Earthcare: Women and the Environment [Paperback]

Carolyn Merchant (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415908884 | ISBN-13: 978-0415908887 | Publication Date: November 6, 1995 | Edition: 1

Written by one of the leading thinkers in environmentalism, Earthcare brings together Merchant's existing work on the topic of women and the environment as well as updated and new essays. Earthcare looks at age-old historical associations of women with nature, beginning with Eve and continuing through to environmental activists of today, women's commitment to environmental conservation, and the problematic assumptions of women as caregivers and men as dominating nature.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Virginia Scharff has used the word "embryonic" to describe the field of women's environmental history ("Are Earth Girls Easy? Ecofeminism, Women's History and Environmental History," Journal of Women's History, Summer 1995). According to Scharff, the melding of gender analysis and environmental history was "singlehandedly" brought to the forefront of women's studies by historian Merchant in her "pathbreaking" work, The Death of Nature: Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (Harper & Row, 1980). In this work, Merchant continues her exploration of the "association of women with nature in Western culture and their roles in the contemporary environmental movement." Earthcare is a blend of some of Merchant's previously published work with the addition of several new essays; it begins with the myth and association of nature as female (Gaia) and fallen from grace (Eve). The greatest strength of Earthcare is its recounting of women's environmental history during the last 100 years. Highly recommended for academic women's studies and environmental history collections.?Susan Maret, Univ. of Colorado Lib., Denver
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Earthcare: Women and the Environment is an important book because it provides historical context as well as calling for an environment ehtic that promotes the well-bing of both human and nonhuman life. -- Environment
A leading ecofeminist thinker...She challenges humankind to rethink the way the Western world has conceptualized its relationship with nature. -- Environmental Law
This well-selected one-volume compilation of the work of a leading woman scholar in environmental ethics and history will prove useful to the general reader and to classes in environmental history and ethics and women's studies. -- Pacific Historical Review
A collection of essays covering all of Merchant's work to date, Earthcare offers an impressive range of analyses which represent the best of ecofeminist argument: historically situated, complexly argued, and sesitive to questions of cultural, racial, and class difference...Besides a fine example of the illuminating nature of the best environmental history, the book would be especially appropriate for classes in history of science, American Studies, and ecofeminism. -- Environmental History
Earthcare provides the reader with a thoughtful accounting of how various cultural and scientific depictions of women/nature over time contain positive, negative, and problematic implications for women's (and men's) attempts to forge a stronger partnership with the nonhuman world...Earthcare represents an engaging and highly readable--yet theoretically challenging--ecofeminist work that will be of value to anyone with interests in the field of women's studies, ecophilosophy, or political economy. Suitable for use in either undergraduate or graduate courses, Merchant's book offers students a more interdisciplinary and organic framework for understanding the gendered complexities of our ecological crisis. -- Humanity and Society
I urge you to buy and read this book. -- Bob J. Baker, Mountain State Sierran
Earthcare is as rewarding as its evocative title suggests...[This] is a rich collection of essays on feminism and the environment...Earthcare should be required reading for any environmentalist. -- Ethics and the Environment

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (November 6, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415908884
• ISBN-13: 978-0415908887
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #341,624 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nature and Women: to Explore, Enjoy and Protect?, July 27, 2009

By 

Bob J. Baker - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Earthcare: Women and the Environment (Paperback)

Earthcare, Women and the Environment
by Carolyn Merchant

With the autogenous authority of his sacred texts and the acculturated inclination of his glands, lofty super-natural man has associated Nature and Women: She is an object of the phallic plow, the gun and the fist, the saw and the male gaze. He has bullied and bulldozed Her mountains tops, explored and mined Her secret places, enjoyed Her moist and fertile bounty and, sometimes, protected Her from others who have queued-up to do the same.
Carolyn Merchant, Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy and Ethics at the University of California (Berkeley) has long been "deeply engaged with issues concerning the relationship between women and nature" and with "women's labor in the earth and the subsequent efforts to save it from destruction." The book is dedicated to these women.
Professor Merchant shows the reader the field of "ecofeminist" movements and effects in 19th and 20th century America, Australia, and Sweden "that deal with the twin oppressions of the domination of woman and nature" as well as promising her own "partnership ethic" approach. She says that while women can do a lot in "mainstream governmental and environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club, "most do not consider themselves feminists" But mainstream not only generally excludes feminism, it includes capitalism as a given, and "its logic precludes sustainability."
Even so, "although . . . rendered all but invisible by conservation historians, women transformed the crusade from an elite male enterprise into a widely based movement," and there were individual achievements as well: Mrs. Lovell White saved the Calaveras Grove of Sequoia gigantea and Seventy years after Ellen Swallow founded the science of ecology, although it was soon squeezed into `home economics', Rachel Carson made the question of the care of the earth a public issue with Silent Spring.
Of course there is resistance to an environmentalist/feminist coalition from both sides. The Australians Valerie Brown and Margaret Switzer even "state that the interaction between women and men . . . diverges sufficiently to . . . suggest that, to an ecologist observing the human species, they would represent different habitats, and different uses of the some environmental niche."
But men's cooperation is needed "if we are to save the planet." To do this we need a new story. "Ideology is a story told by people in power . . .so . . . by rewriting the story we can challenge the structures of power."
This story could hardly do better than to include that of Carolyn Merchant:

"My vision entails a partnership ethic between humans
(whether male or female), and between humans and
non-human nature . . . with other living and
non-living things. . . . The new story can be rewritten
only through action."

I urge you to buy and read this book. As the Pooka said to the recalcitrant Ballor's Son, in Ella Young's magical The Unicorn with the Silver Shoes,

"That would be a Good Action!" (rev.7.28.09)

5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Earthcare won't disappoint, April 6, 2000

By 

Miranda Dwyer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Earthcare: Women and the Environment (Paperback)

If you are looking for a book that shows the intricate details of nature and the relationship between women and the earth, Earthcare is an excellent choice to buy. You won't be disappointed and you will finish the book with a feeling of enlightenment and joy.