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FEMINISM AND ECOLOGICAL
COMMUNITIES
Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing is one of the first books
radically to take stock of the ecofeminist movement. Acknowledging and addressing as
important the arguments against ecofeminism that have been made by postmodern and other
anti-essentialist wings, Chris J. Cuomo nevertheless argues that much of the recent work on
ecofeminism has been strong on criticism but weak on activism, leaving ecofeminist thought
at a crossroads. Taking up this challenge, Feminism and Ecological Communities formulates
a fascinating new blueprint for ecofeminist thought.
Opening by tracing the emergence of ecofeminism from the ecological and feminist
movements, Chris J. Cuomo clearly shows how environmental ethics can benefit by
incorporating feminist insights on the limitations of traditional philosophical conceptions of
ethics. To develop this picture, she asks challenging questions of many ecofeminist
assumptions. Must ecofeminists be committed to the view that women are closer to nature
than men? What are the common goals of feminism and environmentalism? How is the
oppression of women related to the degradation of nature?
Feminism and Ecological Communities addresses these key questions by drawing on
recent work in feminist ethics as well as the work of diverse figures such as Aristotle, John
Dewey, Aldo Leopold and Donna Haraway. Although presenting searching new arguments
against ecofeminist approaches that rely on simplistic analyses of gender, caring and moral
agency, Chris J. Cuomo passionately defends ecofeminism throughout against simplistic
anti-essentialist criticism. Paving a new way forward for ecofeminist theory and practice,
Feminism and Ecological Communities will be essential reading for all those interested in
gender studies, environmental studies and philosophy.
Chris J. Cuomo is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati.
FEMINISM AND
ECOLOGICAL
COMMUNITIES
An ethic of flourishing
Chris J. Cuomo
London and New York
First published 1998
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.
© 1998 Chris J. Cuomo
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cuomo, Chris J.
Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing/Chris J. Cuomo
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Ecofeminism 2. Human ecology 3. Feminist theory I. Title
HQ1233.C86 1998
305.42’01—dc21 97–11037
ISBN 0–415–15805–2 (hb)
0–415–15806–0 (pb)
ISBN 0-203-00319-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-17460-7 (Glassbook Format)
This book is dedicated to the memory of
Emily C. Svetlik,
who taught me how.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’ve written this book while living and thinking in three different communities, and it is with
warmth and incredible gratitude that I recall what it felt like to work in these places, in the
company of such wonderful friends and colleagues. In Madison, Wisconsin, I was advised
and inspired by Claudia Card, who inspires me still. This project was also shaped from its
earliest stages in conversations with Gwen Bialic, Lori Saxe, Tara Ayres, Barb Sparrow, and
Jim Anderson. Sandy Seuser provided nurturance and friendship, while the Others in
Education, including Laurie Fuller and Fong Hermes, helped pull me out of dogmatic
slumbers. The comments of Paula Gottleib, Steve Nadler, and Elizabeth Ellsworth also
provided helpful guidance.
In Ithaca, where I was fortunate to spend a year in the Department of Science and
Technology Studies at Cornell University, I benefitted immeasurably from the intellectual
and emotional support of Ruth Vanita, Archana Prasad, Karen Jones and Jenny Davoren.
Conversations with Sheila Jasanoff, Henry Shue, Kathy Abrams, Steven Yearley, Paula
Moya, Linda Alcoff, Peter Taylor, Herbert Gottleib, and Anna Marie Smith helped in the
seemingly impossible task of clarifying and articulating my thoughts.
Here in Cincinnati, in the last stages of preparing this manuscript, Madeleine Pabis, Ursula
Roma, Linda Weiner Morris, Ted Morris, Catherine Raissiguier, Lycette Nelson, Karla
Goldman, and Kristin Naca helped keep me sane and silly. I am thankful also for the support
of the members of the Department of Philosophy, especially Don Gustafson, and Bob
Richardson, and the Program in Women’s Studies, especially Robin Sheets, Lisa Hogeland
and Maura O’Connor. Special thanks to Julie Fitzgerald, Cate Sherron-Ferrell and Kim
Lockwood, for providing some green life and puppy energy just when I thought I had
forgotten why I was writing this book.
This book was also written in the company of communities not easily locatable in space.
More than anything else, the ideas in this book have been shaped and influenced by a brilliant
and nurturing group of feminist philosophers: The Midwest Society for Women in
FEMINISM AND ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES
x
Philosophy. I would especially like to thank Amber Katherine, Vicky Davion, Kim Hall,
María Lugones, Alison Bailey, Lori Gruen and Claudia Card for the gifts of their friendship
and wisdom. Over the years, I’ve also been influenced by the words and work of Jacquelyn
Zita, Jeffner Allen, Sarah Hoagland, Ann Leighton, Jackie Anderson, Marilyn Frye, Joyce
Trebilcot, Nancy Tuana, Lisa Heldke, Alison Jaggar and Sandra Bartky. So as to avoid a litany
of names (too late, I know), I’ll just say that this book — and this philosopher — would not
have been possible without the friendship, support and work of the members of Midwest
SWIP. If you don’t like what I have to say, you could blame them.
I appreciate the kindness of other writers who have allowed me to reprint their work here.
Excerpts from ‘Fire’ by Joy Harjo (from What Moon Drove Me to This? Berkeley: I. Reed
Books, 1978), ‘Our Stunning Harvest’ by Ellen Bass (copyright 1985, Ellen Bass), and
‘Kopis’taya,’ (‘A Gathering of Spirits’) by Paula Gunn Allen, all appear with permission of
the poets.
This manuscript benefitted greatly from the careful attention of Lori Gruen, Vicky
Davion, Ruth Vanita, and Val Plumwood. Thanks also to Tony Bruce and Adrian Driscoll,
from Routledge, for their patient assistance, and thank you to Lindsey Brake for careful
copyediting. Generous support in the form of money was provided by the Rockefeller
Foundation (which funded my postdoc in Science and Technology Studies at Cornell
University in 1994–95), as well as the Taft Faculty Board and University Research Council
of the University of Cincinnati. Generous support in the form of love was provided by my
wonderful family: Bonnie, Peter, Judy, Gina and Lou Cuomo, and Nicolle Ahles. Generous
assistance in the form of walking on my computer keyboard was provided by Sappho and
Sojourner.
Although I thought I wanted to deviate from the practice of thanking the girlfriend last, it
does seem right to end by thanking the person who had to endure the most annoying effects
of writing, and the most unsavory parts of me, while I wrote this book. For friendship, for
food, for sweet email messages and revivifying distractions, I thank Karen Schlanger, who
reminds me that if there is a reason to care about the earth, or to care about ourselves, it is
because of real, bodily love.
1
INTRODUCTION
Thinking at the crossroads
The story never really begins nor ends, even though there is a beginning and
an end to every story, just as there is a beginning and an end to every teller.
One can date it back to the immemorial days when a group of mighty men
attributed to itself a central, dominating position vis-à-vis other groups;
overvalued its particularities and achievements; adopted a projective attitude
toward those it classified among the out-groups; and wrapped itself up in its
own thinking, interpreting the out-groups through the in-group mode of
reasoning while claiming to speak the minds of both the in-group and the outgroup.
Trinh T. Minh-ha
This book is an attempt to articulate an ecological feminism, and to exhibit its potential as a
source of environmental and social ethics. Feminist environmentalism begins with noticing
similarities and connections between forms and instances of human oppression, including the
oppression of women, and the degradation of nature. A central position grounding
ecofeminism is the belief that values, notions of reality, and social practices are related, and
that forms of oppression and domination, however historically and culturally distinct, are
interlocked and enmeshed. It follows that our strategies – both theoretical and practical – for
resisting oppressions must attend to these connections.
Before proceeding further, let me give an example of the kinds of connections that concern
ecofeminists. One month last year, I felt bombarded by bad news: six women in my circle of
friends and family were found to have cancer – all of the cervix, uterus, or breast. In the midst
of my fear, I pondered histories of inadequate health care for women and the poor, the ways
in which women’s and nonwhite bodies are devalued, the fact that the meaning of women’s
lives is so often reduced to their reproductive functions, and the character of a profit-driven,
increasingly toxic world. At about the same time, in the city where I live, the Ku Klux Klan
was erecting a cross on the downtown square. Enraged, I thought of the misogyny,
ethnocentrism, and homophobia, the unapologetic violence, and the general lack of interest
in widespread human and ecological flourishing expressed by ‘radical’ right-wing
FEMINISM AND ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES
2
movements in the United States. And I considered how legacies of hatred were being played
out on the bodies of people I love.
Yet no story is ever simple. Cancer, of course, seems to have many different causes. And
alongside the fact that women’s bodies are devalued, our bodies are also glorified, and men’s
bodies are devalued, too. And, as for that processed world – at the moment, I can’t say that I
long for a world without my computer, and frequent-flier miles, and a large selection of food
that can be put into my mouth only minutes after deciding I want it. Is it possible to tease the
usefulness of products away from their questionable relationships to militarism, class
oppression, and alienation? Is it possible, in the face of complexity, to construct theories,
practices, and selves, that are mindful of connections? At the very least, the complexity of
reality, of the stories that compose our lives, our desires, our histories and communities, call
for complexity in our practices, our responses, our analyses and recommendations for the
future.
When we pause to consider the implications of our choices, it becomes clear that if we want
to be thorough and consistent, and to make choices that seem good, then careful attention must
be paid to the contexts in which seemingly isolated elements of reality occur. What is the
racial composition of your neighborhood, and how many toxic dumps are nearby? Why is that
tough, safe, gas-guzzling four-wheel-drive vehicle so attractive to me? To which
relationships in our lives do we devote the most time and energy? What assumptions and
contradictions concerning human society lie behind the single-issue environmental
movements and organizations we support? How might we most effectively interrupt
conservative political rhetoric that promotes regressive notions of woman, family, nation,
and racial privilege, even when it pretends to be (merely) about taxes and property rights?
We certainly don’t want to drive ourselves crazy with analysis. Theory should not make
us so obsessed with causes, connections, underlying factors and implications that we cannot
act or move, or leave us so overwhelmed or distracted that we stop caring about whatever
brought us to theory in the first place. Even when crazy-making, theoretical work should help
its audience negotiate or know whatever the writing aims to clarify – be it a piece of art, a bit
of information, or a political identity. Ethical theory, in particular, ought to help us negotiate
our personal, social, and institutional relationships.
Where organic well-being beyond oneself is concerned, and in so far as choice is possible, a
matter is ethical. The concept of ethics is used to locate a particular category of human
problems: one involving the interests of other people, or other ‘morally valuable’ beings, as
factors, and one which calls upon agents to make choices according to socially sanctioned, or
‘appropriate,’ criteria. Aristotle noted that one of the distinguishing features of virtue, his
concept for ethical responses to relationships and situations, is the fact that it involves choice.
According to the norms recorded by him and other influential thinkers in the history of ethics,
INTRODUCTION
3
ethical issues involve the exploration of ‘the good,’ and ‘right and wrong,’ and their attempted
realization in human interactions.
The norms concerning ethical concepts and matters, or the meanings of good and
appropriate actions and attitudes, have been debated from the beginning of philosophy. But
these discussions of norms are undergoing dramatic, unparalleled upheavals on the wave of
social movements for liberation and political change. Two influential, multifaceted, and
intertwined sites of controversy in ethics have been at the intersections of academic
philosophy and feminism, and philosophy and environmentalism. From these unfixed
locations have come some very basic claims with almost incomprehensibly complex
implications: nonmale, nonwhite, nonowning, and otherwise nonprivileged people, and
nonhuman beings, and the interests of all of these entities that are constructed variously as
Other to the paradigmatic Knower, Thinker, Politician and Party to the Contract have been
inadequately represented, and dangerously misrepresented, in the history of philosophy. This
erasure and distortion is of particular interest when it occurs in ethical thought, since ethics is
ostensibly supposed to promote justice and good behavior. Yet, as history shows, ethical
arguments can be molded to justify all kinds of actions and identities.
In efforts to unearth unfriendly references to women and other Others in the history of
philosophy, and to include them qua women, people of color, workers, ecosystems and cows
(rather than wives and mothers, slaves, exotics, foreigners and lower classes, Nature and
meat) in philosophical explorations, several parallel agendas have emerged as central in
feminist and environmental philosophies. One such agenda is to locate and debunk false
characterizations, and to map out their often hidden influences and implications. For
example, Aristotle’s belief that women are essentially, naturally passive helps shape his
claims that only certain men count as citizens, and that the political realm entails men’s
interactions with each other. Women and slaves are backgrounded in his conception of the
polis, though their work enables its existence. Similarly, Descartes’ insistence that nonhuman
animals more closely resemble clocks than rational persons, and that their responses to
unpleasant stimuli are not true expressions of pain, betrays his predisposition to discount
responses that are not uniquely human in his discussion of what knowledge is and how it
functions.
Beyond this critical move, feminist and environmental philosophers also look at the
implications of including subordinated groups and individuals among those who count as
theoretically significant and morally considerable in traditional philosophical systems.
Controversies inevitably arise about how to represent ‘them,’ how to avoid universalization
or reduction (what are ‘women,’ and what is ‘nature,’ anyway?), and whether traditional
frameworks are capable of accommodating as full subjects those castigated as Others by
those very frameworks. An inevitable project is a detailed exploration of how counting
historically discounted Others as relevant seriously undermines or revises the assumptions
and prescriptions of traditional ethical frameworks.
FEMINISM AND ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES
4
This book sits at the crossroads of feminism and environmentalism in two ways. First, it
begins from a concern with the problems that have given rise to both environmentalism and
feminism: the mistreatment of the natural world, and the subordination of women and other
Others, and the ways these are interrelated and influenced by each other. Second, it turns to
the separate world of feminist and environmental analyses to illuminate solutions to, or
means of addressing these problems. I am after ethics that explore connections among related
but distinct phenomena, and in my search I bring together varied philosophical and ethical
perspectives.
It is only the dissatisfied who have the urge to live differently, and hence the
need to find out what ways of living differently would be improvements.
Julia Annas
For many good reasons, people drawn to read a book on feminism and environmentalism are
likely to be wary of ethics, because its language is so strongly associated with rules, norms
and evaluative criteria put forward by the powerful in order to control others and maintain
privilege. An example is current conservative talk of ‘family values’ in the US, which is
actually used to justify the silencing and unfair treatment of lesbians and gay men, and to
impart blame for urban crime and the federal deficit upon unmarried women who have
children and receive welfare payments. Ruling social codes of morality have rarely promoted
women’s interests or the interests of members of other subordinated groups, and as Nietzsche
noted, have helped create cultures founded on guilt, abnegation, denial and lies. In addition,
so-called moralities that aim to justify incredible cruelty toward and exploitation of
nonprivileged groups of humans, and nonhuman beings and communities, motivate serious,
legitimate mistrust of talk of morality. One need only look at what has been carried out against
people and against land in the name of ‘just war’ to acquire a healthy suspicion of moral
claims.
Some ethicists have attempted to distance their writing from repressive social or religious
rules of correct behavior by referring to their own work as ‘ethics,’ and to customary and
religious codes as ‘morality.’ In this scheme, ethics is a matter of agents deciding upon good
behavior or dispositions through rational consideration of arguments and information, while
morality includes unquestioned, unquestioning, rule-following, or unreflective goosestepping
in sync with authorities. Although I do not utilize it here, this distinction makes some
practical sense, and also has a basis in the history of the meanings of the terms. ‘Moral’ is
derived from the Latin moralis, which refers to manners and customs, while the Greek
ancestors of ‘ethics,’ ethos and ethikos, refer respectively to character and custom, and the
technical art of perfecting them. ‘Ethics,’ if a technical practice, carries connotations of
thoughtful agency and of the potential for change and controversy regarding how one ought
to act in social contexts, while ‘morality’ is merely appropriate rule-following.
INTRODUCTION
5
Whether or not Cicero was motivated by a desire to conflate them in the literate mind when
he translated ethikos as moralis, the terms have extensive overlap in current meaning, and
both refer to the same categories of human actions and dispositions: those in which it makes
sense to talk of right and wrong, good and bad, responsibility, duty, and virtue. I therefore use
the concepts of ethics and morality interchangeably, keeping in mind the extent to which
rational consideration of arguments is always socially embedded, and that rote rule-following
does not exempt one from questions of responsibility.
In putting forward arguments toward ethics that are both feminist and environmentalist, I
am not advocating universal rules or restrictive guidelines. I am seeking ways of thinking, and
of evaluating actions, policies, and values, that challenge destructive and oppressive modes
of interaction, and that encourage deep thought and carefulness in the face of lies and
illusions, commingled with facts and observations, that are terribly influential and powerful,
and that enable oppression and exploitation. Needless to say, I am also motivated by a desire
to participate in discussions about ‘what to do’ about the oppression and exploitation of
women, people of color, of workers and the poor, of lesbians and gay men, about the presence
and legacies of ethnocentrism and colonialism, about the torture of nonhuman animals in
laboratories, and about toxic dumping and dwindling wilderness, and about how to engage in
transgressive practices.
Like all philosophy, ethics is always about ideals – as much about what we aspire to do or
be as it is about who we actually are. But ideals can function in real relations. Rather than cling
to pure abstract truth while meeting inevitability, we sometimes have opportunities to make
choices that redirect the path of what seems entirely likely or predisposed. Sometimes these
moments feel grand and revolutionary. Sometimes they are local and personal. Perhaps they
are more available than they seem at the end of the twentieth century, from ‘the belly of the
beast,’ (as Donna Haraway refers to American society). Hope, possibility, alternative,
tradition, history, and creativity can be remarkably powerful in the face of danger and
absurdity.
CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT ECO/FEMINIST
Although I’ve been attracted to thinking at the intersections of feminism and
environmentalism for years, I hesitate to call myself an ecofeminist. Indeed, I prefer to think
of my work as ecological feminism, in an effort to keep the emphasis on feminism, and also
to distance my approach somewhat from other work done by self-titled ecofeminists. Though
I share motivations with the authors of such work, I am sufficiently critical to be
uncomfortable with the label. Accordingly, in these pages, ‘ecofeminism’ is an umbrella term
referring to forthright attempts to link some versions of feminism and environmentalism, and
‘ecological feminism’ refers to the particular subset of ecofeminist approaches I wish to
FEMINISM AND ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES
6
articulate and endorse here. On the whole, I find that a large amount of ecofeminist work has
focused too exclusively on the objects of oppression (such as women and nature), and has not
adequately explored the connections among the various forms and functions of oppressive
systems.
Throughout this book I distinguish between two different approaches to thinking about
connections between feminism and environmental ethics. Some ecofeminists, including
many spiritual writers and activists, look primarily at the connections and similarities among
the objects of oppressive and exploitative thought and action. This approach might be thought
of as object-attentive, because of the way it zooms in on women. Unfortunately, this tight
focus too often results in false universalizations about women, based on the experiences and
interests of women with privilege and power.
Of course, it is possible for a more critical object-attentive approach to take the category
‘woman’ as referring to a diverse, multifarious group of differing and complex individuals.
The clear and present commonalities, patterns and connections among women’s gendered
positions and experiences necessitate a feminism that focuses on those of us who fall under
the category ‘woman.’ None the less, it conceives of the category as multiplicitous, complex,
and even contradictory, and realizes that improving the lives of women therefore necessarily
entails working against all oppressions experienced by anyone in the category ‘woman.’ As
Elizabeth Spelman points out, gender oppression cannot be sliced out from women’s
experiences or identities. There is no pure gender, or instance of sexism, not coexistent with
race, class, and sexuality, and accompanying oppressions and privileges. Feminists stand
contrary to women’s oppression, and ‘woman’ is always formed within social relations other
than gender. Any feminism that aims to deconstruct ‘women’s oppression,’ conceptually or
materially, must recognize that even where aspects of oppression can be identified as being
‘about gender,’ they are commonly, intimately, linked with other oppressions. Feminism
cannot therefore merely involve promoting anything that can be characterized as simply ‘in
women’s interests.’ Because other social categories, such as race, class, and sexuality,
fundamentally shape gendered relations and identities (and vice versa), it is incoherent to
promote a feminism that does not address oppressions based on these categories as well. On
this view, connections between ‘woman’ and ‘nature’ exist because women are part of
‘nature,’ as are all humans, and the suppression and hatred of nature is played out in specific
ways on women’s bodies, activities, and conceptual frameworks. These connections are
relevant because both women and nature are categorically devalued, with their distinct and
similar qualities.
Another way of noting the interconnections among oppressions is based on an analysis of
the ways oppressions function. Accordingly, ecological feminism focuses on the links and
patterns among the treatment of oppressed, exploited, or undervalued beings and entities –
that is, among forms and instances of oppression and degradation, and common ethical and
ontological bases for maltreatment. This approach is not inconsistent with the insights of the
INTRODUCTION
7
first approach, which complicates understandings of moral objects, subjects, and agents. But
a focus on oppression employs the notion that different forms and systems of oppression are
interwoven, and they therefore strengthen and fuel each other. These approaches emphasize
the logical similarity and interdependence of various forms of oppression, the recurrent
themes and tools used to harm people and limit their lives, and the ways that members of
oppressed groups are actively discouraged from noticing these connections and acting in
solidarity to fight common enemies. This approach to interconnection is evident in the work
of Karen Warren and Val Plumwood, who emphasize conceptual and practical connections in
defining ecological feminism.
Though the work of many earlier ecofeminist thinkers, as well as a good deal of
ecofeminist activist rhetoric, could be described as strictly objectattentive, more recent
ecofeminist theoretical work departs from attempts to articulate similarities between those
mythical entities ‘women and nature.’ I count my perspective among those voices critical of
ecofeminist appeals to femininity or women’s corporeality as naturally and essentially more
closely linked to the nonhuman world, of characterizations of nature as feminine, or radically
separate from culture, and of claims that women are particularly responsible for saving the
earth. Rather, the perspective I present here begins with a recognition of the connections
among various types and aspects of oppression and exploitation. But instead of rejecting all
ecofeminism out of hand, I argue that it is important to recognize that because entities like
‘women’ and ‘nature’ are socially, discursively, historically constructed, attention to the
particularities and mechanisms of those constructions (seen partially in their ‘treatment’) will
inevitably result in conclusions about what they are. Conversely, discussion of what some
ecofeminists refer to as bonds or connections between women and nature are not necessarily
rooted in essentialist understandings of what they ‘are,’ but can be based on observations of
the meanings, functions, and dispositions of women and natural entities within a given
discursive universe.
There is a tension in this book between my aim to describe an existent worldview, and my
desire to present it persuasively as a useful ethical alternative. While I aim to create a coherent
picture of ecological feminist thought, I move between a descriptive presentation of
ecofeminism as it is and normative arguments for ecological feminism as it ought to be. Put
differently, part of my project entails sifting through various ecofeminist approaches in order
to illuminate their strengths and weaknesses, though I want also to build upon the strengths
and suggest fruitful directions for further development.
My discussions of ecofeminism ought not to be interpreted as implying that the only
feminists interested in nature – its destruction, its protection, its promise, its historical links
with women and femininity – are those who think of themselves as ‘ecofeminists,’ or who
focus explicitly on the practical and conceptual issues in which connections between gender,
FEMINISM AND ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES
8
race, class, and constructions of nature are apparent. Emphasis on nature, pets or companionanimals,
vegetarianism, and ecologically-sound practices have often permeated feminist
politics and cultures, and feminists have long noticed connections between women and
nature. Though in these pages I am primarily attentive to explicitly feminist/environmentalist
expressions, I hope also to remain mindful of the extent to which certain versions of feminism
have always been environmentalist.
Any piece of philosophy is merely part of a conversation. This book is meant to be a voice
in conversations that include, but are not limited to, American academic/activist radical
politics. My contribution to these conversations focuses on ecofeminist and other theoretical
and literary work from the US, and its relation to Western philosophical traditions. In
addition, my discussion of feminism and environmentalism is very much informed by the
ways in which these movements exist, in the US, and at the intersections of theory and
practice. Feminisms, ecofeminism, and environmentalisms take many different shapes
around the world – and within our own communities – and some understandings of these will
be at odds with my not-disinterested presentation. Because ecofeminism is a near-global
phenomenon, it would be absurd to take one version to exhaust the valuable possibilities for
thinking at the crossroads of feminism and environmentalism. For example, it is undeniably
true that rural women and poor women, including women in the Third World, have been the
leaders in efforts to create practices and institutions that aim jointly to empower women and
to restore devastated ecosystems.1 But while there is certainly significant overlap, there are
different requirements for effective political resistance and social change in different
contexts. While there is a tendency in Western ecofeminist theory to describe the work of rural
Third World women as paradigmatic ecofeminist activism, one sees little effort (in the
literature) to develop specific models that examine the politics of ‘first world’
megaconsumption on ecofeminist grounds.
The ecological feminism I describe is a philosophical feminism that attempts to map
carefully its constituent concepts, logics, knowledge, and justifications, and which stands on
the shoulders of the wealth of feminist philosophical work of the last few decades. In stating
this, I mean to point out my own intellectual foundations as well as a body of work that has
influenced other thinkers concerned with issues at the crossroads of various systems and
modes of oppression. From my focus on the philosophical issues central to ecological
feminism, it will be evident that I am preoccupied with the conceptual realm. Though I don’t
believe that concepts or ideas determine reality, are entirely separate from material, or that
they are always easily identifiable, I do believe that conceptual gridlock can be deadly, and
that conceptual shifts are a necessary aspect of significant social change.
1 For examples, see Leonard 1989; Braidotti et al. 1994; Shiva 1994; Nussbaum and Glover 1995.
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