eutrophication, including phosphorus mining,and heat exchange technologies. The mainshortcoming of this collection is the imbalancebetween the three parts, with over 80% of thebook comprising of part one (physical, chemicaland biological processes) and the remaining20% of the focus split between impacts on soci-eties and mitigation approaches. Readers withan interest in climate change will find this bookchallenging and informative; however, its targetaudience is those with a good general back-ground in physical sciences towards the gradu-ate and professional level.

Sarah MagerUniversity of Otago

Making sense of nature

Noel Castree, Routledge, New York, 2014. 376pp. ISBN 978-0-415-54550-1.

Noel Castree’s newest book seeks to makesense of ‘nature’ by analysing what differentrepresentations of nature do, how they shapeour ideas, beliefs and actions, and who theimportant epistemic communities that makesense of nature for us (the public) are.This text,therefore, supplements an existing, and largebody of geography literature that refutes theidea of nature as a ‘distinct material domain’(p. 5), literature that Castree has contributed agreat deal to already. Yet it diverges from thesetexts in that Making Sense of Nature shiftsbeyond debates rooted in geography andinstead draws on theoretical work and casestudies from multiple disciplines, including cul-tural history and molecular biology. He doesthis to build an argument that we, as the public,need to pay careful attention to the epistemiccommunities we rely upon and what effects thisreliance produces.

Making Sense of Nature is organised intothree parts. Part one consists of three chaptersthat set out what the author understands asnature. These three chapters are deeply theo-retical and are very important for orientingthe reader for the rest of the book. Part twoapplies the tools laid out in the previoussection, drawing extensively on the research of

others to provide illuminating and clear exam-ples. Some of the examples will be well knownto most geographers (for instance, BruceBraun’s study of contestations over forestry inBritish Colombia); nevertheless, Castree effec-tively employs these case studies to explicitlyilluminate the politics of how nature is repre-sented. Part three explores two importantepistemic communities and their roles inshaping understandings of nature, firstly con-sidering the mass media and then scientificexpertise. Throughout this section, Castreeargues that given our dependence on theseepistemic communities for knowledge and itscommunication, we must carefully considerhow they are regulated and the role of thepublic in doing so (or not).

The utility of Making Sense of Nature isenhanced through a suite of additional sectionsat the back of the book, including a glossary ofimportant terms as well as a section on keysources and suggestions for further reading(sources that resonate with Castree’s aims andfocus in Making Sense of Nature are also high-lighted in bold in the reference list). Pepperedthroughout the text are study tasks, questionsand exercises that prompt readers to examinetheir own beliefs and membership of epistemiccommunities among other things. Mostly, thesestudy tasks are deeply interesting and couldbe a very effective tool for teachers of upper-level undergraduate, but mostly postgraduate,classes. Castree usefully fleshes out how thebook might be used as a teaching tool in asection entitled ‘how to use this book’, whichincludes summaries of the core themes in eachchapter. This monograph is also intended as ago-to text for graduate students exploring‘nature’, a function it will serve well.

In some respects, however, it is a text bestsupplemented closely. Specifically, there is littlespace dedicated to engaging with Indigenousways of making sense of nature and (post)co-lonial power relations that have constrainedthe expression of these knowledges. In addi-tion, some sections of this book were quiteinaccessible, mostly in part one as the authordeals with complex and contested concepts thathave been developed within a number of dif-ferent disciplines. In these sections, the authorcould have drawn less on the quotes of othersand relied more on his clear and enjoyable

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writing style that was evident in the largemajority of the book.

Despite these shortcomings, overall, thisbook is incredibly well and widely researched,and is a timely stocktake as conventional ideasof ‘naturalness’ become increasingly murkywithin the Anthropocene. The case studiesCastree explored were interesting andprovocative. His meticulous examination andcritique of the nature society binaries thathave made bestiality taboo in the extreme inWestern society, for instance, left me thinkinglong after I put the book down (althoughI did not entirely agree with all of hisarguments regarding consent). As Castreeintended, this book equips the reader withsome of the tools necessary for understandingthe work of others in shaping what we knowas nature, some of the effects of this work, andthe tools to interrogate the range and placeof these representations within a vibrantdemocracy.

Amanda ThomasVictoria 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 componentof both nature and civilisation. In a fundamen-tal sense, they are the long-distance agentsthat transport sediments across the sub-aerialparts of the planet, redistributing planet-widethe solid material uplifted by mountain-building processes. Ecosystems and societydepend critically on the behaviour of riversand the water, sediment and nutrients theycarry. However, rivers are poorly understood;when it is considered that the water flow inany river is unsteady and non-uniform at awide range of scales, carries sediment of allsizes, and flows in channels of complex geom-etries that alter because of water flow andsediment motion, the difficulty of understand-ing and managing rivers becomes apparent.Because of this, predictions of river behaviour

must depend deeply on empirical knowledgeof how rivers have behaved in the past,and much of this knowledge is inevitablyqualitative.

The book being reviewed is also largelyqualitative in its analyses and descriptions, andthis may surprise those who approach riversas a problem in physics within a complexlandscape context. Nevertheless, the content,though qualitative, is of value to future riverscientists and managers, and is probably abetter approach to understanding interactionsbetween rivers and society than a more deter-ministic methodology.

First and foremost, this is a book written bygeographers for geographers. The text stronglyreflects the authors’ own experience, much ofwhich relates to river systems in Australia. Myown experience has been largely in high-energy mountain rivers, and I have assessedthe book mainly from that perspective; giventhe wide audience at which the book is aimed,this is presumably justified. From this perspec-tive, the influence of tectonics and other land-scape processes on river style, and vice versa,has been underemphasised. From a broaderperspective, the book contains a large quantityof descriptions of river types and behavioursand attempts to systematise these. The for-mer attribute makes it an extremely valuableresource for a student who wants to acquire alot of knowledge about rivers quickly. I wasless convinced by the systematisation, butthis was probably because of my inability toassimilate the lengthy passages of descriptivetext and my lack of familiarity with the lan-guage of the River Styles context. Othersmore comfortable with geographical dis-course will likely find the systematisationmore satisfactory.

The book deals to some extent with themechanical aspects of both river flow and sedi-ment transport but in a somewhat unconvinc-ing way. For example, the topic of ‘impellingand resisting forces’ is given its own chapter,presumably as a basis for the followinggeomorphic analyses. However, what is beingimpelled or resisted is not clear. Presumably itis water, but if so, why is boundary shear stress,which is applied by the water to the boundaryin the flow direction and by the boundary to thewater in the opposite direction, listed as an

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