Description:
Carolyn Merchant's foundational 1980 book The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution established her as a pioneering researcher of human-nature relations. Her subsequent groundbreaking writing in a dozen books and over one hundred peerreviewed articles have only fortified her position as one of the most influential scholars of the environment. This book examines and builds upon her decades-long legacy of innovative environmental thought and her critical responses to modern mechanistic and patriarchal conceptions of nature and women as well as her systematic taxonomies of environmental thought and action. Seventeen scholars and activists assess, praise, criticize, and extend Merchant's work to arrive at a better and more complete understanding of the human place in nature today and the potential for healthier and more just relations with nature and among people in the future. Their contributions offer personal observations of Merchant's influence on the teaching, research, and careers of other environmentalists.
Review Quotes:
This book reaffirms Carolyn Merchant as the foundational guru of modern environmental history and ecofeminism. The fine essays in After the Death of Nature, ably edited by three outstanding scholars of ecology, offer irrefutable testimony to the timeless importance of Merchant as a writer, philosopher, and public educator. It's impossible to properly think about the natural world without grappling with Merchant's far-reaching 21st century global vision.
Douglas Brinkley, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair of Humanities and Professor of History, Rice University and author of Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America
Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and co-author of Journey of the Universe