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Although modernity's understanding of nature and culture has now been superseded by that of environmentalism, the power to define the meaning of both, and hence the meaning of the world itself, remains in the same (Western) hands. This bold argument is at the center of this provocative book that challenges the widespread assumption that environmentalism reflects a radical departure from modernity. Our perception of nature may have changed, the author maintains, but environmentalism remains a thoroughly modernist project. It reproduces the cultural logic of modernity, a logic that finds meaning in unity and therefore strives to efface difference, and to reconfirm the position of the West as the source of all legitimate signification.

Vassos Argyrou lectures in Social Anthropology at the University of Hull. His research interests include social and cultural theory, poststructuralism and postcolonialism and southern Europe. Publications include Tradition and Modernity in the Mediterranean (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Anthropology and the Will to Meaning: A Postcolonial Critique (Pluto Press 2002).