tation of ecology difficult: the emergence of nature as a new concern
in politics, and the disappearance of nature as a mode of political
organization.
The Pitfall of “Social Representations” of Nature
In the first section of this chapter, we distinguished the sciences from
Science, and in the second, political ecology fromNaturpolitik.We are
now going to have to carry out a third displacement if we want to
draw the maximum benefit from this favorable conjunction between
science studies and the ecology movement. It seems to be the case that
the most sophisticated of the human sciences have also long since
abandoned the notion of nature, by showing that we never have im-
mediate access to “nature in general”; humans only gain access, ac-
cording to the historians, the psychologists, the sociologists, and the
anthropologists, through the mediation of history, of culture—which
are specifically social and mental categories. By also asserting for my
part that the expression “nature in general” has no meaning, I seem to
be reconnecting with the good sense of the human sciences. In short,
from this vantage point it is simply a matter of asking the militant
ecologists to stop being so naive as to believe that they are defending,
under cover of nature, something other than a particular viewpoint,
that of Westerners. When they speak of putting an end to anthro-
pocentrism, they manifest their own ethnocentrism.^38 Unfortunately,
if one believes that my argument based on political epistemology
amounts to saying that “no one is capable of evading social representa-
tions of nature,” then my effort is doomed. In other words, I now have
to worry not that my readers will reject my argument, but that they
will seize it too hastily, confusing my critique of the philosophy of
ecology with the theme of the “social construction” of nature!
At first glance, though, it seems difficult to get along without the
help that is offered by works on the history of attitudes toward nature.
Excellent historians have demonstrated this quite convincingly: the
way fourth-century Greeks conceived of nature has nothing to do with
the way nineteenth-century Englishmen did, or eighteenth-century
Frenchmen, not to mention the Chinese, the Malay, or the Sioux.^39 “If
you are trying to tell us that these changing conceptions of nature re-
flect the political conceptions of the societies that developed them,
POLITICS OF NATURE
32