Denaturalizing Ecological Politics: Alienation from Nature from
Rousseau to the Frankfurt School and Beyond. By Andrew Biro. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2005. 270p. $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.
Andrew Biro's dense argument for a “denaturalized
ecological politics” should have wide appeal. At one level, it
should make political theorists generally—whether or not they
consider themselves “ecological theorists”—reflect more
systematically on how concepts of nature structure the ideas of canonical
thinkers. Political ecology is too often treated like a specialty shop in
the theory emporium, a boutique that one enters or not according to the
inclinations of taste. In fact, its insights recast the central concerns
of political theory broadly conceived. Just as feminists have uncovered
how gendered concepts are woven throughout the entire fabric of political
discourse, so ecological political theorists demonstrate how nature in
multiple guises (wildness, savagery, emotional connectedness, fecundity,
scarcity, etc.) subtly inflects the meaning of notions of rights, justice,
and human well-being. In this regard, Biro's perceptive analyses of
Rousseau and Marx—like John Meyer's reading of Aristotle and
Hobbes in Political Nature (2001)—add heft to a growing
literature that, in the name of environmental concern, wrings new meaning
from familiar theorists.