Eco Feminism

12 Key excerpts on "Eco Feminism"

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  Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies

  • Heather Eaton(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • T&T Clark

    (Publisher)

  Anne Primavesi characterizes ecofemi-nism as the bringing of an ecological paradigm into play from a feminist perspective, setting out to disclose the intrinsic link in male-dominated cultures between how one speaks about women and nature, and how one behaves towards them (Primavesi 1991: 36). From ecofeminist philosophy comes an understanding that it is a convergence of ecology and feminism into 'a new social theory and political movement [which] challenges gender relations, social institutions, economic systems, sciences, and views of our place in the biosphere' (Lahar 1991: 28). I refer to ecofeminism as a lens through which all disciplines are examined and refocused (Eaton 1998: 57-82). Charlene Spretnak claims that 'ecofeminists address the crucial issues of our time, from repro-ductive technology to Third World development, from toxic poisoning to the vision of a new politics and economics - and much more' (Spretnak 1990: 8-9). To fully explore ecofeminism, several disciplines are needed, such as a team of the following: ...historians of culture, natural scientists and social economists who all share a concern for the interconnection between the domination of women and exploita-tion of nature. It needs visionaries to image how to construct a new socio-economic system and a new cultural consciousness that would support relations of mutuality rather than competitive power. For this one needs poets, artists and liturgists, as well as revolutionary organizers, to incarnate more life-giving rela-tionships in our cultural consciousness and social system. (Ruether 1991: 2) In the light of this diversity, and of the fact that today some ecofeminist groups can communicate instantly with others through Internet links, any categoriza-tion has to be provisional. Ecofeminism is interdisciplinary, international and politically active.

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  Critical Environmental Politics

  • Carl Death(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  10 Feminism

  Erika Cudworth

       

  Introduction

  Since the early 1970s, a distinct strand of feminist theorizing and activism has explicitly linked human relations with the ‘environment’ to gender (and other) inequalities. Ecofemi-nism emerged from a critique of both sexism in the green movement (Doubiago 1989) and an absence of awareness about ‘environmental’ questions in feminist politics (Plumwood 2004: 43; Salleh 1984). Ecofeminists draw on and develop various elements of both ecological and feminist politics however. For example, like deep ecologism (see McShane, this volume), most ecofeminists conceptualise human relations with ‘nature’ as a form of domination. They also can be understood to provide a version of social ecology in which the domination of nature is interrelated to intra-human social hierarchy and difference based on gender, race and class amongst other formations. Here, they are influenced by the work of ecosocialists and postcolonial scholarship. The influence of feminist politics is perhaps the strongest, however, as ecofeminists deploy concepts of gender domination and inequality in thinking about labour, production, knowledge and power and interrogate our ideas of what it means to be human.

  This chapter focuses on the concepts and theories of ecofeminism, or ecological feminism, and its influence on environmental politics. It proceeds through three sections. First, the core ideas section considers various influences and approaches in ecofeminist analysis; the use of ‘patriarchy’ to explain the domination of ‘otherised’ groups (including women, non-human animals and non-human life), and ideas of ‘linked dualisms’ and ‘multiple oppressions’, which have been used to explain how the human treatment of the environment is bound up with (or ‘intersectionalised’ by) social inequalities. The section on key thinkers maps the different strands of ecofeminist thinking in focusing on some influential thinkers from different geographic and disciplinary locations. The final section will consider the critical potential of ecofeminism and argue that in emphasizing the intersectionalised qualities of exploitation and exclusion, ecofeminism has provided an important critique of other kinds of political ecologism.

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  The SAGE Handbook of Environment and Society

  • Jules Pretty, Andy Ball, Ted Benton, Julia Guivant, David R Lee, David Orr, Max Pfeffer, Professor Hugh Ward, Jules Pretty, Andy Ball, Ted Benton, Julia Guivant, David R Lee, David Orr, Max Pfeffer, Professor Hugh Ward(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Ecofeminism now reflects the concerned efforts of women trying to integrate their personal, ecological and socio-political concerns (Eaton and Lorentzen, 2004, p. 2). As with feminism in its early days, there was a desire to have an all-embracing ecofeminist movement. Speaking of the specific experience of the United States, Noel Sturgeon points out that ecofeminism faced very quickly the issue of women’s diversity (Sturgeon, 1997) as did the wider feminist movement (Coote and Campbell, 1982). Ecofeminism also found itself at odds with some aspects of feminism, particularly the liberal feminist agenda of equal opportunities. As the American social ecofeminist Ynestra King put it, ‘what is the point of partaking equally in a system that is killing us all’ (1990, p. 106). While all ecofeminists see a connection between feminist issues and environmental questions, this is expressed in many different ways. For some early ecofeminists a direct affinity appeared to be claimed. Women ‘understand’ nature through their physiological functions (birthing, menstrual cycles) or some deep element of their personali-ties (life-oriented, nourishing/caring values). This version of ecofeminism draws heavily on radical/cultural feminism in promoting the partic-ular and exclusive interests/values of women (Collard, 1988). This led to the political charge that ecofeminism romanticised women’s mother-ing and nurturing roles, thereby feeding reac-tionary patriarchal politics (Davion, 1994). As Kate Soper points out, it was understandable that feminists would resist any perspective that seemed to argue for the ‘naturalness’ of nature because of the danger of endorsing ‘the naturalisa-tion of sexual hierarchy’ (1995, p. 121). This creates a dilemma for ecofeminism where the de-naturalising impulse of feminism is at odds with the nature-valorising approach of ecology which risks opening up ‘the potentially reactionary dimensions of ecological naturalism’ (Soper, 1995, p. 124).

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  Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Affairs in the British Press

  An Ecofeminist Critique of Neoliberalism

  • Martina Topić(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2 Ecofeminism

  Theory, issues and advocacy

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003091592-2

  Ecofeminism is a feminist movement “and current of analysis that attempts to link feminist struggles with ecological struggles” (Sandiland, 1999 , p. xvi), and as such ecofeminism focuses on the duality of oppression of women and Nature (Mallory, 2012 ) by the ideology of hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy, both of which are also linked to capitalism (von Werlhof, 2007; Merchant, 1992 ; Stoddart & Tindall, 2011 ; Radford Ruether, 2012 ; Henderson, 1997 ; Maclaran & Stevens, 2018 ; Gaard, 1997 ; Ling, 2014 ; Warren, n.d. ; Đurđević & Marjanić, 2020 ). With this, ecofeminism becomes a movement that combines elements of radical feminism (focus on patriarchy and the domination of women and Nature) and socialist feminism (opposition to capitalism) (Topić, 2020d ). Even though it is often said there are as many ecofeminisms as ecofeminists, the common definition of ecofeminism is an anti-hierarchical and anti-capitalist movement that works on a global scale as evidence on a wide range of activism across the globe have demonstrated so far (Griffin, 2020 ; Fakier & Cock, 2018 ; Holy, 2007 ; Shiva & Bandyopadhyay, 1986 ; Jain, 1984 ; Bandyopadhyay, 1999 ; Moore, 2011 ; Mishra et al., 2021 ; Green Belt Movement, n.d.).

  In other words, as opposed to other feminisms that are either overly dogmatic or overly white and Western to apply to everyone, ecofeminism indeed can be (and has been) used in a variety of contexts. Therefore, as already emphasised, ecofeminism encompasses elements of radical feminism (which sees women as inherently different than men and predominantly because of the gendered socialisation process and thus focuses on criticising patriarchy) and socialist feminism (due to its focus on capitalism and hierarchy as well as focus on class differences and the difference between the Global North and the Global South and the accompanying oppression) (Topić, 2020d ). The fundamental view of ecofeminism is that the reason for oppression lies in the dichotomy of culture vs Nature where men are associated with culture and women with Nature, which then ends up in oppression of both women and Nature. The idea developed from the view that humans separated themselves from Nature and belong to the culture, which is seen as an anti-thesis to Nature (Holy, 2007

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  Ecofeminist Natures

  Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political Action

  • Noel Sturgeon(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  E C O F E M IN IS T NATURES AND TRANSNATIONAL ENVIRONM ENTAL P O L IT IC S feminist efforts to transform W ID to a newer environmentalist paradigm, which, as I will discuss shortly, was becoming at the time a hegemonic global formation. In this context, “ecofeminism” means this feminist intervention into environmentalism more than it represents a set of new, independent the- oretical arguments. While this “ecofeminist” position thus has political relevance and effec- tiveness within a political context at a particular time, it also runs the risk of dovetailing with older W ID assumptions about women as “natural re- sources.” There was concern that ecofeminist arguments (such as Shiva’s) defining women as environmental managers and activists would be translated into development policies that required women to be the primary laborers in conservation schemes that may or may not have benefited them directly. Many progressive development scholars critiqued these arguments as essen- tialist, though such essentialism had existed as well in older W ID discourse.28 In a pattern similar to the move from W ID to GAD, a focus on women, envi- ronment, and development, or W ED (which could also be seen as the “ecofeminist” moment), has been recently been challenged by G E D , or gen- der, environment and development, a position that pays attention to the nu- ances of gender relations in households, property rights, labor relations, and kinship systems, all of which determine a differential relationship between women and their environments dependent on age, marital status, and many other factors. G E D scholars argue that these nuances must be taken into ac- count in policy planning, and that assumptions of women’s natural tendency to protect the environment are deeply misguided. It is this debate with which our critics, Agarwal, Jackson, Leach and Rao, are concerned.

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  Environmental Ethics

  From Theory to Practice

  • Marion Hourdequin(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Although ecofeminist theorists such as Karen Warren argue that ecofeminism offers insights both to feminism and to environmentalism, the central aim of ecofeminism arguably has been to inject a different perspective into environmentalism, environmental philosophy, and environmental political theory. For example, ecofeminists have criticized environmental philosophers for paying too little attention to the way in which oppressive and exploitative social relations are tied to an oppressive and exploitative relationship to nature. The fundamental shared conviction of ecofeminists is that in order to establish a positive, nondominating relationship with nature, we need to address the problematic patterns of domination that exist within society. The many forms of oppression and domination common to contemporary societies—sexism, racism, classism, and so on—are all intimately linked. If this is the case, then why focus on the oppression of women and the environment in particular? Why not tackle all forms of oppression simultaneously? In principle, ecofeminism does support the elimination of all forms of oppression, however ecofeminists see particular reasons to focus on women and the environment, because there are important historical and conceptual connections between these two forms of oppression. We saw in Chapter 1 the ways in which Carolyn Merchant argues for historical connections among women, nature, and environmental exploitation. The conceptual connections, which have been developed especially clearly by philosopher Karen Warren, are explored in the following section. Dualisms, up/down thinking, and the logics of domination Especially in the West, we are accustomed to dualistic modes of thinking. “Dualism” may sound sophisticated, but this term describes a familiar way of conceiving opposites as contradictory and mutually exclusive.

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  Ecofeminist Natures

  Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political Action

  • Noel Sturgeon(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5 Ecofeminist Natures And Transnational Environmental Politics DOI: 10.4324/9781315865874-6

  In previous chapters, I have argued that a tension exists between ecofeminist definitions of diversity that privilege differences based on U.S. racial categories, and notions of diversity based on “international” difference. In this chapter, I will decenter the U.S. context in order to consider the deployment of ecofeminist conceptions of race and gender within a transnational context. I want to ask about their political results within a particular historical, disciplinary, and political context in the early 1990s in order to explore the conditions under which “strategic essentialisms” operate, and to generate ways of assessing their effects. I will start by sketching two interrelated contexts. One is the field of development studies, which, from 1970 to 1990, had experienced shifts from “development” to “women in development” to “women, environment, and development.” The second context is a phenomenon I will call the “globalization of environmentalism,” or the hegemonic contests over the meaning and use of “environmentalism” within a post-Cold War transnational political arena. Finally, I will look at a specific example of the deployment of an implicitly ecofeminist discourse as a mobilizing tool by an organization called WEDO, or Women’s Environment and Development Organization, which was founded in 1990 to orchestrate a “women’s voice” within UN deliberations over the intersection between environment and development. What I want to show here is the way in which “ecofeminism,” rather than being a fixed group of movement actors or organizations, or even a set of circumscribed theories or analyses, is a political intervention into dominant development discourses that, by the end of the 1980s, were tied to a hegemonic environmental discourse. What ecofeminism allows in this context is a feminist intervention into changing development discourses as well as a location within which coalitions between southern and northern feminists can take place.

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  Radical Ecology

  The Search for a Livable World

  • Carolyn Merchant(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  I use the categories of liberal, cultural, social, and socialist feminism to illustrate different approaches to the ways women have been concerned with improving the human/nature relationship and to show how each approach has contributed to an ecofeminist perspective (Table 8.1). 9 Liberal ecofeminism is consistent with the objectives of reform environ-mentalism to alter human relations with nature from within existing structures of governance through the passage of new laws and regulations. Cultural ecofeminism (which during the 1980s developed out of and superceded radical feminism) analyzes environmental problems from within a critique of patriarchy and offers alternatives that could liberate both women and nature. Social and socialist ecofeminists ground their analyses in capitalist patriarchy. They ask how patriarchal relations of reproduction reveal the domination of women by men, and how capitalist relations of production reveal the domination of nature by men. The domination of women and nature inherent in the market economy's use of both as resources would be totally restructured

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  Developing Ecofeminist Theory

  The Complexity of Difference

  • E. Cudworth(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Yet, the analogy is highly 1 appropriate, as Mary Mellor puts it: A book on ecofeminism(s), feminism(s) and ecologism(s) must neces- sarily be a tangle of ideas, an interweaving of many threads. (1997:8) Ecofeminism is not “only” about the relationships between the domi- nation of women and of “nature.” Given the huge parameter of their theoretical terrain, ecofeminists are terribly ambitious. The loom looms large and the threads are many. In being about what I call multiplicities of domination, that is, about intra-human and extra-human domination and the intricate patterns of such domination, ecofeminism could be about everything in critical, social and political theory. The mapping of such interrelations of processes and institutions of domination is diffi- cult, but whilst the multiplicities of difference which ecofeminist theory compels us to account for, are extreme in their diversity, we can broaden our conceptual repertoire in order to produce more inclusive social and political theory. My intention here is to develop some conceptions drawn from a variety of perspectives, and to suggest a multiple systems approach to theorizing the complexity of life on this planet. What has characterized both feminism and ecologism is trans- disciplinarity. This has been both a strength in terms of the breadth of analysis, whilst also a source of misinterpretation and dispute. It is no longer sufficient for ecofeminism to be dismissed by simply being labeled with “the insult of ‘essentialism’ ” (Salleh 1997:xi), and with the most naive and simplistic understandings attributed to various theorists. One of the aims of this book is to reclaim and reframe certain kinds of ecofeminist knowledge. This means to contextualize it in its historical, geographic and disciplinary location, and assesses the possibilities for reworking of certain concepts and theories with the insight of recent developments in social theory.

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  Marxist-Feminist Theories and Struggles Today

  Essential writings on Intersectionality, Postcolonialism and Ecofeminism

  • Khayaat Fakier, Diana Mulinari, Nora Räthzel, Khayaat Fakier, Diana Mulinari, Nora Räthzel(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Zed Books

    (Publisher)

  At this site, ecopolitical strategies for ecology, feminism, postcolonial, and socialist movements can also find common ground. Notes 1 This paper was first published in Capitalism Nature Socialism 14(1)(2003): 61–74, with thanks to Taylor & Francis for permission to reproduce it. The essay is based on ideas presented at the Conference of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Environment and Society (RC24), Cambridge University, 5–7 July 2001. 2 Thus, ‘the only way out of this impasse is to confront the intransitive and irreducible nature of each major structure of oppression in its own right, while realising that gender, division of labour, and class are constructed simultaneously and reciprocally’ (Sayer and Walker, 1992: 40, quoted in Dickens, 1995: 70). 3 Although re-visioning political economy, the ecofeminist project is broader and more inclusive than the approach taken by eco-Marxist philosophers (see Benton, 1993; Hayward, 1995). 4 For an ecofeminist exploration of the semantics of mater/matrix/materiality, see Griffin (1979). 5 And further, as Dickens notes (1995: 123), even the US Department of Agriculture concedes that alternative biodynamic food production saves energy! 6 See Jackson (1995) and reply by Salleh (1996). Guha (1991) falls into the same trap as Jackson, criticising Shiva’s analysis of the Chipko movement from a liberal feminist position, when Shiva’s concern is a moral economy and a people’s science. 7 Regarding knowledge theft in the ecological sphere. A case in point is biopiracy of the Indian neem tree by the US pharmaceutical W. R. Grace. Happily, ecofeminist Shiva and others succeeded in a court challenge to quash the patent. On repressive assimilation of radical ideas, see Marcuse (1972). 50 | ARIEL SALLEH References Adam, B., 1998. Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards . Routledge, London. Beck, U., 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity .

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  The Transition to Sustainable Living and Practice

  • Liam Leonard, John Barry(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 7 ECOFEMINISM: ECOFEMINISM AND THE GREEN PUBLIC SPHERE Chaone Mallory INTRODUCTION Following particular feminisms that theorise the body as a place where the regulatory practices of racism, classism, sexism and speciesism are ‘inscripted’ or ‘sedimented’, but also understand the body as a site of resistance, a place where oppressive practices can be transgressed and transformed, this chapter explores the relation between ecofeminist theories of oppression, the notion of gender and species performativity and environmental activisms. Ecofeminist philosopher Deborah Slicer has argued that it is not only the human body that is capable of resistance through altering the performances around which identity is congealed but nature too has agency, is a player in processes of disruption and resignification. Ecopolitical theorist Catriona Sandilands has written about the ‘chain of equivalencies’ that discursively and materially link women, nature, people of colour, the differently-abled, queer folk and so on and has pondered how ‘a politics of performative affinity’ can help to emancipate both humans and the more-than-human world. Taking this brand of ecofeminist ecopolitical theorising as my starting point, I explore the role of environmental and feminist activisms, focusing on two instances of direct action, one from the US radical forest defence movement and one from the 1999 anti-World Trade Organisation (WTO) protests in Seattle, in The Transition to Sustainable Living and Practice Advances in Ecopolitics, Volume 4, 139–154 Copyright r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2041-806X/doi: 10.1108/S2041-806X(2009)0000004010 139 disrupting hegemonic notions of who or what counts as a political subject and actor. Such actions, I argue, open spaces for subaltern voices, including non-human ones, to be heard.

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  Women Philosophers on Economics, Technology, Environment, and Gender History

  Shaping the Future, Rethinking the Past

  • Ruth Edith Hagengruber(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  Environment, Power and Society (1971) pioneered notions of ecological engineering, economics, and environmental accounting. Women’s aspiration to live in balance with nature thereby waging a movement against mal- development, environmental degradation, global capitalization, and the need for indigenous cultures, economic values, and programs based on sustainability has found its voice in ecofeminism. Starhawk, a notable thinker on ecofeminism, challenges the idea of male dominated Western economies destroying nature and transforming the structures of power (in hands of males) while drawing parallels with nature and women as life giving forces thus placing them ( women and nature) at the center. Ecofeminism theorizes upon the recognition of connections between the domination of nature and women across the patriarchal society further locating these two entities with racism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and class exploitation. Hence, earth as a feminist space becomes the central category of analysis in this context that encounters the nature-culture dualism. The devastation of earth has made the ecofeminist to rethink and reconsider the antithetical viewpoint of capitalism and science that stands in sharp contrast to the ‘green earth’. The green politics calls for structural changes in the society where feminist ethics binds together to create an ecotopia ( Ecology + Utopia) – i. e., green is ‘ Utopia’. This formulation further leads to the interrogations and debates that further raise questions and concerns like:

  1.

  Can nature, women, development, and science maintain a harmonious relation?

  2.

  If science/ technology and capitalism – a developmental necessity – are thought to be the major force causing the destruction of nature and women, how can an ecotopian world be created?

  In an attempt to address these questions, the paper formulates the discussion on Vandana Shiva’s ideas on ecocriticism, women and nature. Vandana Shiva, an Indian physicist and ecofeminist, founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy that emphasizes on sustainable methods of agriculture. Shiva has articulated the complications caused by capitalist domination and provided adoptive measures and realistic solutions in Globalization’s New Wars: Seed, Water, and Life Forms (2005) and Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (2005). As an ecofeminist, Shiva in her article, “Empowering Women” remarks that sustainable and productive methods to agronomy can be attained by restoring the system of agriculture in India that is women-centered (Shiva 2004

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