ABSTRACT

This chapter suggests that the conception of a plastic relationship of humans to the natural environment needs to be replaced by a conception of it as elastic. The plasticity premise is the cultural support for discounting the effect of dumping waste in the environment, for depleting its resources, and degrading it. The assumption of a relationship between humans and nature characterized by plasticity and related goal of mastering nature underlie the work of Marx and Marxists. Naive assumptions about the plasticity of the relationship of humans to nature, and about social constructions mastering nature, confront a growing realization of the implasticity of the relationship between humans and their environment. The assumption that society determines what humans find appealing — and hence that they could be socialized without injury to find plastic trees and an artificial environment more appealing than nature — constitutes an extreme social determinism.