Customer Reviews

Ecofeminism

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

"Ecofeminism" by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva is a collection of articles dealing with various aspects of ecofeminism, a relatively new and somewhat controversial philosophy. Ecofeminism isn't a simple combination of Green and feminist ideas. Rather, it's a very specific current, which often runs counter to more regular feminism.

The ecofeminists reject the Enlightenment, the bourgeois revolutions and modern individualism. They also attack modern science for its materialism and reductionism. Women are seen as closer to Nature, and ecofeminists therefore see a connection between patriarchal oppression of women and destruction of the environment. In terms of greenness, ecofeminists could be considered "dark greens" or "fundis", since they seem to reject the entire modern civilization in favour of a society based on subsistence agriculture. Strangely for dark greens, however, they don't consider overpopulation to be a problem.

While ecofeminism is regarded as left-wing (no doubt because of its anti-hierarchic perspective), its anti-Enlightenment, anti-science, communitarian and "organismic" perspective does have obvious affinities with a certain kind of conservative philosophies. And while Mies and Shiva nominally defend the right of abortion, they actually seem to vacillate on the issue. It would seem that they really oppose both abortion and modern contraception (including condoms) in favour of coitus interruptus. This is a very extreme position, reminiscent of certain religious groups. Curiously, there is a mostly-religious group in the United States called Feminists for Life (FFL) which explicitly opposes abortion and is neutral on contraception, no doubt in order to recruit Catholics. Unless I'm mistaken, FFL is loosely associated with a Catholic current known as Consistent Life Ethic. Apparently, the most radical supporters of this current are animal rights activists and vegetarians.

There doesn't seem to be anything in particular precluding a fusion of ecofeminism and the anti-abortion "feminists", except perhaps the traditional left-right divide.

I can't say I like it. I'm a feminist. But apparently, not an ecofeminist for life.

(Since the book is a good introduction to ecofeminism, I gave it five stars despite disagreeing with much of the contents.)

I had to read this book for a class. In it, it states that birth control causes infertility, which is hardly true with modern birth control. Though with some, there can be a delay after prolonged usage, it is not a large problem. However, they did cite this source! It was cited "survey of five women". That breaks just about every statistical rule I've ever learned. It also at one point made some sort of assumption that most men have never touched a plant. Also, if they had a proofreader s(he) was probably drunk the whole time. There were so many typos in the book!

.... 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.