Consequently, they aim to develop radical economic transformations in a quest for a new means to organise a sound production of nature (Smith 1996). The aim of this paper is to analyse this approach to understanding the human-nature relationship. Subsequently, the paper is divided into three strands. First, it attempts to position the "production of nature" approach, underlining how nature is produced within capitalist societies. Secondly, the paper will attempt to add some depth to the understanding of the approach through utilising two case studies, primarily work by Boyd (2001) on factory farmed chickens and Kloppenburg's (1988) study of hybrid seeds in the U.S. Finally, the paper will turn attention to critically evaluating the approach through a study of the critical literature of the "production of nature" and will question whether the approach is a sound lens with which to analyse contemporary ecological dilemmas or whether it is intrinsically flawed.
The "Production of Nature" Argument.
"With the appearance over the last decade of a set of new and uniquely powerful genetic technologies, we are poised on the edge of an era in which humanity will be "making" natural history" .
(Kloppenburg, 1988:2).
The production of nature argument was originally developed by Neil Smith (1984), a Marxist geographer, in his seminal work Uneven Development which built upon David Harvey's (1978) paper Population, resources and the ideology of science. Here, Harvey suggested that over-population was a problem, not of a scarcity of resources, but of ecological limits to socio-economic systems, suggesting, to some extent, that there was a link between nature and society. Smith, building on Marxist interpretations, argued that there was a unity between nature and society:.
"As soon as human beings separated themselves from animals by beginning to produce their own means of subsistence, they began moving themselves closer and closer to the centre of nature.