Abstract
Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene emerges at the intersection of two progressive twentieth-century political movements, one concerned with the fight for women’s rights and the other with ecological sustainability within the environment. The book celebrates the ongoing philosophical and activist advocacy of feminist ecologies as it traces the ecofeminist movement’s roots and alignment with recent social, cultural and artistic developments. It proposes the broad term ‘feminist ecologies’ to capture the diversity of the movement over the last 45 years and the range of possible ways in which feminist and ecological concerns can speak to one another in the era of the Anthropocene. To find solutions to ecological and feminist issues we need new modes of theory and praxis, activism and philosophizing as well as radical rethinking of policy, law, spirituality and education. Feminist Ecologies sets us on this path. It challenges us to take control over the Anthropocene and shift our environments towards new and more sustainable directions.
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Notes
- 1.
The Anthropocene is a controversial periodizing term even without the inclusion of its gender implicati ons (Rose 2008; Baskin 2015; Haraway 2015). Di sagreements ensued over whether the new geological moment of the Anthropocene should commence with the beginning of agriculture or the early nineteenth-century industrial age or around 1950, when atomic bombs left radioactive traces on the earth’s surface. Despite this, the term Anthropocene has been widely adopted in the Environmental Humanities where it is usually considered to begin with the industrial age.
- 2.
The language of feminism and ecofeminism also changes over time. For example, in some contexts in the 1980s, the word ‘men’ was sometimes used but this was predominantly replaced by ‘patriarchy’ by the 1990s in order to emphasize the way structural forces manifest in the lives of everyone.
- 3.
The impetus and ideas for this book came out of the ‘Feminist Ecologies’ conference held at the University of Melbourne on 13–14 November 2014; Germaine Greer gave the keynote lecture ironically titled ‘Mother? Nature?’ in which she spoke about her current land conservation project at Cave Creek rainforest in Queensland.
- 4.
Plumwo od was well known in environmental and social activist circles throughout her life, particularly for her struggle to save Australia’s old growth forests as well as for her advocacy for Aborigin al women’s rights, abortion rights and refugee rights. Salleh has a long personal history of grass-roots activism, including being active in the Movement Against Uranium Mining, the Franklin Dam Blockade, the Australian Greens Party , the Women in Science Enquiry Network, the Society for Social Responsibility in Engineering, the Australian Government’s Gene Technology Ethics Committee and the International Sociological Association Research Committee for Environment & Society. Mathew s has a long-time involvement in land restoration and currently manages a biodiversity reserve on a rocky outcrop in semi-arid northern Victoria. Together with two new co-owners, she has recently established a private Conservation Trust to protect the property in perpetuity. Rose lived for many years in remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory of Australia and has served as a consultant anthropologist for the Aboriginal Land Co mmissioner, Northern Land Council, Central Land Council, NSW Parks and Wildlife Service and the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority. In her attendance at science-dominated international gatherings on the environment, Rigb y has championed the importance of humanities scholarship. Her work questions the way that fundamental Christian beliefs support the human dominance of nature and has been a prominent figure in the development of ecotheology.
- 5.
Dr Anne Poel ina is a Nyikina Traditional Custodian of the Fitzroy River in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia. http://majala.com.au/our-people/Custodian. See also the Martu Living Deserts project which combines modern science with Indigenous ecological knowledge in a partnership between the Martu people of the Western Desert, the Nature Conservancy and BHP Billiton http://www.natureaustralia.org.au/our-work/lands/martu-living-deserts/. (Accessed 21/5/2017).
- 6.
These include, for example, Annette Greenall Gough, Jo Vallentine, Janis Birkeland, Patsy Hallen and numerous others.
- 7.
This might include Manuel DeLanda, Rosi Brai dotti, Timothy Morton, Bruno Latour, Diana Coole, Samantha Frost and Richard Grusin.
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Stevens, L., Tait, P., Varney, D. (2018). Introduction: ‘Street-Fighters and Philosophers’: Traversing Ecofeminisms. In: Stevens, L., Tait, P., Varney, D. (eds) Feminist Ecologies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64385-4_1
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