Michael Bell has given us an extraordinary and ambitious book. Addressing the entanglements of nature, religion and society over the course of three millennia the book is packed with new insights, powerful analysis and – even, that endangered species! – sociological wisdom. Arguments are introduced and illustrated with compelling personal stories, travel narratives about interesting places, and developed in conversation with captivating characters. The result is a well-crafted treatise that is a pleasure to read, and the reader is left with the feeling of having had a somewhat one-sided conversation with an interesting, sage, and opinionated interlocutor. Bell is at his most compelling in discussing the social development of our understandings of nature and how those understandings intertwine with social practices and relations. He charts this evolution from the time before anyone had a concept of nature in itself (he calls it ‘nature before nature’). His story winds through to the development of nature as a transcendent source of moral good (‘second nature’) via detours to nature as a moral bad (‘third nature’). The predominant modern conception of ‘second nature’, for all its real contributions to environmental awareness and recognition of the need for conservation, also poses real, and often unrecognised danger: the absolute good of nature has an amazing capacity for ‘naturalising’ social relations. Bell goes further than the usual sociological resistance to arguments from nature, but makes us question the assumption that nature is both inherently good and intrinsically apolitical. He asks how we came to such an understanding, itself now taken as ‘natural’. This book is clearly the fruit of many years’ study in the sociology of agroecology, and it will provide much sustenance for the important task of environmental challenges that grow more salient by the year. The most important distinction that Bell makes in his analysis of the historical development of religion is between the pagan and the bourgeois, terms he takes in the antique sense, and that connect back to the different conceptions of nature in this ‘big history’. 957929 ISS0010.1177/0268580920957929International Sociology ReviewsReviews: Environment review-article2020

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Michael Mayerfeld Bell，美好之城：自然、宗教和对正确事物的古代探索

迈克尔贝尔给了我们一本非凡而雄心勃勃的书。这本书解决了三千年来自然、宗教和社会的纠葛，充满了新的见解、强有力的分析，甚至还有濒临灭绝的物种！——社会学智慧。通过引人入胜的个人故事、关于有趣地方的旅行叙述来介绍和说明论点，并在与迷人人物的对话中发展。结果是一本精心制作的论文，读起来很愉快，读者会感觉自己与一位有趣、睿智且固执己见的对话者进行了有点片面的对话。贝尔在讨论我们对自然理解的社会发展以及这些理解如何与社会实践和关系交织在一起时，最为引人注目。他描绘了在任何人对自然本身有概念之前（他称之为“自然先于自然”）的演变过程。他的故事通过绕道将自然视为道德坏事（“第三自然”），将自然发展为道德善（“第二自然”）的超然来源。现代占主导地位的“第二自然”概念，尽管它对环境意识和对保护必要性的认识做出了所有真正的贡献，但也带来了真实的、往往未被认识到的危险：自然的绝对善具有“自然化”社会关系的惊人能力. 贝尔比通常的社会学抵制来自自然的论点走得更远，但让我们质疑自然既是内在善又在本质上与政治无关的假设。他问我们是如何达成这样一种理解的，而这种理解现在被认为是“自然的”。这本书显然是生态农业社会学多年研究的成果，它将为日益突出的环境挑战这一重要任务提供大量的支撑。 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 贝尔在他对宗教历史发展的分析中所做的最重要的区分是异教徒和资产阶级之间的区别，他采用的是古老意义上的术语，并与这段“大历史”中的不同自然概念联系起来。957929 ISS0010.1177/0268580920957929国际社会学评论评论：环境评论-文章2020 贝尔在他对宗教历史发展的分析中所做的最重要的区分是异教徒和资产阶级之间的区别，他采用的是古老意义上的术语，并与这段“大历史”中的不同自然概念联系起来。957929 ISS0010.1177/0268580920957929国际社会学评论评论：环境评论-文章2020 贝尔在他对宗教历史发展的分析中所做的最重要的区分是异教徒和资产阶级之间的区别，他采用的是古老意义上的术语，并与这段“大历史”中的不同自然概念联系起来。957929 ISS0010.1177/0268580920957929国际社会学评论评论：环境评论-文章2020