A Reenchanted World
The Quest for a New Kinship with Nature
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A surprising and enlightening investigation of how modern society is making nature sacred once again
For more than two centuries, Western cultures, as they became ever more industrialized, increasingly regarded the natural world as little more than a collection of useful raw resources. The folklore of powerful forest spirits and mountain demons was displaced by the practicalities of logging and strip-mining; the traditional rituals of hunting ceremonies gave way to the indiscriminate butchering of animals for meat markets. In the famous lament of Max Weber, our surroundings became "disenchanted," with nature's magic swept away by secularization and rationalization.
But now, as acclaimed sociologist James William Gibson reveals in this insightful study, the culture of enchantment is making an astonishing comeback. From Greenpeace eco-warriors to evangelical Christians preaching "creation care" and geneticists who speak of human-animal kinship, Gibson finds a remarkably broad yearning for a spiritual reconnection to nature. As we grapple with increasingly dire environmental disasters, he points to this cultural shift as the last utopian dream—the final hope for protecting the world that all of us must live in.
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According to Gibson (Warrior Dreams), "No political movement ... can account for the intensity of feeling expressed by those... who experience an attachment to animals and places so overwhelming that they feel morally compelled to protect them, and who look to nature for psychic regeneration and renewal." He follows the thread of the "recently recovered tradition of Native American spiritualism" and historical figures who rejected a mechanical view of modernism Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, John Muir, Rachel Carson arguing that "out of these shards of history came the new culture of enchantment" and a paradigm that stresses a relationship with rather than dominion over other species. The rise of the "reenchantment of nature" is not all sweetness and light; Gibson notes the ecological damage caused by enthusiastic nature tourists and evangelicals' backlash against "nature worship" as idolatry. But the book's message is passionately optimistic. Gibson believes that the cultural transformation gathering momentum and "coupled with political courage to act" can "remake the world."
