This book analyzes the culture of nature, that is, the ways humans view nature and their relationship to it. It examines the material side of the relationship between social action and the processes of nature, and develops a sociology of environmental degradation.

Preface -- The Intensification of Rationalization and Its Alternatives -- Rationalization Under the Premise of Plasticity -- Rationalization and Ecological Irrationality -- Rationalization Under the Premise of Greenness -- Rerationalization -- Derationalization -- The Sociology of Environmental Degradation -- The Political Economy of Waste -- Accounting for Waste and Accountability for Waste -- Environmental Classes and Environmental Conflict -- Toward a Symbiotic Relationship with Nature -- Science and Applied Science as Partial Knowledge -- Parasitism: A "Light Cloak" or an "Iron Cage"?

Raymond Murphy is professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is author of Rationality and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry into a Changing Relationship (WestviewPress 1994).