Dr. Ariel Salleh University of Western Sydney

Ecofeminism as Politics - nature, Marx and the postmodern

by Ariel Salleh 1997 / 256 pp. ISBN 1-85649-400-4 (paperback)

CONTENTS:

Preface: An Integrating Politics-Who Speaks and How?

Part I: Women and Ecopolitics
Ecology Re-frames History
Ecofeminist Actions

Part II: An Embodied Materialism
Body Logic: 1/0 Culture
Man/Woman=Nature
For and Against Marx
The Deepest Contradiction

Part III: Making Postcolonial Sense
When Feminism Fails
Terra Nullius
A Barefoot Epistemology
As Energy/Labour Flows
Agents of Complexity
Beyond Virtual Movements

ABOUT THE BOOK In the search for sustainable futures, this book is written to destabilize eurocentric political discourses that construct humanity as separate from nature. That in turn, means interrogating conventional Marxist class analysis, focusing instead on a grouping that Ariel Salleh names "meta-industrial workers." These are housewives, peasants, indigenous peoples -- whose reproductive labors minimize risk and hold complex living systems together. Here ecofeminism is a politics embedded in specific skills and values-an "embodied materialism." At the psychological level, it is a politics energized by the painful contradictory identity of being both a human subject and a natural resource. This materialist epistemology silences old criticisms of ecofeminism as essentialist. Ecofeminism as a meta-industrial perspective, integrates our thinking about ecological, social justice, feminist, and indigenous concerns. This common denominator politics has been inspired by the author's experience as both activist and sociologist of knowledge. The text travels laterally through topics such as globalization and Green ideologies, gendered science and gene tech, aboriginal land rights, the population debate, critical reflections on neo-liberalism and on Marx's theory of value. Not surprisingly the book has found a home in environmental studies, history and philosophy of science, ethics, politics, sociology, cultural and women's studies. Social movement researchers will find it gives a broad brush history of a major grassroots resurgence.

"A nascent political economy...a unique and powerful explanatory position." -John Barry, editor of Green Politics Newsletter, UK, (Environmental Politics, Autumn 1998)

"I place Ariel Salleh's scholarship in the front rank with work of ecofeminists such as Vandana Shiva, Rosemary Ruether and Susan Griffin." -Max Oelschlaeger (ed), Postmodern Environmental Ethics and author of Caring for Creation

"Passionately written, well researched and sweeping in theoretical scope...there is something refreshing about Salleh's inclusionary politics." -Betsy Hartmann, author of Reproductive Rights and Wrongs (Women's Review of Books, October 1998)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Ariel Salleh was a founding member of the Greens in Sydney, Australia 1985. A seasoned activist, she is currently Associate Professor in Social Ecology at the University of Western Sydney. Between 1990-92, she was visiting scholar in Environmental Conservation Education at New York University. Besides Ecofeminism as Politics: nature, Marx and the postmodern, she has published over 70 pieces in UK journals like Science as Culture and Environmental Politics. In the US, her gender critique of deep ecology produced a decade long controversy in the pages of Environmental Ethics. Further information on Dr. Salleh's publications are to be found in the ecofeminism bibliography and especially from her University homepage.