Ecofeminism (Paperback)

by Maria Mies (Author), Vandana Shiva (Author)
Key Phrases: new reproductive technologies, die tageszeitung, consumer liberation, Third World, New York, Women's Studies (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Two of Zed's best-known authors, one an economist, the other a physicist and philosopher, come together in this book on a controversial environmental agenda. Using interview material, they bring together women's perspectives from North and South on environmental deterioration and develop and new way of approaching this body of knowledge which is at once practical and philosophical.

Do women involved in environmental movements see a link between patriarchy and ecological degradation? What are the links between global militarism and the destruction of nature? In exploring such questions, the authors criticize prevailing theories and develop an intellectually rigorous ecofeminist perspective rooted in the needs of everyday life. They argue for the acceptance of limits, the rejection of the commoditization of needs, and a commitment to a new ethics.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Zed Books (October 15, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1856491560
• ISBN-13: 978-1856491563
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #499,933 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Against Globalization, May 4, 2000

By	Richard Hakala (bloomington, indiana U$A) - See all my reviews

This tag-team work from socialist-feminist Maria Mies and anti-biotech activist Vandana Shiva attempts to demystify the 'ecofeminist' movement. Thereby this is not the book for you if you're looking for Wiccan bioregion-friendly meditation techniques. It is for you however if you're interested in a comprehensive, analytical ciritique of hierarchy and some descriptions of grass-roots resistance (specifically to oppression at the intersection of class, gender and the environment). Readable, provocative, and inspiring.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do you call yourself a feminist?, September 16, 1999

By A Customer

If you call youself a feminist, you need to read this book! It will change the way you think about western feminists and the relationships between nature, women, and capitalism.

10 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Environmental Communism, July 26, 2001

By	unraveler "unraveler" (Nevada) - See all my reviews

.... It is short on hard analysis and long on slogans and ideological assertions. The following example may illustrate the point: "The continuation of the industrial growth model can only lead to further ecological destruction and to greater inequality, deeper poverty. And the first to be affected will be women and children. If this is to be avoided, and the aim is to put 'women and children first' in a different benevolent sense, then the industrial, world-market- and profit-oriented growth model must be transcended" (p.252). Note the bold prediction in the beginning and a decidedly non-Marxist dislike of industry. The solution offered seems to be a grass roots movement that would persuade people to change their life-styles. Corporations would have to give way to much smaller, locally-based units of production motivated by ecological sustainability and economic self-reliance; men would have to change their identity and become more women-like and less macho, and they would have to care for the sick and the elderly as much as women, so that they would have less time for war games (p. 257).

If much of the preceeding sounds like irrelevant philsophizing to you, you are not alone. The two social activists who wrote this book, and who oppose intellectual property rights, have nevertheless copyrighted the book in both of their names. Almost everything this book proposes is unrealistic and silly. It is laden with philosophical absurdities stemming from logical deductions that remind me of passages from "Alice in Wonderland." And the conclusion of the book is a brief manifesto, which is vacant and unimaginative. I gave the book two stars, because it is readable and its inane propagandistic "analysis" is mildly amusing.