In this episode of Urban Nature, Kate Soper and Gabriel Kozlowski discuss the multiple meanings of Nature alongside issues related to environmental activism, feminism and the need for a cultural and economic shift towards a post-growth society and an alternative concept of hedonism. She emphasizes the need for a new political imaginary that challenges current consumerist and growth-driven lifestyles, promoting a path towards a more socially and environmentally just future.
“Nature comes in as a kind of essential, fundamental concept through which we recognize our ontological distinctness from the world we inhabit.” – Kate Soper, Professor of Philosophy
“There can’t be any talk of the nature-culture relationship without some understanding of what comes under those respective concepts. Even if we set that the ontological gap between humanity and nature is early staging, we still need to accept the importance of some kind of balanced distinction here, a difference of conceptual reach, as it were.” – Kate Soper, Professor of Philosophy
“I see the promotion of an alternative cultural politics and prosperity as a first step and transitional means to creating a mandate for a form of governance committed to the post-growth project and the transformative policies that it would require.” – Kate Soper, Professor of Philosophy