Close to Home

Women Reconnect Ecology, Health and Development

Vandana Shiva

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138164062
• eBook ISBN: 9781134164738
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

It is 20 years since environmental issues were first put on the international agenda at the Stockholm Conference, and concern for planetary survival has shifted from desertification to acid rain to ozone depletion to biodiversity. The official responses to all the various crises, however, has largely been one of offering technological and managerial 'fixes,' which often fail to address or solve the basic ecological issues.

Genuine, viable improvements can only be implemented at ground level, by those most strongly affected by the problem. Because of their location 'on the fringes,' and their traditional role in providing sustenance, it is women who are often able to offer ecological insights that are deeper and richer than the technocratic recipes of international experts, or the responses of men in their own societies. Close to Home emphasises that the environment is not some distant concern, but one that affects the health and well-being of communities on a daily basis. For women, 'the environment' is the place in which we live.

The contributions in this book, edited by Vandana Shiva, show how women worldwide are taking action at grass-roots level, battling toxic wastes, low-level radiation and biotechnology in the struggle for truly sustainable community development.

Index

• Abortion,, also Sex determination and preselection 45, 67, 79, 80, 119
• Acceptable risk, 49–50
• Acid rain, 148
• Agency for International Development (USAID), 65, 66, 156
• Agent Orange, 95, 148
• Agriculture
• – capitalist, 99–102, 111n1
• – four-sided, 109–10
• – in the Philippines, 114–15, 117–20
• – sustainable, 120, 131–32
• Al. See Artificial insemination AIDS
• – awareness of, 15–16
• – bodily effects of, 21–22
• – and ecological crisis compared, 10–13, 37–40
• – spread of, in Thailand, 10, 17–21, 38
• – Thai legislation regarding, 31, 32–35, 37
• Aircraft, 149, 150
• Allergies, 45, 46
• All India Institute of Medical Sciences, 79
• Alvarez, Teresita, 114
• AMIHAN (Peasant Women’s Federation) (Philippines), 114, 118, 119–20
• Amniocentesis,, See also Sex determination and pre-selection 72, 78, 81–62, 83, 84, 85
• Anaemia, 61–62, 72, 74
• Animal feed, 67–68
• Antibiotics, 65, 66
• Anti-diarrhoeals, 64–65
• Aquatin, 119
• Argentina, 66
• Artificial insemination (Al), 85
• Arunachalam, Ponnambalam, 123
• Asarco Inc., 49
• ASSINSEL. see International Association of Plant Breeders for the Protection of Plant Varieties
• Association of Women Victims of Bhopal, 92
• Asthma, 45
• Australia, 130
• Awasi, Bipin, 89, 91
• Ayupan, Loreta, 5
• Ayurveda, 78

• – Baby M. case, 139
• B...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Women, Ecology and Health: Rebuilding Connections
• After the Forest: AIDS as Ecological Collapse in Thailand
• Killing Legally with Toxic Waste: Women and the Environment in the United States
• Environmental Degradation and Subversion of Health
• Using Technology, Choosing Sex: The Campaign Against Sex Determination and the Question of Choice
• Legal Rights … and Wrongs: Internationalising Bhopal
• ‘Green Earth, Women’s Power, Human Liberation’: Women in Peasant Movements in India
• Filipino Peasant Women in Defence of Life
• Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka: Its Ecological and Political Consequences
• The Seed and the Earth: Biotechnology and the Colonisation of Regeneration
• The Re-greening of the Planet
• Ecological Economics
• Notes on Contributors
• Index