Nature, Technology and the Sacred

Download or read book Nature, Technology and the Sacred written by Bronislaw Szerszynski and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative and timely book argues that contemporary ideas and practices concerning nature and technology remain closely bound up with religious ways of thinking and acting. Using examples from North America, Europe and elsewhere, it reinterprets a range of 'secular' phenomena in terms of their conditioning by a complex series of transformations of the sacred in Western history. The contemporary practices of environmental politics, technological risk behaviour, alternative medicine, vegetarianism and ethical consumption take on new significance as sites of struggle between different sacral orderings. Nature, Technology and the Sacred introduces a radically new direction for today's critical discourse concerning nature and technology – one that reinstates it as a moment within the ongoing religious history of the West.