Feminist Ecologies

Human beings have long been thought of as masters of the natural world with a drive to dominate and control. This drive to dominate and control typically seen as a mark of manhood is viewed as having dangerous consequences for nature, women, children, and other living things. Historically, activities of the early days, which gave rise to our present modern industrial society, were very much a masculine enterprise right from the start, filled with clear images of the all-powerful male mind conquering a female Nature. This victory of male dominance over the female nature has extended into dominance, manipulation and oppression of nature and its environment as well. Just as women are viewed as being there to serve men's needs, nature is seen as existing for " man " to exploit at will. Within this reasoning, men often use and abuse women, children, peasant and tribal peoples, nature and the environment itself, for their own short-term selfish interest and advancement. This has led to the devastation of the natural environment and the further oppression of those who live most closely with it. Due to the fact that this situation of violence and exploitation is becoming a threat to life on earth, various studies, thoughts and movements have emerged to find the root of the problem and accurate diagnosis of their causes with a view to proffering theories to deal with them. This paper seeks to examine and analyze one or more of these studies or schools of thought known as feminism, ecology and ecofeminism in other to determine if they indeed do have adequate diagnosis of the world earth and environmental problems of degradation in relation to the activities of men and women, and solutions that may seem appropriate.

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.

Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements, 2015

2009

Combining feminist and ecological approaches, ecofeminism opposes the domination of the white male over women, over the poor and over the natural world. Virginie Maris surveys epistemological, moral and social forms of the ecofeminist critique, drawing conclusions about the association between reductionist science and paternalist capitalism.

Introduction: To understand what we mean today by environmental or ecological justice, the concepts must be conceived from within its historic roots through each particular paradigm; therefore the historic perspective ought to be discussed in relation to how different religions and cultures conceived environment justice in the past and then investigate the extent of change in concept that happened along the trail of development till today; from the Sumarians in Mesopotamia, across Buddhism and Confucius till Christianity and Islam. This latter discussion falls under the first subtitle: Environmental Justice: from within a paradigm.

Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology, 2020

This piece argues that an analysis of the onto-anthropological groundings of the climate crisis must be read through the lens of coloniality/modernity and not simply through the lens of modernity. Francis privileges the lens of modernity with no attention to coloniality and therefore misses the ways that our own theological anthropologies are complicit in sustaining the nexus of the extractive zones of coloniality of being/coloniality of gender. I propose the development of a decolonial feminist integral ecology that re-frames the “cries of the earth and the cries of the poor,” in a decolonial vein via the introduction of a hermeneutics of el grito and the privileging of a variety of ecologies of knowledges and being as expressed in the concept of vincularidad. The incorporation of both of the above could enable a true coalition of ecologies that aim to rupture the dominant and oppressive workings of coloniality, undermining the extractability of bodies and lands and bringing forth the potential for real environmental justice.

Journal of Environmental Media Volume 2 Supplement, 2021

This article builds an ecofeminist lens from community efforts as a form of feeling alternative futures in Hawaiʻi, with broader application for elsewhere. Women and children are critical groups on the front lines of climate-related crises, including food and housing insecurity, and the fight for environmental justice. Drawing upon personal experience, in this article, I highlight several grassroots projects that I have been connected to on the island of Oʻahu in Hawaiʻi that exemplify community-based efforts to conceptualize, build and feel sustainable alternative futures. In the face of compounding human existential crises, it is women's grassroots community organizing, Indigenous knowledges and traditional Hawaiian practices that are leading the way to sustainable food production, community building, and resurgent Hawaiian sovereignty. Through practical community-engaged experience, and learning from these communities, we can feel ecofeminist alternative futures and enact sustainable practices that challenge the current climate emergency.

he Eastern Ghats, ENVIS, Newsletter, Environment protection Training And Research Institute, Vol.9, No.1, pp.7-8., 2003

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South, 2019

This faculty-student collaborative article is a result of a graduate seminar on 'Environmental Education' taught at the Aga Khan University's Institute for Educational Development in Karachi, and it illuminates new perspectives and pedagogies of nature from the global South, specifically South Asia. Drawing inspiration from feminist and indigenous thought, the narratives of ecology shared here center the place of emotions, experience, memory and spiritual intimacy, offering one means of decolonizing environmental studies and expanding our understanding of 'environmental consciousness'. These narratives defy ontologies of nature-human separation, capturing not just the coexistence of animals, spirits and humans but their co-constitution. Such indigenous ecologies of knowledge and wisdom, we argue, offer a timely corrective to fragmented and exploitative constructions of the natural environment as mere resource, pleasure, or commodity, while providing a profound, alternative basis for a richly layered, spirited, environmental education.