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This book brings together recent and ongoing empirical studies to examine two relational kinds of politics, namely, the politics of nature, i.e. how nature conservation projects are sites on which power relations play out, and the politics of the scientific study of nature. These are discussed in their historical and present contexts, and at specific sites on which particular human-environment relations are forged or contested. This spatio-temporal juxtaposition is lacking in current research on political ecology while the politics of science appears marginal to critical scholarship on social nature. Specifically, the book examines power relations in nature-related activities, demonstrates conditions under which nature and science are politicised, and also accounts for political interests and struggles over nature in its various forms. The ecological, socio-political and economic dimensions of nature cannot be ignored when dealing with present-day environmental issues. Nature conservation regulations are concerned with the management of flora and fauna as much as with humans. Various chapters in the book pay attention to the ways in which nature, science and politics are interrelated and also co-constitutive of each other. They highlight that power relations are naturalised through science and science-related institutions and projects such as museums, botanical gardens, wetlands, parks and nature reserves.

Historical events, however terrible, are not in and of themselves traumatic.‎ For a trauma to emerge at the level of a collectivity, 'social crises must become ‎cultural crises' (Alexander et al., 2004, p. 10). For an historical event ‎to become a cultural trauma, it must be socially mediated and represented, a ‎trauma narrative must be constructed. Consequently, there is always a gap‎ between the traumatogenic event and its representation, this gap creates the‎ space for the 'trauma process'. Unlike trauma theory, therefore, cultural trauma ‎places the weight of analysis not on the historical event as such but on the ‎narrative struggle that constitutes and sustains that event as a cultural trauma.‎ Thus, we have a series of interrelated terms: history, trauma, narrative and‎ memory, that pivot around an absent presence, a traumatogenic event. It is the‎ nature of that traumatogenic event that I explore in this paper. First, I will set ‎out my theoretical differences from trauma theory and then attempt to square‎ the circle between a non-pathological conception of trauma in cultural trauma‎ theory and my own commitment to psychoanalysis. In conclusion I will put‎ forward a number of claims that I hope will be consistent with cultural trauma‎ theory. That is to say, the traumatogenic event is not given but is retrospectively‎ constructed and in this sense is ahistorical and non-narrative.‎

Original work by Brent Berlin, Eugene Hunn, Cecil Brown, and other ethnoscientists has produced significant findings pertaining to claims of universality for folk‐biological ranks, in general, and folk‐botanical life forms, in particular. These findings implicitly call into question conventional wisdom in the history of biology, which tends to consider life forms as the outworn vestiges of scholastic tradition or as merely socially practical ways of carving up the living world. Unfortunately, however, ethnobiologists continue to rely on faulty analytical schema for assessing the nature of life forms which philosophers and historians of biology have developed in their ignorance of the popular conceptual foundations of folk taxonomy. The error is compounded by the adoption into ethnosystematics of the most empiricistically reductionist, and logically confused, interpretation of such schema that derives from the neo‐Adansonian, or pheneticist, school of modern system‐atics. This interpretation confounds (1) meaning and reference, (2) the semantics of cognitively distinct object domains, and (3) the conceptual differences between common sense and science. These points are challenged, and it is concluded that life forms, though anthropocentrically biased, are no more "artificial" or "special‐purpose" than higher‐order scientific taxa. Finally, the problem of so‐called "unaffiliated" and "ambiguous" generics is addressed and a new analysis offered.

The development of lobbying in the modern world is directly related to the dynamics of democratic regimes. The interaction between interest groups and the state is inherent in the nature of constitutional democracies. However, as shown in this article, lobbying in a democracy can be viewed from two opposite perspectives — as a continuation of the spirit of democracy and the development of a dialogue between the civil society and the state and as a deviation from the principles of representative democracy. The article analyzes the categories of public and private interests and it is shown that the interpretation of the role of interest groups and lobbying in a society depends on how we understand the interest and whom we consider as carriers of political interests. It is shown how in the XXth century a classical discussion was developing around the role of interest groups in politics and that this discussion has not lost its relevance today.

Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- PART I THEORIES -- 1 Human Responsibility for Extra-Human Nature: An Ethical Approach to Technofutures -- 2 Technology and the Humanisation of Nature: New Resources for Critical Assessment -- 3 Artefactualising the Sacred: Restating the Case for Martin Heidegger's 'Hermeneutical' Philosophy of Technology -- 4 Technology in a Postnatural Condition? Concepts of Nature and Meanings of Technology -- PART II RELIGIOUS NARRATIVES -- 5 Forbidden Fruit: Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb -- 6 Technology and Iconography: Minding the logoi -- 7 'Millions of Machines are Already Roaring': Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit -- 8 The Technologisation of Life: Theology and the Trans-Human and Trans-Animal Narratives of the Post-Animal -- PART III PRACTICES -- 9 Re-Inventing Homemaking: A Necessary and Ethical Means of Production in a Post-Growth, Ecologically Sustainable Economy -- 10 Redeeming the Climate: Investigating a Theological Model of Geoengineering -- 11 Resilience Techniques: Spiritual Practices and Customary Economics within Farming Communities in Amanbaev Village, Kyrgyzstan -- 12 Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency: Climate Modification as Divine Economy -- PART IV SYNTHESIS -- 13 The Twilight of the Machines -- Bibliography

À partir d'un travail de film documentaire réalisé sur le pèlerinage « gitan » de Saint-Auvent (Haute-Vienne), d'une plus large fréquentation de groupes familiaux du Limousin et de la lecture d'auteurs manouches (Doerr et Stimbach) nous nous interrogeons sur le sens donné dans le discours émique de la communauté manouche limousine à l'affirmation sans cesse réitérée d'une proximité, voire d'une familiarité avec la nature que les Gadjé (non Tsiganes) ne connaîtraient pas. Ce parcours nous conduit de l'analyse des déclarations d'un amour privilégié et réciproque de la nature aperçu comme constitutif de l'identité manouche à l'examen du lien qui unit ce thème de la nature à la mémoire, au respect et en fait au culte discret des défunts.

Portuguese perceptions of nature in the new worlds they encountered in Southeast Asia from the turn of the sixteenth century were a complex amalgam of inherited frameworks and the forging of a new gaze or vision. Grand claims that the Portuguese discoveries amount to the "construction of space" and the "invention of humanity" have been trumpeted, but are too overblown. From another perspective, Portuguese scholars have recently engaged in a philosophical debate aroundexperiencialismo—the distinction between "scientific experience" and the supposedly pre- or non-scientific "lived" experience of the senses (experiência vivencial), suggesting that the Portuguese Discoveries fall at a critical juncture between these two hermeneutic paradigms. But what did this amount to in concrete terms?I would prefer to turn to other scholars like the Belgian historian Albert Deman, who has stipulated that the perception of Indian nature in the European imaginary, was locked in three unchanging tropes that even first-hand experience could not easily undo. These tropes were exuberance, superabundance and luxury, and go right back to the first encounters between East and West in antiquity, notably Alexander the Great's adventures of the fourth century B.C., which impressed upon Westerners the East's "superior forms of life" and what Pliny, for example, dutifully acknowledged as "the wonder of the victorious expedition of Alexander the Great, when that part of the world was first revealed." Why wonder, and what does Deman allude to when he writes of "superior forms of life"? The common impression was that everything grew more forcefully, and in greater profusion in the East. There were, for example, two flowerings a year of some plants; the colours and tastes were stronger; the smells were beguiling. What the Portuguese noted as "thefumos da India" merely drew on biblical reference in the Book of Proverbs to the "spicy breezes of the East". From these basic conceptions had sprung compilations of all the fabulous stories of the East, texts such as those produced by Ktesias the Knidian and Megasthenes whose ideas were passed down through Pliny into the genre of the marvellous, ormirabilia, fanciful speculations and fables developed along the lines of half-truths reported by returning merchants and travellers, and sometimes fictions spread by Arab middlemen keen to retain their long-standing monopoly of purveyance to Christian consumers.

The article considers a genre of the documentary that is nature documentaries, dedicated to wildlife of our Planet, covering the ornithology, oceanology and botany sciences. Certain specific cinematographic, linguistic codes and area affiliation are the key prerequisites for nature documentary to be considered as a sub-genre. The article highlights the lexical and syntactic components in the text of a popular science documentary along with some expressive elements (intonation, face expression and gestures). The manifestation of the above mentioned features of a nature documentary is associated with the type of audiovisual text. The author of the article proposes a typology of audiovisual texts of popular science documentaries, which is based on various methods of narration and presentation of material to the recipient. She distinguishes three types of nature documentary texts: 1) off-screen narration text; 2) a combination of the off-screen narration and on-screen commentator's text; 3) off-screen narration, on-screen commentator's text and on-screen interview text.

Dass der Mensch qua Erziehung, Bildung und Gewöhnung eine 'zweite' bzw. 'andere' Natur ausprägen könne oder vielmehr müsse, um den Anforderungen und Normen der Gemeinschaft zu entsprechen, ist eine Vorstellung, die bis auf die Theoriebildungen der klassischen Antike zurückreicht. Spätestens seit Cicero erlangt die Formel 'zweite Natur' dann eine semantische Erweiterung, indem sie nicht mehr nur zur näheren Bestimmung der inneren (Um-)Bildungsprozesse von Individuen, sondern darüber hinaus auch der Ergebnisse/Objektivationen menschlichen, die äußere Natur formierenden Tuns (Arbeit) herangezogen wird. Es ist die fundamentale Einsicht in die schier unendliche Ausprägungsdynamik und Plastizität der menschlichen wie außermenschlichen Natur, die Hegels Überlegungen zum Begriff der zweiten Natur durchgängig bestimmt und trägt. Der Begriff der zweiten Natur begegnet uns in Hegels Werk nur vereinzelt, aber wo er auftaucht, ist er von systematisch entscheidender Bedeutung – so etwa im Übergang zwischen Natur (Irreflexivität) und Geist (Reflexivität) im Rahmen seiner anthropologischen Reflexionen zur Wirkungs- und Funktionsweise der Gewohnheit in der Enzyklopädie oder im Übergang von der "Moralität" (subjektiver Geist) zur "Sittlichkeit" (objektiver Geist) im Rahmen seiner rechtsphilosophischen Überlegungen. Hegel unterscheidet mithin zwi-schen einer subjektiven Dimension 'zweiter Natur' (die innere Konstitution des Individuums als das Ergebnis eines Bildungs- und Sozialisationsprozesses) und einer objektiven Dimension 'zweiter Natur' (die Welt des Sozialen und deren Regeln, Gesetze und Institutionen). Damit schafft Hegel nicht nur Platz für beide Bedeutungen, sondern er vereinigt sie zudem – wenn auch nicht explizit – in einer dialektischen Konzeption, deren Rekonstruktion sich diese Studie zum Ziel gesetzt hat.

Abstract
Although community is a core sociological concept, its meaning is often left vague. In this article it is pointed out that it is a social form that has deep connections with human social nature. Human social life and human social history can be seen as unflagging struggles between two contradictory behavioral modes: reciprocity and status competition. Relative to hunter-gatherer societies, present society is a social environment that strongly seduces to engage in status competition. But at the same time evidence increases that communal living is strongly associated with well being and health. A large part of human behavior and of societal processes are individual and collective expressions of on the one hand succumbing to the seductions of status competition and one the other hand attempts to build and maintain community. In this article some contemporary examples of community maintaining, enrichment and building are discussed. The article concludes with a specification of structural conditions for community living and a short overview of ways in which the Internet affects these conditions.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- Notes on contributors -- Foreword -- References -- Preface -- Notes -- References -- Introduction: transecology-(re)claiming the natural, belonging, intimacy, and impurity -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 1: "The bog is in me": transecology and The Danish Girl -- Notes -- References -- Filmography -- Chapter 2: Coming out, camping out: Transparent's eco-ethical approach to gender -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 3: Posthuman ecological intimacy, waste, and the trans body in Nånting måste gå sönder (2014) -- Materialities of the film #1: synopsis and background -- Materialities of the film #2: intimacies -- Aesthetics of contamination -- The pond, murky water -- Uncontainable waste -- Posthuman ecological intimacy -- The hill, a pile of rubbish -- Intimate wasteful others -- Notes -- References -- Filmography -- Chapter 4: A journey through eco-apocalypse and gendertransformations: new perspectives on Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve -- Environmental tropes: apocalypse and wilderness -- Desert as an ambiguous "wilderness" -- (Trans)gender discourse in -- Leilah: inbetweenness and natureculture -- Tristessa: (in)authenticity and performance -- Evelyn/Eve's body: technological, mythological, and material -- Blurring boundaries of gender, humanity, and nature -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 5: Chinese literature, ecofeminism, and transgender studies -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 6: Gendercrossing at the frontier: AnnemarieSchwarzenbach's transgender memoirs in the Alborz Mountains -- The Schwarzenbach myth -- Fallen angel: from androgyny to erasure -- Disoriented orientalism -- Interlude: heart of Europe -- Inhospitable ecologies -- Frontier is the heart -- Notes -- References.