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The relationship between ontology, realism, and normativity is complex and contentious. While naturalist and realist stances have tended to ground questions of normativity in ontology and accounts of human nature, critical theories have been critical of the relationship between ontological and normative projects. Queer theory in particular has been critical of ontological endeavors. Exploring the problem of normativity and ontology, this paper will make the case that the critical realist ontology of open systems and complex, contingent, conjunctural causation deeply resonates with queer theory, generating a queer ontology that both allows for and undermines ontological and normative projects.

Human dignity is a crucial concept in international and domestic human rights law. It is understood to be the foundation of human rights, and while we know what human rights are, the nature, content, and grounds of human dignity remain unclear. The aim of this chapter is to propose scientific grounds for human dignity. In this context, the author will explore contemporary evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, where it is claimed that human nature is constituted by tendencies to cooperate (Tomasello, 2009), or under a different formulation, by narrow altruism and imperfect prudence (Załuski, 2009). Evolutionary psychology holds that we have basic tendencies to cooperate with one another and to behave altruistically in order to achieve a common good. This means that our basic evolutionary default and scientifically proven mode of being are optimistic and can be labelled as morally good. The author argues that this human nature constitutes scientific grounds for human dignity. The author’s argument holds that since human dignity comprises the inherent worth of every human being, this positive moral fact about the scientifically understood human nature is human dignity. The author then present this issue within two broader philosophical frameworks of analytic philosophy – namely, naturalism (especially methodological naturalism) and metaphysical realism. Following this, the author contends that references to natural sciences in debates on the foundations of human dignity and human rights argue against the strongest objection to human rights – the objection of Western ethnocentrism.

This work addresses what Michael E. Brown calls the immanence of sociality to individuality. It does so by focusing on the essentially social nature of human consciousness. I explore Durkheim’s analysis of human consciousness, beginning with totemism and concluding with his analysis of German consciousness at the time of World War I. I do so in order to provide some insight into the rise and nature of political movements, with a focus on extreme right wing political groups and leaders today as well as the spirit of the French Revolution in European and American history. With reference to Marx’s early writings on consciousness, spiritual nourishment, and the fettering of forces of production and his later writings on the critical significance of fetishism, and the role of “fictitious” capital, I conclude by claiming that bringing together the insights of Durkheim, Marx, and Spinoza can provide a way to analyze and address the interlocking social, political, economic, and cultural crises of today.

Aboriginal people across Australia have diverse practices, beliefs and knowledges based on thousands of generations of managing and protecting their lands (Country). The intimate relationship Aboriginal people have with their Country is explored in this chapter because such knowledge is important for building insight into the relationship between social and ecological systems. Often in research Aboriginal views have been marginalised from discussions focused on their lands to the detriment of ecosystems and human health. This chapter aims to understand if such marginalisation is evident in Western human–nature relationship discourses.

This chapter provides a critical literature review which examines whether Aboriginal people’s diverse understanding of their ecosystems have been incorporated into human–nature theories using the biophilia hypothesis as a starting point. Other concepts explored include solastalgia, topophilia and place.

Critiques of these terminologies in the context of Aboriginal people’s connection to Country are limited but such incorporation is viewed in the chapter as a possible mechanism for better understanding human’s connection to nature. The review identified that Aboriginal people’s relationship to Country seems to be underrepresented in the human–nature theory literature.

This chapter emphasises that the integration of Aboriginal perspectives into research, ecological management and policy can provide better insight into the interrelationships between social and ecological systems.

Purpose – This paper explores a pervasive yet little explored myth that underlies much marketing theory and practice: living in harmony with nature. While previous research typically presents “harmony with nature” as something consumers can easily find by returning to a benevolent “Mother Nature,” the current research problematizes how “harmony with nature” is discursively constructed in contemporary advertisements.

Methodology/approach – This paper traces the visual genealogy of contemporary advertising imagery to explore different discursive constructions of the harmony myth. Over 600 advertisements published in Backpacker magazine between 2007 and 2009 form the database for this research.

Findings – Drawing on a more nuanced understanding of the organic framework of nature, and representations of nature in the artistic genre of Romantic landscape painting, the current research finds that divergent images of an “Arcadian” and “Dynamic” nature give rise to different constructions of harmony that are fraught with tension. Harmony might be as easily lost as it is found, or it might never be achieved at all.

Originality/value of paper – This research shows that living in harmony with nature is less harmonic than it seems. It extends previous research that adopted an implicitly unproblematic understanding of finding harmony in nature by uncovering nuances and contradictions within contemporary manifestations of the harmony myth. Implications for marketers and for our understanding of the human/nature relationship more generally are offered.

No longer do resource economists merely regard nature as a collection of inert materials to be improved by human labor and manufactured capital; rather, nature is, to an increasing extent, taken to be a mindless producer of economically valuable ecosystem goods and services. Instances of natural capital are frequently said to produce such goods and services in a manner that is relatively detached from human agency. This article argues that, historically, the idea of nature as a systematic original producer capable of self-generation is hardly novel. The eighteenth-century roots of this idea can be found in the writings of Carl Linnaeus who depicted the whole Earth and all of its productions as the “oeconomy of nature.”

Drawing upon Alfred Sohn-Rethel's work, we argue that, just as capitalism produces abstract labor, it coproduces both abstract mind and abstract life. Abstract mind is the split between mind and nature and between subject/observer and observed object that characterizes scientific epistemology. Abstract mind reflects an abstracted objectified world of nature as a means to be exploited. Biological life is rendered as abstract life by capitalist exploitation and by the reification and technologization of organisms by contemporary technoscience. What Alberto Toscano has called “the culture of abstraction” imposes market rationality onto nature and the living world, disrupting biotic communities and transforming organisms into what Finn Bowring calls “functional bio-machines.”

Following particular feminisms that theorise the body as a place where the regulatory practices of racism, classism, sexism and speciesism are ‘inscripted’ or ‘sedimented’, but also understand the body as a site of resistance, a place where oppressive practices can be transgressed and transformed, this chapter explores the relation between ecofeminist theories of oppression, the notion of gender and species performativity and environmental activisms. Ecofeminist philosopher Deborah Slicer has argued that it is not only the human body that is capable of resistance through altering the performances around which identity is congealed but nature too has agency, is a player in processes of disruption and resignification. Ecopolitical theorist Catriona Sandilands has written about the ‘chain of equivalencies’ that discursively and materially link women, nature, people of colour, the differently-abled, queer folk and so on and has pondered how ‘a politics of performative affinity’ can help to emancipate both humans and the more-than-human world. Taking this brand of ecofeminist ecopolitical theorising as my starting point, I explore the role of environmental and feminist activisms, focusing on two instances of direct action, one from the US radical forest defence movement and one from the 1999 anti-World Trade Organisation (WTO) protests in Seattle, in disrupting hegemonic notions of who or what counts as a political subject and actor. Such actions, I argue, open spaces for subaltern voices, including non-human ones, to be heard. By considering the liberatory political possibilities of viewing species identity performatively, that is, as something that creatures, especially the human critter (to use the vernacular of the US forest defence movement) does rather than is, I suggest that activisms in all their variety are political sites where meaning is made and ecosocial relations configured, in ways that have material consequences for people and other beings of the earth.