Human Ecology

Arguing for environmentally sustainable lifestyles, this envisages a new kind of consciousness based on the notion of the individual as an agent mediating between society and the environment. We face an environmental catastrophe of global proportions. The ecological rationality of modern society, and of science in particular, is in question. Science still responds to crises at the level of technocratic expertise, and still treats society as an adaptive system. By bringing together a number of integrative approaches to the human-environment problem, Human Ecology shapes a more radical, fundamental agenda for change. The book creates a framework for a cohesive discourse, for a "new human ecology". From the notion that the individual person is an agent mediating between society and environment, the individual contributors recognize that the environmental crisis is really a crisis of society - manifesting itself in an increasing fragmentation of lives in general and knowledge in particular. Arguing for environmentally sustainable lifestyles, the book envisages a new kind of consciousness and a new environment.