In a critical reinterpretation of the idea of the 'disenchantment of nature', this provocative and timely book argues that contemporary ideas and practices concerning nature and technology remain closely bound up with religious ways of thinking and acting. Using examples from North America, Europe and elsewhere, many derived from original research, it reinterprets a range of 'secular' phenomena in terms of their conditioning by a complex series of transformations of the sacred in Western history. The contemporary practices of environmental politics, technological risk behaviour, alternative medicine, vegetarianism and ethical consumption take on new significance as sites of struggle between different sacral orderings. Nature, Technology and the Sacred introduces a radically new direction for today's critical discourse concerning nature and technology, one that reinstates it as a moment within the ongoing religious history of the West.
- ISBN10 0470774312
- ISBN13 9780470774311
- Publish Date 28 February 2008 (first published 12 September 2004)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
- Imprint Wiley-Blackwell
- Pages 240
- Language English