ABSTRACT
Before the world was mechanized and industrialized, the metaphor that explained self, society, and the cosmos was the image of organism. This is not surprising since most people were connected with the Earth in their daily lives, living a subsistence existence. The organic metaphor that once explained everything was replaced by mechanical images. By the mid-seventeenth century, society had rationalized the separation of itself from nature. With nature “dead” in this view, exploitation was purely a mechanical function, and it proceeded apace. Ecofeminism gives women and men common ground. While women may have been associated with nature, they have been socialized to think in the same dualities as men have and people feel just as alienated as do their brothers. Bioregionalism means learning to become native to place, fitting ourselves to a particular place, not fitting a place to people's predetermined tastes.
