Alienations and natures

Abstract The idea of alienation from nature might usefully help to articulate both anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric environmental concerns and the relations between them if the theory involved is appropriately nuanced and pluralistic. Three senses of 'alienation' are distinguished (estrangement, renunciation of ownership, and reification), as are three environmental contexts or senses of 'nature' (the natural world, non-human nature and the humanly constructed environment). These different senses of alienation and nature are then mapped onto one another to produce various senses of 'alienation from or of nature'. It is emphasised that some of these should be viewed as qualified goods. A green political theory focused on alienation needs to consider such different senses of alienation from nature and the relationships between them. Keywords: alienationestrangementreificationnatureenvironmentnon-human Notes 1. In his translator's notes to Marx (2007 [1961]), p. 11. 2. See for example, Soper (1995). 3. Good resources for this, in addition to Soper (1995) and Williams (1990 [1983], pp. 219–224), include Mill (1904 [1874]) and Lewis (1967, pp. 24–74). 4. See for example Vogel (2002, 2011). 5. See Mészáros (2005 [1970], pp. 99–114) for a thorough discussion of the traditional account. 6. As Evernden (1993 [1985]) emphasises, we are ecologically placeless and so must construct our own. 7. Even in the same location as one's own place when the location encompasses cultural heterogeneity as tends to be the case in modern urban areas. See Young 1990, Ch. 8. Cannavò's (2010) account of 'place' draws heavily upon Young's. 8. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this important qualification. 9. See for example Plumwood (2006) and Bennett (2010) for discussion of non-human agentic contributions to otherwise humanised landscapes. 10. My thanks to the anonymous reviewer who raised this issue. 11. See for example my (Hailwood 2011b) criticism of Martha Nussbaum's call for the 'gradual supplanting of the natural with the just' as a requirement of extending justice to non-human animals (Nussbaum 2006, p. 400). For a more extended critical analysis of Nussbaum on this issue see Wissenburg (2011). 12. See Marx (2007 [1961], e.g. pp.102, 105), Benton (1992, p. 68). 13. I expand on this claim in more detail in Hailwood 2011a. 14. My discussion here brackets the degree of estrangement from humanised environments entailed by recognition of human difference.