Mother / Nature Popular Culture and Environmental Ethics [Paperback]

This brief but ambitious book explores our relationship with nature through the imagery we use when we talk about Mother Nature. Employing the critical tools of religious studies, psychology, and gender studies, Catherine M. Roach examines the various manifestations of nature as mother and what that idea implies for the way we approach the natural world. Part One, Nature as Good Mother, discusses the notion that nature is, or is like, a beneficent and nurturing mother who provides and maintains life. In studying the green slogan Love Your Mother, Roach questions the effectsfor women and for the environmentof imputing female gender to nature. She asks us to look at the associations that motherhood and mothering carry within a culture still shaped by patriarchy. She notes the danger of such an apparently pro-environmental slogan if mother evokes the bountiful, self-sacrificing provider who herself requires no care.

Part Two, Nature as Bad Mother, looks at the contrary notion of nature as a violent, threatening, and wrathful mother. This image arises most often when humans and technology are depicted as masters of unruly nature. Here Roach draws on theological reflection to analyze this ambivalence toward nature manifested in a fantasy that casts humans as gods. She explores the contributions of eco-theology and eco-psychology to a heart of darkness perspective. Finally, Part Three, Nature as Hurt Mother, looks at possibilities and pitfalls of environmental healing inherent in the image of nature as a mother we have wounded and now seek to heal.

Catherine M. Roach is Assistant Professor of New College and Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

Preliminary Table of Contents:

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: 1. Wilderness-Within and Without
Part I: Nature as Good Mother
2. Love Your Mother
3. Mothers and Mother Nature
Part II: Nature as Bad Mother
4. She Will Try To Drown You
5. Splã7