ABSTRACT
The alienation from nature that is foundational to so much of the industrialised world has also left its imprint on academic thought; and this trend has become even more firmly established since the mid-1980s. This chapter explores some of the ways that anthropology may sometimes unwittingly legitimate industrialism's destruction of the natural world, redefining humanity according to an industrial template and framing nature as the formless raw material out of which industrial products are manufactured. Academic knowledge about 'human life in the world' tends to be polarised between a culture-free natural science and a culturally focused social science which pays only lip-service to nature. The value difference ascribed to the human and the non-human realms is a central ideological component of industrialism, and the critique of anthropocentrism has an important place within the broader critique of industrialism's impact on the natural world.
