Inhuman nature: sociable life on a dynamic planet

Abstract

The book is an attempt to rethink human social life through our ongoing immersion in and engagment with earth processes. It responds to the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the threat of abrupt climate change, recent outbreaks of wildfire in Australia and other events which remind us just how volatile our earth can be. While attentive to the current environmental predicament, it locates the issue of human-induced change in the broader context of dwelling on a planet which the natural sciences are discovering is more turbulent and unpredictable than most of us had previously imagined. Recognising that human lives are inherently vulnerable, Inhuman Nature also suggests that there is a vast reservoir of experience inscribed in communities, bodies, landscapes, stories and objects that is to do with making it through the variability of earth processes. As well as conversing with the earth and life sciences, the book taps into some recent themes in social theory and philosophy about the agency of more-than-human things, and about care, responsiveness and hospitality. The introduction has been provided.