ABSTRACT

The anthropocentrism of conservationist arguments allowed greater receptivity to the social dimensions of environmental concern, whereas the wilderness preoccupation of preservationist positions was often attacked for its elitism. "Green politics" developed as an amalgamation of environmental, peace, social justice, and women's movements, challenging the anthropocentric, technocratic, patriarchal, colonialist, militarist perspectives that damage both the natural world and social relations. Wondering about the origins of people industrial society understandably leads to curiosity about pre-historic humankind. Given a lack of hard evidence concerning the character of early hominid cultures, however, the exercise has typically evolved into more of an image of the observers than the observed. Norse, Egyptian, or early Greek mythologies paint a common picture of the gods—plural—as immanent in nature. The Hebraic tradition that eventually distinguished itself from the pagan mystery cults and other polytheistic traditions of surrounding empires initiated a slow transition away from an integrative animism and toward a binaried view of man and nature.