Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care: In Search of Economic Alternatives

✍ Scribed by Christine Bauhardt; Wendy Harcourt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 311
• Series: Routledge Studies in Ecological Economics
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Endorsement Page
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Introduction: Conversations on care in Feminist Political Economy and Ecology
Introduction: more questions than answers
Diverse meanings of care
Going beyond capitalism
Gender, sustainability and post-development
A shared vision?
References
Chapter 2 Nature, care and gender: Feminist dilemmas
Central concepts of Feminist Political Economy: Social reproduction and the care economy
Ecofeminism and Queer Ecologies: Feminist analyses of socially constructed relations between society and nature
Feminist Political Ecology – a promising future for a strong feminist critique of capitalism and for creating economic alternatives
References
Chapter 3 White settler colonial scientific fabulations on otherwise narratives of care
Introduction
What we can learn from ecofeminism
White settler narratives and erasures
Feminist political ecology in conversation with white settler narratives
Caring for non-human others over generations
Learning to tell Gaia stories
Interpreting histories
Feminist imaginaries and scientific fabulations
Natureculture otherwise
Conclusion: Differential belonging
Notes
References
Chapter 4 Environmental feminisms: A story of different encounters
Introduction: Living in the ‘Anthropocene’
The Anthropocene and environmentalism
Why environmentalism needs feminism (and vice versa)
Ecofeminism: Women and nature
Feminist Political Ecology
Feminist new materialism and posthumanism
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 5 Climate change, natural disasters and the spillover effects on unpaid care: The case of Super-typhoon Haiyan
Introduction
Conceptual framework: Relationship between climate change, natural disasters and care work
The case of Super-typhoon Haiyan
Health expenditures faced by affected households
Concluding remarks
Notes
References
Chapter 6 Care-full Community Economies
Introduction
Common threads: CEC and FPE
Who cares?
What do we care for?
How do we care?
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 7 Care as wellth: Internalising care by democratising money
The ecofeminist critique of the externalisation of care
Internalising care
Social money
Internalisation through a basic income
Privatising money and feminising the state
Where does money come from?
Reclaiming money from the market
Care as wellth
Democratising money
Conclusion
References
Chapter 8 Diverse ethics for diverse economies: Considering the ethics of embodiment, difference and inter-corporeality at Kufunda
Introduction
Community and diverse economies
Unpacking the diverse ethics of community economies
The community economy of Kufunda Village
Concluding our journey with diverse ethics: Contributions and questions
Notes
References
Chapter 9 Striving towards what we do not know yet: Living Feminist Political Ecology in Toronto’s food network
Introduction
Embodied gendered economies
Living feminist ecological citizenship
Restructuring food and place
Striving towards what we do not know yet: Feminist food politics in Toronto
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 10 ‘The garden has improved my life’: Agency and food sovereignty of women in urban agriculture in Nairobi
The politics and cultures of food sovereignty
Agency and the gendered urban landscape in Nairobi
African Indigenous Vegetables as gendered and place-based cultivation practice
Nairobi’s policy and urban planning in urban agriculture
Methodological disclosure
Between conformity and creativity: Gender relations in urban agriculture in Nairobi
Discussion: Urban agriculture as a practice of care, agency and sovereignty
Notes
References
Chapter 11 Transnational reconfigurations of re/production and the female body: Bioeconomics, motherhoods and the case of surrogacy in India
From desire to right: Discourses around one’s own child
Biopower and the political regime of re/production in India
Bioeconomies and market efficiency of baby production
Labour and care extractivism
New subjectivities and dilemmas
Perspectives
Notes
References
Chapter 12 Menstrual politics in Argentina and diverse assemblages of care
Introduction
Feminist Political Ecology
The ethics of care
Why looking into menstrual management technologies matters in an analysis of care
Care for the body, care for the environment and care for the future generations
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 13 Bodies, aspirations and the politics of place: Learning from the women brickmakers of La Ladrillera
Introduction
Encounters
The politics of place
La Ladrillera
The brickmaker women and their families
A methodological note
The places and the encounters
First generation
Second generation
Third generation
Three generations of brickmaker women
Care, the brickmaker women and their practices of the difference
References
Chapter 14 Towards an urban agenda from a Feminist Political Ecology and care perspective
Introduction
Sustainability and sustainable development: A post-development and gender perspective
Human rights institutions and the new urban agenda
Feminist Political Ecology and care: Challenging the agenda
Implementing other views at the local level
Final reflections
Notes
References
Index