eutrophication, including phosphorus mining,

and heat exchange technologies. The main

shortcoming of this collection is the imbalance
between the three parts, with over 80% of the
book comprising of part one (physical, chemical
and biological processes) and the remaining
20% of the focus split between impacts on soci-
eties and mitigation approaches. Readers with
an interest in climate change will nd this book
challenging and informative; however, its target
audience is those with a good general back-
ground in physical sciences towards the gradu-
ate and professional level.
Sarah Mager
University of Otago
Making sense of nature
Noel Castree, Routledge, New York, 2014. 376
pp. ISBN 978-0-415-54550-1.
Noel Castrees newest book seeks to make
sense of nature by analysing what different
representations of nature do, how they shape
our ideas, beliefs and actions, and who the
important epistemic communities that make
sense of nature for us (the public) are. This text,
therefore, supplements an existing, and large
body of geography literature that refutes the
idea of nature as a distinct material domain
(p. 5), literature that Castree has contributed a
great deal to already. Yet it diverges from these
texts in that Making Sense of Nature shifts
beyond debates rooted in geography and
instead draws on theoretical work and case
studies from multiple disciplines, including cul-
tural history and molecular biology. He does
this to build an argument that we, as the public,
need to pay careful attention to the epistemic
communities we rely upon and what effects this
reliance produces.
Making Sense of Nature is organised into
three parts. Part one consists of three chapters
that set out what the author understands as
nature. These three chapters are deeply theo-
retical and are very important for orienting
the reader for the rest of the book. Part two
applies the tools laid out in the previous
section, drawing extensively on the research of
others to provide illuminating and clear exam-
ples. Some of the examples will be well known
to most geographers (for instance, Bruce
Brauns study of contestations over forestry in
British Colombia); nevertheless, Castree effec-
tively employs these case studies to explicitly
illuminate the politics of how nature is repre-
sented. Part three explores two important
epistemic communities and their roles in
shaping understandings of nature, rstly con-
sidering the mass media and then scientic
expertise. Throughout this section, Castree
argues that given our dependence on these
epistemic communities for knowledge and its
communication, we must carefully consider
how they are regulated and the role of the
public in doing so (or not).
The utility of Making Sense of Nature is
enhanced through a suite of additional sections
at the back of the book, including a glossary of
important terms as well as a section on key
sources and suggestions for further reading
(sources that resonate with Castrees aims and
focus in Making Sense of Nature are also high-
lighted in bold in the reference list). Peppered
throughout the text are study tasks, questions
and exercises that prompt readers to examine
their own beliefs and membership of epistemic
communities among other things. Mostly, these
study tasks are deeply interesting and could
be a very effective tool for teachers of upper-
level undergraduate, but mostly postgraduate,
classes. Castree usefully eshes out how the
book might be used as a teaching tool in a
section entitled how to use this book, which
includes summaries of the core themes in each
chapter. This monograph is also intended as a
go-to text for graduate students exploring
nature, a function it will serve well.
In some respects, however, it is a text best
supplemented closely. Specically, there is little
space dedicated to engaging with Indigenous
ways of making sense of nature and (post)co-
lonial power relations that have constrained
the expression of these knowledges. In addi-
tion, some sections of this book were quite
inaccessible, mostly in part one as the author
deals with complex and contested concepts that
have been developed within a number of dif-
ferent disciplines. In these sections, the author
could have drawn less on the quotes of others
and relied more on his clear and enjoyable
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Book Reviews 82
2014 New Zealand Geographical Society
writing style that was evident in the large
majority of the book.
Despite these shortcomings, overall, this
book is incredibly well and widely researched,
and is a timely stocktake as conventional ideas
of naturalness become increasingly murky
within the Anthropocene. The case studies
Castree explored were interesting and
provocative. His meticulous examination and
critique of the nature society binaries that
have made bestiality taboo in the extreme in
Western society, for instance, left me thinking
long after I put the book down (although
I did not entirely agree with all of his
arguments regarding consent). As Castree
intended, this book equips the reader with
some of the tools necessary for understanding
the work of others in shaping what we know
as nature, some of the effects of this work, and
the tools to interrogate the range and place
of these representations within a vibrant
democracy.
Amanda Thomas
Victoria University of Wellington
Geomorphic analysis of river systems:
An approach to reading the landscape
Kirstie A. Fryirs and Gary J. Brierly, Wiley-
Blackwell, Chichester, UK, 2012. 360 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4051-9274-3.
Rivers are a crucial and complex component
of both nature and civilisation. In a fundamen-
tal sense, they are the long-distance agents
that transport sediments across the sub-aerial
parts of the planet, redistributing planet-wide
the solid material uplifted by mountain-
building processes. Ecosystems and society
depend critically on the behaviour of rivers
and the water, sediment and nutrients they
carry. However, rivers are poorly understood;
when it is considered that the water ow in
any river is unsteady and non-uniform at a
wide range of scales, carries sediment of all
sizes, and ows in channels of complex geom-
etries that alter because of water ow and
sediment motion, the difculty of understand-
ing and managing rivers becomes apparent.
Because of this, predictions of river behaviour
must depend deeply on empirical knowledge
of how rivers have behaved in the past,
and much of this knowledge is inevitably
qualitative.
The book being reviewed is also largely
qualitative in its analyses and descriptions, and
this may surprise those who approach rivers
as a problem in physics within a complex
landscape context. Nevertheless, the content,
though qualitative, is of value to future river
scientists and managers, and is probably a
better approach to understanding interactions
between rivers and society than a more deter-
ministic methodology.
First and foremost, this is a book written by
geographers for geographers. The text strongly
reects the authors own experience, much of
which relates to river systems in Australia. My
own experience has been largely in high-
energy mountain rivers, and I have assessed
the book mainly from that perspective; given
the wide audience at which the book is aimed,
this is presumably justied. From this perspec-
tive, the inuence of tectonics and other land-
scape processes on river style, and vice versa,
has been underemphasised. From a broader
perspective, the book contains a large quantity
of descriptions of river types and behaviours
and attempts to systematise these. The for-
mer attribute makes it an extremely valuable
resource for a student who wants to acquire a
lot of knowledge about rivers quickly. I was
less convinced by the systematisation, but
this was probably because of my inability to
assimilate the lengthy passages of descriptive
text and my lack of familiarity with the lan-
guage of the River Styles context. Others
more comfortable with geographical dis-
course will likely nd the systematisation
more satisfactory.
The book deals to some extent with the
mechanical aspects of both river ow and sedi-
ment transport but in a somewhat unconvinc-
ing way. For example, the topic of impelling
and resisting forces is given its own chapter,
presumably as a basis for the following
geomorphic analyses. However, what is being
impelled or resisted is not clear. Presumably it
is water, but if so, why is boundary shear stress,
which is applied by the water to the boundary
in the ow direction and by the boundary to the
water in the opposite direction, listed as an
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Book Reviews 83
2014 New Zealand Geographical Society