Feminist Political Ecology

Feminist Political Ecology explores the gendered relations of ecologies, economies and politics in communities as diverse as the rubbertappers in the rainforests of Brazil to activist groups fighting racism in New York City. Women are often at the centre of these struggles, struggles which concern local knowledge, everyday practice, rights to resources, sustainable development, environmental quality, and social justice. The book bridges the gap between the academic and rural orientation of political ecology and the largely activist and urban focus of environmental justice movements.

Feminist Political Ecology explores the gendered relations of ecologies, economies and politics in communities as diverse as the rubbertappers in the rainforests of Brazil to activist groups fighting racism in New York City. Women are often at the centre of these struggles, struggles which concern local knowledge, everyday practice, rights to resources, sustainable development, environmental quality, and social justice. The book bridges the gap between the academic and rural orientation of political ecology and the largely activist and urban focus of environmental justice movements.

This book explores the gendered relations of ecologies, economies and politics in communities as diverse as the rubbertappers in the Amazon to activist groups fighting racism in New York and bridges the gap between rural and urban movements.

This book envisages a different form of our economies where care work and care-full relationships are central to social and cultural life. It sets out a feminist vision of a caring economy and asks what needs to change economically and ecologically in our conceptual approaches and our daily lives as we learn to care for each other and non-human others. Bringing together authors from 11 countries (also representing institutions from 8 countries), this edited collection sets out the challenges for gender aware economies based on an ethics of care for people and the environment in an original and engaging way. The book aims to break down the assumed inseparability of economic growth and social prosperity, and natural resource exploitation, while not romanticising social-material relations to nature. The authors explore diverse understandings of care through a range of analytical approaches, contexts and case studies and pays particular attention to the complicated nexus between re/productivity, nature, womanhood and care. It includes strong contributions on community economies, everyday practices of care, the politics of place and care of non-human others, as well as an engagement on concepts such as wealth, sustainability, food sovereignty, body politics, naturecultures and technoscience. Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care is aimed at all those interested in what feminist theory and practice brings to today’s major political economic and environmental debates around sustainability, alternatives to economic development and gender power relations.

This edited volume explores how a feminist political ecology framework can bring fresh insights to the study of rural and urban livelihoods dependent on vulnerable rivers, lakes, watersheds, wetlands and coastal environments. Bringing together political ecologists and feminist scholars from multiple disciplines, the book develops solution-oriented advances to theory, policy and planning to tackle the complexity of these global environmental changes. Using applied research on the contemporary management of groundwater, springs, rivers, lakes, watersheds and coastal wetlands in Central and South Asia, Northern, Central and Southern Africa, and South and North America, the authors draw on a variety of methodological perspectives and new theoretical approaches to demonstrate the importance of considering multiple layers of social difference as produced by and central to the effective governance and local management of water resources. This unique collection employs a unifying feminist political ecology framework that emphasizes the ways that gender interacts with other social and geographical locations of water resource users. In doing so, the book further questions the normative gender discourses that underlie policies and practices surrounding rural and urban water management and climate change, water pollution, large-scale development and dams, water for crop and livestock production and processing, resource knowledge and expertise, and critical livelihood studies. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental studies, development studies, feminist and environmental geography, anthropology, sociology, environmental philosophy, public policy, planning, media studies, Latin American and other area studies, as well as women’s and gender studies.

Destined to transform its field, this volume features some of the most exciting feminist scholars and activists working within feminist political ecology, including Giovanna Di Chiro, Dianne Rocheleau, Catherine Walsh and Christa Wichterich. Offering a collective critique of the ‘green economy’, it features the latest analyses of the post-Rio+20 debates alongside a nuanced reading of the impact of the current ecological and economic crises on women as well as their communities and ecologies. This new, politically timely and engaging text puts feminist political ecology back on the map.

This textbook introduces political ecology as an interdisciplinary approach to critically examine land and environmental issues. Drawing on discourse and narrative analysis, Marxist political economy and insights from natural science, the book points at similarities, differences and inter-connections between environmental governance in the global North and South. A wide range of carefully curated case studies are presented, with a particular focus on Africa and Norway. Key themes of power, justice and environmental sustainability run through all chapters. The authors challenge established views and leading discourses and present research findings that may surprise readers. Chapters cover topics including wildlife conservation, climate change and conflicts, land grabbing, the effects of population growth on the environment, jihadism in the African Sahel, bioprospecting, feminist political ecology, and struggles around carbon mitigation within a fossil fuel-based economy. This introductory text provides tools and examples for both undergraduate and postgraduate students to better understand on-going struggles about some of the world’s most urgent challenges.

Destined to transform its field, this volume features some of the most exciting feminist scholars and activists working within feminist political ecology, including Giovanna Di Chiro, Dianne Rocheleau, Catherine Walsh and Christa Wichterich. Offering a collective critique of the 'green economy', it features the latest analyses of the post-Rio+20 debates alongside a nuanced reading of the impact of the current ecological and economic crises on women as well as their communities and ecologies. This new, politically timely and engaging text puts feminist political ecology back on the map.