Exploring the changing significance of nature in daily life, this text demonstrates that nature is irreducibly contested and embedded in highly diverse and ambivalent social practices.

Demonstrating that all notions of nature are inextricably entangled in different forms of social life, the text elaborates the many ways in which the apparently natural world has been produced from within particular social practices. These are analyzed in terms of different senses, different times and the production of distinct spaces, including the local, the national and the global. The authors emphasize the importance of cultural understandings of the physical world, highlighting the ways in which these have been routinely misunderstood by academic and policy discourses. They show that popular conceptions of, and attitudes to, nature are often contradictory and that there are no simple ways of prevailing upon people to 'save the environment'.

PART ONE: RETHINKING NATURE AND SOCIETY Introduction Nature and Society

A Historical Context A Sociology of Environmental Knowledges Cultural Readings of Nature Environmental Bads Environmentalism and Society Conclusion PART TWO: INVENTING NATURE Introduction Postwar Reconstruction and Rational Nature To Nature as Environment Inventing British Environmentalism Post-Rio Environmentalism Conclusion PART THREE: HUMANS AND NATURE Introduction The Polling Culture and the Environment A Relational Framework

Rhetoric, Identity and Nature

Globalization, Agency and Trust PART FOUR: SENSING NATURE Introduction Nature, Space and Vision Nature and the Other Senses Conclusion PART FIVE: NATURE AND TIME Introduction The Social Sciences and Time Different Times in and of Nature Memories of Nature PART SIX: NATURE AS COUNTRYSIDE INTRODUCTION Producing Countryside Spaces Landscapes of Discipline The Countryside and Ambivalence Spatial Practices in the Countryside PART SEVEN: SUSTAINING NATURE Introduction Sustainability as New Public Discourse Sustainability Discourse and Daily Practice Framing Environmental Concerns Conclusion PART EIGHT: GOVERNING NATURE Summarizing Mad Cows Globalizing the Nation Governing Nature