations – and an intergenerational storm, the power of present generations over future, who are notably vulnerable to what Gardiner calls the ‘tyranny of the contemporary’ (p. 36). The third dimension is theoretical: the lack of ‘robust general theories’ to guide us (a point to which I shall return).

The interaction of all three produces problems of potential moral corruption – including corruption of the very terms and values used to frame the discussion of climate change – on an unprecedented scale. As Gardiner says, ‘The temptation to pass the buck on to the future, the poor, and nature is very strong’ (p. 9), often by engaging in ‘shadow solutions’ (p. 140), and resorting to a variety of tactics in order obscure that buck-passing and thereby continue to think well of ourselves even while doing so. Thus it is not surprising that both collectively and individually, we are so ill-equipped to deal with the challenge of climate change. One of the few consolations (so to speak) on offer in this book is a convincing demonstration that the problem really is extremely serious, complex and demanding.

As a corollary, Gardiner shows how that challenge differs and in some ways exceeds the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons models. Both ultimately derive from game-theoretic analysis, of course, and Gardiner is willing to go far with self-interest, utilitarianism and cost-benefit analysis. (There is only a passing nod to more-than-human nature here, let alone its intrinsic value.) His strategy, though, seems to be one of ‘more rope!’ since the deeper he goes into such models the clearer their limits become, not least because they bleed into broader and fuzzier concerns, including ethics. It becomes clear that deep ethical claims are unavoidably involved which cannot be decided by economic modelling alone. Indeed, ultimately there is no such thing. (None of which amounts to an argument for abandoning economic modelling altogether, he rightly adds.)

Other chapters destroy the credibility of using scientific uncertainty – something which needs careful qualifying in any case – to justify doing nothing; and include an illuminating (if sobering) discussion of the important psychological dimensions of climate change and our responses to it; an explanation of why ‘we should not look to the disasters of abrupt change – either the actual experience of them, or increasing scientific evidence that they are coming – to save us’ (p. 208); and an excellent analysis of geoengineering, including the worrying dynamics and effects that ‘lesser of two evils’ arguments fail even to consider.

I have two criticisms. The main one is that Gardiner claims that all our current political institutions and theories have failed, or are failing, to pass the global test of anthropogenic climate change. Such a claim is certainly highly plausible, especially in the case of institutions. However, the bleeding of theories into values and practices cuts both ways: theories cannot be quarantined from values and practices. So generically speaking, there is something odd about a call for a ‘robust general theory’. I imagine Gardiner would defend such a call and goal as something that can contribute, though cannot be expected to do more, to a better actual outcome. The problem here is more severe, however. The very interconnectedness he anatomises positions theory itself – including his own and all such accounts, no matter how reasoned and reasonable – as pragmatic, rhetorical and in the broadest sense political: a kind of intervention, not a kind of observation. The same is true a fortiori of ‘our ways of talking and thinking about moral problems such as climate change’ (p. 305). Thus what is needed is a different, less epistemological and rationalistic theory, or meta-theory, than he himself offers.

Relatedly, there is one kind of political theory that Gardiner fails to put to the global test. This omission is even odder, because it is not true that ‘we lack a strong philosophical account of corruption’ (p. 303). Corruption, the importance of which he rightly emphasises in relation to the perfect storm of climate change, is central to both virtue ethics and its cousin, civic republicanism. I’m not sure why he chose to ignore these traditions but the result is poorer for it. Compared to virtue ethics and civic republicanism, with their pre-modern roots, both consequentialism and deontology (which are much better-represented here, if not uncritically so) are rationalistic and thereby epistemological – and in the context of ecocrisis, given the unmistakeable involvement of just those philosophical praxes, debilitatingly so. My second criticism concerns Gardiner’s critique (in an appendix) of Garrett Hardin’s analysis of overpopulation as an instance of the Tragedy of the Commons. Again, that critique is acute and valuable, but it is unnecessarily weakened in a number of ways. In particular, Gardiner seems to think that the issue of environmental impact can be cleanly separated from the number of people present on the Earth. This is wrong; however mediated their impacts are, sheer numbers cannot be qualified into irrelevance. Second, emissions are far from the only environmental impact of human population, as he seems to imply. Finally, any difference between the regulation, including self-regulation, that Gardiner calls for and Hardin’s ‘mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon’ is by no means clear.

Neither of these general critical points diminishes the value of the book as a whole. To the extent it has a weakness, however – or more positively, a direction in which it would be good to take it, and the discussion as a whole, next – that direction emerges uneasily in the unspoken implications of such statements as ‘The key point is that we should act on climate change even if doing so does not make us better off; indeed, even if it may make us significantly worse off’ (p. 68); and ‘most of the burdens of this shift away from fossil fuels must be borne largely by the developed nations, and especially the wealthy within those nations’ (p. 402). Good luck with that! But in any case, something of Hardin’s sensibility – an unflinching willingness to look into the abyss, or rather a number of abysses – seems increasingly necessary.

PATRICK CURRY
Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology
University of Trinity St David

This second edition of Patrick Curry’s Ecological Ethics: An Introduction aims to ‘introduce the reader, clearly and critically to the subject of ecological ethics’ (p. 1). His intended audience is broad, including students, activists, and the wider public. This edition updates all chapters of the previous (2005) edition, and provides new discussions of animals, climate change, sustainable economies, education and food, as well as a new chapter on human overpopulation.

As an introductory text Curry’s is unusual in starting from a controversial philosophical position: ‘the belief, or perception, that nature – which certainly includes humanity – is the ultimate source of all value’ (p. 2). Curry seems to believe that nature’s being the source of all value is a reason for its being intrinsically valuable, leaving him with what he takes to be a decisive answer to the debate of whether or not nature is intrinsically valuable. Sidestepping this debate, he uses the text to show the implications of what he calls a ‘fully ecocentric ethic’, one that is ‘now urgently needed’ (p. 1). Thus Curry’s book attempts to challenge traditional views of environmental ethics. For example, he favours the word ‘ecological’ over ‘environmental’ because the latter is understood as ‘that which surrounds’, which, in Curry’s view, embeds an implicit anthropocentrism about nature. This ecocentrism-first methodology invites objections. Curry’s attempts to mix his own position with pedagogy are sometimes unsuccessful. While he gives a passionate exposition of his own views, his treatment of rival views is scant, and often uncharitable; and so the book does not provide an evenhanded introduction to key topics in the literature. Curry rejects traditional ethical theories in two brief introductory chapters. The critique of deontological ethics is quick and unconvincing: Curry points out that Kant and Rawls both held that only rational human beings could be considered moral patients (or recipients of justice), and from this, he dismisses all deontological approaches as anthropocentric and hyper-rationalistic (pp. 41–42). Curry’s critique of utilitarian thinking (and consequentialism as such) is similarly weak: current practices of meat-eating could be morally acceptable, given the possibility that eating meat might afford more pleasure than the harms that go along with it (p. 45). After dismissing deontological ethics and consequentialism, Curry endorses what he calls Green Virtue Ethics (GVE). GVE says a good ecological citizen appreciates oneself as one part within nature, and treats nature as a whole with attitudes of love and reverence. Despite his interest in virtue ethics, Curry shows little interest in drawing insights from its history. Aristotle and Hume are discussed only cursorily; Nietzsche is mentioned only in passing, despite his importance for ecological virtue theories. Curry’s main influences are recent ecocentric environmental philosophers, of course, and the book provides a useful bibliography of the important names and works in this area. He frequently cites popular writers on the topic, including Leopold, Naess, Sylvan, and Plumwood. Often, though, he offers quotations from them simply to endorse them, usually only offering minor criticisms or amendments (at one point, he blames Sylvan’s ‘attachment to rationalism’ on his being a male member of a philosophy department – p. 113).

Curry introduces two interesting concepts in his ecocentric theory. One is the notion of civic republicanism. This political approach places virtue at the centre of a vision of active self-governing citizens, whose sense of ecological citizenship allows them to care for nature. The second interesting concept is that of post-secular spirituality. Curry’s idea is that a proper relationship with nature is a spiritual relationship, though without supposing any sort of mysticism. These two related ideas are worth pursuing, and may encourage lines of future research.

However, the book’s first half categorises ethical theories into light green (anthropocentric), mid-green ethics, and deep-green. Light green theories value the environment only insofar as its preservation serves human interests. Mid-green theories expand moral consideration to other animals and living things, and finally, deep-green theories are those that treat all of nature (animals, plants, landforms and ecosystems) as intrinsically valuable. Curry’s version of GVE promotes a relationship of what he calls an animistic post-secular spirituality. It may be objected that this (familiar) rubric is condescending and unfair: why must anthropocentric thinking be ‘shallow’, and is it any surprise that the ‘deep’ theory is also the one that is most wise? Curry’s rubric may be alienating (or even insulting) to readers who do not share his same spiritualistic views about nature. Throughout the book, Curry repeatedly appeals to the assumption that a failure to see intrinsic value in nature inevitably causes ecological catastrophe. Curry’s strong claim is this: we are living in a state of ecological catastrophe, and the leading ethical theories of the day are to blame. He does not take seriously the possibility that the leading ethical theories are adequate, while ecological crises result from the misapplication of those theories.

Ecological Ethics also suffers from some haphazard organisation. The first chapter provides an exposition of the ecological crisis our planet is undergoing. Next, Curry provides brief introductions to basic principles of ethics, and moves from light to dark green approaches. In many places, though, he goes off on tangents instead of addressing the problems he introduces (Chapter 3, ‘Ethics’ is a good example of this). Three short chapters then provide basic exposition of different approaches to ecocentric ethics: ecofeminism, post-secular green ethics, and pragmatism within moral pluralism. The book then veers towards practical consideration of educating ecocentric virtues and applying virtue ethics, as opposed to strictly conceptual or theoretical matters. The penultimate chapter, ‘Grounding Ecological Ethics’, does not ground in the sense of justifying ecological ethics, but instead applies ecocentric thinking to such pressing issues as food usage, climate change and nuclear power. He begins the chapter with the claim: ‘In this chapter, I will consider some aspects of modern life in relation to ecological ethics ... presenting an ecological ethics without any consideration of how it could become a reality in daily material life is a job half-done’ (p. 185). He then applies his ecocentrism to a laundry-list of problems. Since by this point he has already done away with traditional approaches to ethics, only ecocentric approaches are applied to the issues, though Curry repeats himself by blaming ecological crises on rationalism, anthropocentrism and capitalism. This makes for an unnecessarily long chapter (of about sixty pages), given that Curry allocates such little space for theoretical considerations in the book’s short introductory chapters.

Overall then, Ecological Ethics does not suffice as a complete introduction for the student. For students interested in understanding a variety of views on environmental ethics, traditional anthologies would be more illuminating. Curry’s passion for ecological change is laudable, and he presents many intriguing ideas throughout. Although his treatment of traditional views in ethics is less than charitable, Curry’s book works as a starting point for those interested in gaining familiarity with some of the key themes of the ecocentric viewpoint.

ELLIOT GOODINE
Department of Philosophy
University of Alberta

Mick Smith, whose work bridges philosophy and environmental studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, has been carving out a distinctive intellectual niche of his own for some years. With a background in ecological science, he is a transatlantic transplant from Britain to North America whose previous works have involved critical engagement with postmodern environmental thought, hermeneutics, concern for place and the relationship of nonhuman nature to environmental ethics and politics. In this book, he newly introduces, updates and draws together a range of his previous work to develop a perspective that is self-consciously anarchistic yet profoundly engaged with the ethical and political aspects of environmental philosophy.

The manner in which the book’s orientation is anarchist, however, first needs some elaboration. This is not a straightforwardly political eco-anarchism of the type associated with thinkers such as Murray Bookchin and Alan Carter. Rather, Smith’s target is the concept of sovereignty as it is conceived ecologically, metaphysically and in statist legitimation claims: that is, ‘human dominion over the natural world’ (p. xi) in the first case, the shifting range of dualistic human-nonhuman, subject-object divisions that support this dominion – which Smith sometimes refers to, following Agamben, as the ‘anthropological machine’ (p. 4) – in the second case, and the narrower political sense of national sovereignty over a territory in the third instance, with the third of these taken as presupposing the first two in some form. To immediately outline his most direct criticisms, Smith draws on Carl Schmitt’s view that ‘the ultimate mark of sovereign power’ is ‘to be able to suspend the rule of law and the political order by declaring a state of emergency’, a suspension that must itself ‘depend on extralegal/procedural decision made by the very power that thereby awards itself a monopoly on political power/action’ (p. 123, emphasis in original), and then draws upon Agamben’s use of Foucault to indicate ways in which today ‘politics is everywhere being replaced by biopolitics, the governmental management and control of the biological life (and death) of populations’ (p. xv). The intersection of the former possibility with the latter dynamic and the ongoing technological enframing of humans and nature thus opens up an alarming and ironic possibility: that ‘the global war on terror will segue seamlessly into the crisis of global warming’, the growing danger being ‘that this emergency is used to legitimate further technocratic interventions, to further extend the state and corporate management of biological life, including the continuing reduction of humanity to bare life’ (p. 126). It is against these conceptions of sovereign power and the alarming prospects that they may imply that Smith sets his conception of ‘radical ecology’, an anarchist perspective that ‘constitutes a fundamental political challenge precisely because it refuses to accept the reality of any aspect of this myth of state sovereignty, whether in terms of sovereignty over human practical possibilities or natality of the natural world or national territories’ but will instead ‘advocate ethical, nonauthoritarian, non-territorially delineated relations to the more-than-human world’ that ‘envisages ecological ethics as anarchic ‘first philosophy’ ... that can persuasively inform (rather than compel assent to) diverse forms of ecological politics’ (p. 122, emphases original). Accordingly, Smith draws upon the thought of Levinas, Iris Murdoch and Hannah Arendt, amongst others, to open out possibilities for such an ecological ethics, while examining what may be drawn from primitivism as a possible source for cross-pollinating anarchic ethics with ecological concern.

The most significant element that Smith draws from primitivism proves to be the notion of ‘wildness’, not in the locational sense of ‘a point of origin that can be defined and controlled’ but as ‘an opening that escapes the order of things authority always seeks to impose’, a resistance to the ongoing reduction of life to merely instrumental relations – ‘the initiating and differentiating creativity, the life-affirming, animating negativity with no use, the natality of beings, by which the more-than-human world resists dominion’ (p. 96, emphasis original). From this primitivist perspective, ‘wildness is regarded as synonymous with creative freedom from social constraint’, whilst ‘“wilderness experiences” allow a person to recognize and express something of the wildness that... lies within all people’; such experience ‘illuminates humanity’s affinity with wild nature’ (p. 94) whilst the wildness of nature itself ‘signifies how life exceeds the boundaries and categories of such systematic impositions, how nature is never just a resource’ (p. 95), and should thus be allowed to ‘exist as something big enough to lose and find oneself in’ (p. 97), counterbalancing the narcissism of contemporary culture. This intertwining of anarchism, primitivism and ecology in turn generates some normative grip on what is meant by the rhetoric of ‘saving the earth’, for whilst Smith’s book is all but bereft of policy proposals, at least some things are clear. For his radical ecology, to ‘save the whales is to free them from all claims of human sovereignty, to release them into their singularity, their being such as it is’ (p. 103, emphases original) and this will require ‘constituting a new politics’ and ‘revitalizing politicoethical understandings of the possible relations among humanity and the nonhuman world’ (p. 110). In Smith’s view, such a new politics and ethics must reject the human exceptionalism of the anthropological machine, but at the same time retain the creative possibilities opened up by such practices as art, love, play, wildness and politics without reducing individual responsibilities to systems theory. He duly devotes a chapter (Chapter 5) to comparing Ulrich Beck’s risk society theory with Arendt’s political framework to help evaluate the politics of acting into nature before finishing off by connecting Arendtian politics to Levinasian ethical concerns against an ecological backdrop in Chapter 6, and drawing the strands in the concluding Chapter 7 and apologue to oppose the notion of ecological sovereignty against recent statist suggestions from the likes of Robyn Eckersley and James Lovelock.

This is strikingly original and densely argued book, and whilst this reviewer found the intertwining of ideas of nature and liberty in the treatment of primitivism to be most to his taste, this brief review cannot do justice to the range of ideas involved or the breadth and complexity of the whole work. Though predominantly drawn from a quite different tradition, I would rank it as the most systematic work of explicitly ecological anarchism since Alan Carter’s book A Radical Green Political Theory (1999), and it deserves a suitable audience as such.

References
Carter, A. 1999. A Radical Green Political Theory. London: Routledge.

PIERS G.H. STEPHENS
University of Georgia

PIERS H.G. STEPHENS Philosophy Department University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 USA