".
(Smith, 1984:65).
Furthermore, Smith was also implying that capitalist societies not only interacted, interfered and altered the natural world but materially produced it (Castree, 2001a). Therefore, it would appear that what Smith was offering was an alternative to the dualism of external and universal concepts of nature i.e. that nature is God-given and autonomous and is a separate realm. According to Smith, such concepts of nature are nothing more than mere ideologies of nature that provided a backbone to the bourgeois ideology of nature. .
In this respect, as Castree (2000) underlines, the "production of nature" approach is quite different to the technocentric and ecocentric worldviews. Technocentrics believe science and technology can improve nature in the interests of humans whereas ecocentrics place nature first, attempting to save and preserve it. What both have in common, however, is the fact that both share an external view of nature unlike the "production of nature" approach that no longer sees nature as a separate sphere legitimising existing or new economic, social and environmental arrangements. For Smith, nature and society are interrelated. In short, nature is social "all the way down" (Castree, 2001b:15). .
Capitalism, Science and The Production of Nature.
But how does nature fit into the capitalist system and how is it produced? Marx himself provides an interesting starting point in that under capitalism:.
" nature becomes for the first time simply an object for mankind, purely a matter of utility; it ceases to be recognised as a power in its own right; and the theoretical knowledge of its independent laws appears only as a stratagem designed to subdue it to human requirements, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production." .
(Marx quoted in Harvey, 1978:227-228).
Thus what Marx is stating is that capitalist society and its quest for accumulation pushes over the limits of growth.
