ABSTRACT
In Paul Connerton’s definition, modernity is dominated by the exponential growth of the capitalist world market ‘from the mid nineteenth century accelerating to the present’ (Connerton, 2009, p. 4). The work of purification carried out by scientists in laboratories becomes a generalised mode of thought and action. Nature no longer encompasses only a domain to be explored and used as resource for material production, but entire people are construed as nature; feminine-identified nature, although not a novel concept in mid-nineteenth century, now becomes one of the underpinning concepts in medical, political, and economic philosophies in ways that influence social actors’ performance of gender identities; and in the dominant Western world view, the immense colonial spaces under Western rule are represented as realms of ungovernable nature to be tamed and conquered, realms separated from ‘proper’ culture, yet realms that provide resources for the creation of Western material culture and the cultural imaginary.
