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This article discusses resources in relation to the individual, using the symbolic interactionist perspective to systematize the view that resources are symbols and cannot be understood apart from social worlds. According to the article, resources have no intrinsic meaning; they are defined, and redefined, by individuals in society and by those who study them. U.S. citizens now notice things that previously went unnoticed. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the current energy crisis. Economists must now think in terms of production and consumption as having adverse rather than positive effects. For example, there is concern that the manufacture of nitrogen may destroy the ozone in the earth's upper atmosphere. In a similar vein, land is now thought of in terms of political, economic, and psychological terms. It is this symbolic construction of reality that is the focus of this article. Environmental scholars have not sufficiently emphasized the role of symbols in the individual's relation to the environment. While the energy- producing qualities of resources are important, the authors contend that at least equal attention should be given to the way resources are defined and the way individuals act on these definitions.