The Changing Nature of Eco/Feminism (original) (raw)
Related papers
2010
Abstract Ecofeminist theory posits a link between hegemonic masculinity, gendered patterns of inequality and environmental degradation. This paper examines how environmental movement participants in British Columbia take up these notions. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with thirty-four core members of the environmental movement, as well as sixty-two rank and file members. Almost all of the interview participants articulate a broadly feminist discourse of women's equality.
Feminism and Environmental Justice
From the Euro-American social workers of the settlement house movement to the African- and Asian-American, Chicana/Latina and indigenous women activists fighting toxic wastes and ecologically-damaging industrialism and colonialism, women differently situated by race, ethnicity, or nation have framed their eco-justice activism as an extension of women’s gendered role as caregivers, or as a response to the linked devaluation of women, communities of colour, poor people and environments. Around the world, women are on the frontlines of climate justice crises as well and climate justice solutions.
Introducing new feminist political ecologies
Geoforum, 2011
Political Ecology is firmly established as an important area of enquiry within Geography that attends to many of the most important questions of our age, including the politics of environmental degradation and conservation, the neoliberalisation of nature and ongoing rounds of accumulation, enclosure and dispossession, focusing on access and control of resources, and environmental struggles around knowledge and power, justice and governance. This short introductory paper considers how feminists working in this field of enquiry consider the gender dimension to such issues, and how political ecologies might intersect with a feminist objectives, strategies and practices: a focus for early iterations of a promising sub-field, labelled Feminist Political Ecology. It considers a number of epistemological, political and practical challenges that together may account for the relatively limited number of works that self-identify as feminist political ecology. Whilst this has made it difficult for Feminist Political Ecology to gain purchase as a subfield within the political ecology cannon, this introductory piece highlights fruitful new ways that developments in feminist thinking enrich work in this field, evident in a flowering of recent publications.
Sociological Spectrum, 2011
This article draws upon two waves of interviews with environmental movement members in British Columbia, Canada, in order to examine participants’ interpretations of the relationship between gender and environmental politics. Four claims emerge from this analysis. First, our results support the notion that there is an affinity between environmental politics and feminism. Second, despite recent critiques of ecomaternalism and the dual subjugation of nature and women within ecofeminism, these discourses remain useful as interpretive resources for research participants. Third, while ecomaternalism is a recurrent theme, it appears to be declining in relative importance as a discursive resource. Finally, notions of hegemonic masculinity are becoming more salient as an interpretive framework. While the first two claims emphasize continuity in participants’ interpretive framework, the latter findings describe shifts in participants’ understandings of gender and environmental politics.
Feminist approaches to environmental politics
Contemporary Political Theory, 2024
Ecofeminism as scholarship and practice continues to polarize, draw criticism, and inspire scholarly works and politics that account for the structures of domination that perpetuate sexism and ecological exploitation. Ecofeminist scholarship grew in volume and prominence in the 1970s and 1980s but began to falter under the weight of critiques that the approach upheld gender essentialism and a white western feminism
Pepperoni or Broccoli? On the Cutting Wedge of Feminist Environmentalism
Feminist environmentalism has become a significant intellectual and social policy force across fields as diverse as public health, political economy, philosophy, science, and ecology. Feminist environmental theory and activism together are challenging and redefining foundational principles, from animal rights to the environmental economy of illness and well-being, from global political economy to the role of Big Science as the primary arbiter of the state of the environment. Animal rights is one of the most intellectually challenging and innovative areas of intellectual activity and social activism, and within feminist environmentalism is one of the most radical subfields. This paper provides an overview of activity in this subfield, starting from the observation that feminist environmental scholarship and grassroots activism on animal rights pivot around three concerns: elucidating the commonalities in structures of oppressions across gender, race, class, and species; developing feminist-informed theories of the basis for allocating " rights " to animals; and exposing the gendered assumptions and perceptions that underlie human relationships to nonhuman animals. At the same time, the serious contemplation of animal rights makes a considerable contribution to destabilizing identity categories and adds new dimensions to theorizing the mutability of identity. Prologue Feminist environmentalism is hot and getting hotter. At its best, feminist environmental-ism rocks boats in public health, political economy, philosophy, science, and ecology. Feminist environmental theory and activism together are challenging and redefining foundational principles from animal rights to the environmental economy of illness and well-being, from global political economy to the role of Big Science as the primary arbiter of the state of the environment. Rather than write a disciplinary-based review of the field of feminist environmentalism that extols these myriad strengths, I would like to use this opportunity to reflect the breadth of the field—and the potential for even greater breadth—through one lens. Let me start with a recent social moment that suggests, for me, the scope of the field of play of feminist environmental curiosity. The scene is a women's studies party for a retiring staff member at a Boston university. A handful of women's studies students, including two shy undergraduate men, are tending the drink table and serving the food. I am sitting with a group of three other faculty women when one of the men passes by with a tray of pizza in each hand. In his left hand, pepperoni pizza, in the right, broccoli. We each in turn reach for the broccoli. He pauses and then asks quizzically, 'What is it about feminists and vegetarianism, is there something going on?' Three of us exclaim an enthusiastic 'yes,' the fourth a