ABSTRACT
This chapter explores in more detail the arguments for non-exploitative relationships between society and nature. It outlines something of the extensive history of calls for the establishment of non-exploitative relationships with nature, the forms of argument made and the social context in which they have been placed. The chapter focuses on Occidental thought, which has sought to challenge technocentric values and that may therefore be seen to promote a broadly ecocentric perspective on society and nature. Romanticism is commonly used to refer to a cluster of ideas adopted by many artists, musicians, poets and writers in Europe and North America from the late eighteenth century. The numbers of people travelling to spectacularised nature and other countrysides raised, in the minds of many, the possibility that their Romantic experience would be undermined by the opening up of such areas to an increasing number of people.
