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hedgehog-moss · 4 years

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Bonsoir! Can you suggest some books on ecofeminism, that you've read or have on your to-read list?

I would suggest:

Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, Vandana Shiva

Visionary Women: How Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters Changed Our World, Andrea Barnet

Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the “Green Economy”, ed. Wendy Harcourt & Ingrid Nelson

Françoise d’Eaubonne et l’écoféminisme, Caroline Goldblum (I believe Françoise d’Eaubonne coined the term “ecofeminism” in her essay Le féminisme ou la mort—one chapter of Carolyn Merchant’s Ecology provides a translation of some of d’Eaubonne’s thoughts)

Small Town, Big Oil: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the Richest Man in the World—And Won, David W. Moore

Ecofeminism, Maria Mies

Women and the Environment: Crisis and Development in the Third World, ed. Sally Sontheimer

Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth, Marilyn Waring (the chapter on war and the high economic value men have ascribed to death is particularly good)

Earth follies : coming to feminist terms with the global environmental crisis, Joni Seager

Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism and the Fight to Feed the World, Trina Moyles

(The bolded links redirect to OpenLibrary for the books that are available there)

On my to-read list:

Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology, Ariel Salleh

Unbowed, Wangari Maathai (I reblogged this article about her the other day, which made me want to check out the memoir she wrote)

Feminism and Ecology, Mary Mellor

Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care, Sherilyn McGregor (I’m interested in her critical discussion of how women caring about the environment is often described in maternal, rather than political, terms)

The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen & Maria Mies

I would also recommend Naomi Klein’s books; although she writes about political ecology rather than ecofeminism, at least she doesn’t forget about women in her books the way male environmentalists often do. Some of the male-authored books on the environment that gave me food for thought lately include Arran Stibbe’s Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By, Paul Kingsnorth’s Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, David Owen’s The Conundrum, and Ozzie Zehner’s Green Illusions, and only the latter took notice of the fact that women’s subjugation is relevant in climate change discussions—his book contains a chapter on women’s rights and he is the only one who points out that one essential factor to create a ‘green’ and sustainable society is giving women and girls power to make decisions—over their own bodies, as well as in social, economic and political spheres.

I also appreciate that his book revolves around the idea that there is too much of a focus in today’s environmentalism on producing new technology and more (but ‘clean’) energy (wind, solar, biofuels, carbon-sequestrating gadgets…)— when, instead of attempting to create the kind of technology that will get our society-as-it-is through the climate crisis, we ought to create the kind of society that has a better chance of adapting to & mitigating it. In other words, realistic and efficient climate activism should focus on women’s rights, antimilitarism, improving democratic institutions and health care, combating consumerism and wealth disparities—things that often don’t register as climate activism, although they have a better chance of improving environmental issues and helping us face related crises than a fixation on potential scientific or technological miracles. I have found in my reading that it is surprisingly rare to find this holistic approach to environmentalism outside of ecofeminist writings.

#ask #books #book recs #ecofeminism

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