‘Nature’ in deep ecology and social ecology: Contesting the core

Abstract

'Nature' is a core principle in ecological political thought, and if political ecology has contributed anything new to the discipline of political theory, then part of what that consists in is the placing of the 'human-nature relationship' at the centre of theoretical concern. This notwithstanding, ecological political thought, and its analysis, has tended to focus upon the 'ecocentric-anthropocentric divide', and the normative question on 'values in nature' to the extent that conceptual differences about the 'nature of nature' in ecological thought have been somewhat neglected. Here I explore differing decontestations of nature in deep ecology and social ecology, and assess their import for the different normative arguments each of these eco-variant ideologies makes for human action in the natural world. I show that these different decontestations of nature are crucial to this normative argument, and that this has important implications for the study of ecological political thought.