The Death of Nature

By Carolyn Merchant

The Death of Nature is referenced in passing in my textbook for this year's study with The Open University, and if pointing me to this book were all the year did for me, it would be worth it. It's one of those non-fiction books you probably wouldn't pick up (or even come across) unless someone recommended it to you. The cover and publishing style is a bit odd and academic, although the writing style is mercifully closer to popular sociology than academic essay writing. It's fairly old, too, published in 1983; reading older non-fiction books is risky because you never know if you're picking up a timeless classic (like Silent Spring) or an out of date relic.

This book is timeless and vital. It is, among other things, a searing account of how a mechanistic world view "laid open a new and brutal exploitation" of the natural world, other species, and women. It's a fascinating cultural exploration, charting the change from seeing Earth as a living mother to a dead, inanimate object.

Representations of nature are made up, and they matter. "Concepts of nature and women are historical and social constructions. There are no unchanging "essential" characteristics of sex, gender, or nature. Individuals form concepts about nature and their own relationships to it that draw on the ideas and norms of the society into which they are born, socialised, and educated."

I'm increasingly of the view that if we're to find a way out of the climate and ecological crises, we need sociological inputs for change. Scientific and technological analysis and progress is not enough. Our broken relationship with the natural world is far deeper, and far more fundamental things need to change than the tech we use. In fact, science and technology - at least the way we've approached them, particularly in the West - are interwoven with our problematic attitudes to the world around us.