INTRODUCTION

Of all the words discussed in this book, ‘nature’ is the most fraught with conflict, and it is obviously in the field of definitions of nature that ecology is contested. This chapter closes the book and opens out further ways of articulating the body, the city and capitalism through food. It accounts for developments in ecological writing, including the new prose on ‘Romantic ecology’. If the Shelleys and their circle speak to us of waste and flow, populations and poison, the dangers and benefits of capitalism, the corruptions of a certain kind of ‘materialism’ and the reform which will green the desert and sustain life for all, then may they be considered to be speaking ecologically, and with what sort of dialect?

The first section discusses the discourse of famine in Shelley's debate with Malthus. Since the contemporary arguments about famine and population are so vigorous, it seems an apt beginning. To focus on famine may help to ground further discussions of ecology in the ‘politics of the body’.