Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Wandering signifier

Two books on nature
by
September 2025, no. 479

Beyond Green by Lesley Head

Melbourne University Press, $39.99 pb, 252 pp

Buy this book

Human/Nature by Jane Rawson

NewSouth, $34.99 pb, 213 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

Wandering signifier

Two books on nature
by
September 2025, no. 479

The idea of ‘green politics’ is implicitly self-limiting. Unlike the blue that we associate with the right, or the red we associate with the left, green is taken to refer to the substance of a political ideology: to the natural world of plants and trees, to ‘pristine’ nature and ‘unspoiled’ wilderness. As such, it tends to reproduce a simplistic distinction between humanity and nature – a distinction that is inseparable from the very environmental crises through which green politics proposes to steer us. Consciously or otherwise, environmentalism is constructed as something to do with the world’s ‘green spaces’, as opposed to a politics of human transformation.

Beyond Green

Beyond Green

by Lesley Head

Melbourne University Press, $39.99 pb, 252 pp

Buy this book
Human/Nature

Human/Nature

by Jane Rawson

NewSouth, $34.99 pb, 213 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.