Environmental Citizenship. Andrew Dobson and Derek Bell, eds. 2006. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 296 pp. $125.00 hardcover; $24.00 paperback.

Citizenship and the Environment. Andrew Dobson. 2003. Oxford University Press, New York. 227 pp. $119.95 hardcover; $39.95 paperback.

Western political culture has proven itself to be remarkably durable. Despite the vicissitudes of the last twenty-five hundred years, many of its core beliefs and philosophical assumptions are still intact and continue to exert considerable influence on our contemporary political discourse. Perhaps the most venerable political construct to have survived from classical antiquity is the concept of citizenship. The ancient Greeks believed that the good life could only be achieved by the direct and active participation of the individual in the public sphere. That the Greeks explicitly privileged the public space of politics over the private space of the home is made clear by their use of the term “idiot” to characterize people who did not participate in the affairs of the political community or polis.