Hostname: page-component-5d84bcc8dc-8cqpf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-08-29T04:24:55.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Feminism, Capitalism, and Ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Johanna Oksala
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article critically assesses the different ways of theoretically connecting feminism, capitalism, and ecology. I take the existing tradition of socialist ecofeminism as my starting point and outline two different ways that the connections among capitalism, the subordination of women, and the destruction of the environment have been made in this literature: materialist ecofeminism and Marxist ecofeminism. I will demonstrate the political and theoretical advantages of these positions in comparison to some of the earlier forms of theorizing the relationship between women and nature, but I will also submit them to philosophical critique. I will show how the Marxist ecofeminist position needs to be both updated and revised in order to account for the different, sometimes contradictory mechanisms for the capitalization of nature that have become prominent today. I will underscore two developments in particular: the dominance of neoliberalism and the development of biotechnology. I will conclude by summing up the theoretical grounds on which a contemporary political alliance between feminist and ecological struggles against capitalism can be built.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , Spring 2018 , pp. 216 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aho, Hanna. 2016. “Lyhyt oppimäärä metsien rooliin ilmastopolitiikassa.” https://www.sll.fi/ajankohtaista/blogi/lyhyt-oppimaara-metsien-rooliin-ilmastopolitiikassa (accessed October 23, 2017).Google Scholar
Agarwal, Bina. 1992. The gender and environment debate: Lessons from India. Feminist Studies 18 (1): 119–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agarwal, Bina. 2001. A challenge for ecofeminism: Gender, greening, and community forestry in India. Women & Environments International 52/53: 12–15.Google Scholar
Bailey, Alison. 2011. Reconceiving surrogacy: Toward a reproductive justice account of Indian surrogacy. Hypatia 26 (4): 716–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benston, Margaret. 1997. The political economy of women's liberation. In Materialist feminism: Reader in class, difference, and women's lives, ed. Hennessy, Rosemary and Ingraham, Chrys. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Birch, Kean, and Tyfield, David. 2012. Theorizing the bioeconomy: Biovalue, biocapital, bioeconomics or…what? Science, Technology & Human Values 38 (3): 299–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, William, Prudham, W. Scott, and Schurman, Rachel A. 2001. Industrial dynamics and the problem of nature. Society and Natural Resources 14 (7): 555–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi, et al. 1994. Women, the environment and sustainable development: Towards a theoretical synthesis. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Carlassare, Elizabeth. 2000. Socialist and cultural ecofeminism: Allies in resistance. Ethics and the Environment 5 (1): 89–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1: 139–67.Google Scholar
Daly, Mary. 1978. Gyn/Ecology: The metaethics of radical feminism. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Angela Y. 1972. Reflections on the black woman's role in the community of slaves. Massachusetts Review 13 (2): 81–100.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. 2016. Hidden in plain sight: A note on legitimation crises and the racial order. Critical Historical Studies 3 (1): 143–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farris, Sara R. 2015. The intersectional conundrum and the nation‐state. https://viewpointmag.com/2015/05/04/the-intersectional-conundrum-and-the-nation-state/ (accessed October 23, 2017).Google Scholar
Federici, Silvia. 2012. Revolution at point zero: Housework, reproduction, and feminist struggle. New York: Autonomedia.Google Scholar
Folbre, Nancy, and Nelson, Julie A. 2000. For love or money—or both? Journal of Economic Perspectives 14 (4): 123–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, John Bellamy. 2002. Ecology against capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. 2014. Behind Marx's hidden abode. New Left Review 86 (March–April): 1–17.
Fraser, Nancy. 2016. Expropriation and exploitation in racialized capitalism: A reply to Michael Dawson. Critical Historical Sudies 3 (1): 163–78.Google Scholar
Gaard, Greta. 2011. Ecofeminism revisited: Rejecting essentialism and re‐placing species in a material environment. Feminist Formations 23 (2): 26–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaard, Greta, and Gruen, Lori. 2005. Ecofeminism: Toward global justice and planetary health. In Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (4th edition), ed. Zimmerman, Michael E., Callicott, J. Baird, Warren, Karen J., Klaver, Irene, and Clark, John. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.Google Scholar
Griffin, Susan. 1978. Woman and nature: The roaring inside her. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2003. The new imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie. 2000. Global care chains and emotional surplus value. In On the edge: Living with global capitalism, ed. Hutton, W. and Giddens, A.London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Ilmasto.org. 2008. Vanhat metsät sittenkin hiilinieluja. http://ilmasto.org/kirjoitukset/vanhat-metsat-sittenkin-hiilinieluja (accessed October 23, 2017).Google Scholar
Kirk, Gwyn. 1997. Standing on solid ground: A materialist ecological feminism. In Materialist feminism: A reader in class, difference, and women's lives, ed. Hennessy, Rosemary and Ingraham, Chrys. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Klein, Naomi. 2014. This changes everything. Capitalism vs. the climate. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1976. Capital: A critique of political economy, vol. I. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Mellor, Mary. 1992. Breaking the boundaries: Towards a feminist green socialism. London: Virago.Google Scholar
Merchant, Carolyn. 1980. The death of nature: Women, ecology, and the scientific revolution. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Mies, Maria. 1986/1998. Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale: Women in the international division of labour. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Mohapatra, Seema. 2014. A race to the bottom? The need for international regulation of the rapidly growing global surrogacy market. In Globalization and transnational surrogacy in India: Outsourcing life, ed. DasGupta, Sayantani and Das DasGupta, Shamita. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Moore, Jason. 2015. Capitalism in the web of life: Ecology and the accumulation of capital. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Nanda, Meera. 1997. “History is what hurts”: A materialist feminist perspective on the green revolution and its ecofeminist critics. In Materialist feminism: A reader in class, difference, and women's lives, ed. Hennessy, Rosemary and Ingraham, Chrys. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Oksala, Johanna. 2011. The neoliberal subject of feminism. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 42 (1): 104–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pande, Amrita. 2009. Not an “angel”, not a “whore”: Surrogates as “dirty” workers in India. Indian Journal of Gender Studies 16 (2): 141–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salleh, Ariel. 1997. Ecofeminism as politics: Nature, Marx and the postmodern. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Sandel, Michael. 2012. What money can't buy: The moral limits of markets. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.Google Scholar
Shiva, Vandana. 1989. Staying alive: Women, ecology and development. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Smith, Neil. 2007. Nature as accumulation strategy. Socialist Register 43: 16–36.Google Scholar
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). 2009. State of world population 2009. Facing a changing world: Women, population and climate. https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/state_of_world_population_2009.pdf (accessed October 23, 2017).Google Scholar
Vogel, Lise. 2013. Marxism and the oppression of women: Toward a unitary theory. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vora, Kalindi. 2013. Potential, risk, and return in transnational Indian gestational surrogacy. Current Anthropology 54 (S7): S97–S106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar