BIBLIOGRAPHY
This bibliography is limited to selected recent
resources. Annotations are taken from book jackets and article
abstracts. Please refer to book reviews for commentary on a book's
substance.
Issues and Concepts: Books and Chapters
Bandarage, Asoka, 1997
Women, Population and Global Crisis: A Political-Economic
Analysis. London and New Jersey: Zed Books.
It has been widely assumed that overpopulation is one of the
root causes of global crisis. Even among feminist and environmental
movements, the common wisdom on population has never been seriously
critiqued. This book provides a historical overview of the population
question and places the population-poverty-environment-security
debate within a broad theoretical perspective.
Becker, Mary, Cynthia Grant Bowman, and Morrison Torrey, 2001
"Women and the State: Global Feminism and Equality." In Cases and Materials on Feminist Jurisprudence: Taking Women Seriously. St. Paul, MN: West Group.
Bennett, Vivienne, 1995
Politics of Water: Urban Protest, Gender, and Power in Monterrey,
Mexico. Pittsburgh, PA-: University of Pittsburgh Press.
In the early 1980s, nearly a quarter of Monterrey's nearly three
million inhabitants had no running water in their homes, while
the region's heavy industries were major water consumers. Bennett
uses the water crisis of the 1980s as a lens through which to
reveal and question the processes of urban services planning in
Monterrey. Her study focuses on the water services themselves,
the response of poor women to the crisis, and the dynamics of
planning water services for the city.
Braidotti, Rosi, Ewa Charkiewicz, Sabine Hausler, and Saskia Wieringa, 1994
Women, the Environment and Sustainable Development: Towards
a Theoretical Synthesis. London: Zed Books.
There is a widespread perception that the development process
is in a state of multiple crises. While the notion of sustainable
development is supposed to address adequately its environmental
dimensions, there is still no agreed framework relating women
to this new perspective. This book is an attempt to present and
disentangle the various positions put forward by major actors
and to clarify the political and theoretical issues that are at
stake in the debates on women, the environment, and sustainable
development.
Breton, Mary Joy, 2000
Women Pioneers for the Environment. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
This book provides sketches of more than 40 women activists
in the Americas, Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and Asia,
recounting the special ways in which each stepped out of her traditional
role and dedicated her life to saving the planet. Breton interweaves
her accounts with narratives on the ecological hazards that drove
these women to spearhead various environmental campaigns, examining
why and how they challenged, and often defeated, the power structures
of government and industry. Their efforts illuminate the crucial
role of women in the environmental movement and provide inspiration
for a new generation of activists.
Bruce, Morito, 2002
"Sustainable Development, Conservation and Sustainability." In Thinking Ecologically: Environmental Thought, Values, and Policy. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing.
Buckingham-Hatfield, Susan, 2000
"The Making of Science: It's a Man's World." In Gender and Environment. New York: Routledge.
Dankelman, Irene and Joan Davidson, 1988
Women and the Environment in the Third World: Alliance for
the Future. London: Earthscan.
Third World women play the major role in managing natural resources.
They are also the first and hardest hit by environmental mismanagement,
yet they are neither consulted nor taken into account by development
strategists. With the help of well-documented case studies, this
book describes ways in which women can organize to meet environmental,
social, and economic challenges by providing a clear account of
the problems faced by women in the management of land, water,
forests, energy, and human settlements. It also describes the lack
of response from international organizations.
Diamond, Irene, 1997
Fertile Ground: Women, Earth, and the Limits of Control. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Diamond parallels the abuse of nature and the abuse of women
to challenge ecological and feminist assumptions about population
control and fertility. She proposes that Western feminism has
developed within the masculinist ideology of power, including
control of nature and the earth. Thus, much of the discourse of
women's liberation reinforces the will toward technological mastery
by emphasizing ownership of bodies and control of fertility. Diamond
demonstrates the need for diversity, both ecologically and culturally,
if we are to renew our relationship with the Earth, beginning
with respect for local and culturally specific connections to
the environment. Relying heavily on the work of Foucault, Diamond
develops the idea of the sexuated body as the basis of the western
focus on owning bodies. She advocates focusing on and celebrating
fertility of both women and the Earth, and challenging technology
that provides sex without consequences, reproduction without sex,
and food without sweat. Avoiding romantic calls to return to the
wilderness and arguments about women's inherent alliance with
nature, Diamond directs attention to the cyclical nature of life
and death, and provides a stepping stone for future ecofeminist
efforts.
Dietrich, Gabriele, 1992
Reflections on the Women's Movement in India: Religion, Ecology,
Development. New Delhi: Horizon India Books.
Drawing on experiences of slum-dwelling women in southern India,
and on 15 years of work in the women's rights movement and other
informal sector unions, this is a critical analysis of the impact
of India's new economic policy (NEP) on the everyday life and
survival of poor women, and on local welfare agencies. Rejecting
the hegemonic profit-accumulation development paradigm, an alternative
"life-centered production, or life and livelihood production"
system is proposed as more supportive of feminist concepts. Economic
globalization and the NEP threaten women's survival, since women
are co-opted by the joint efforts of the state, communal religious
forces, and development agencies into working with the current
system, lured by empowerment strategies. Dietrich argues that
poor women's cultural frameworks, shattered by the NEP's implementation
and the politicization of religion, can be saved only by an autonomous,
organizational, and cultural resource-laden people's movement
advocating a life-centered production paradigm.
Ferguson, Anne, 2005
"Water Reform, Gender, and HIV/AIDS: Perspectives from Malawi." In Globalization, Water and Health: Resources Management in Times of Scarcity, edited by Linda Whiteford and Scott Whiteford. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research.
Gaard, Greta and Patrick Murphy, Editors, 1998
Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of
Illinois Press.
Ecofeminist Literary Criticism is the first collection of its kind: a diverse anthology that explores both how ecofeminism can enrich literary criticism and how literary criticism can contribute to ecofeminist theory and activism. Ecofeminism is a practical movement for social change that discerns interconnections among all forms of oppression: the exploitation of nature, the oppression of women, class exploitation, racism, colonialism. Against binary divisions such as self/other, culture/nature, man/woman, humans/animals, and white/non-white, ecofeminist theory asserts that human identity is shaped by more fluid relationships and by an acknowledgment of both connection and difference. Once considered the province of philosophy and women's studies, ecofeminism in recent years has been incorporated into a broader spectrum of academic discourse. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism assembles some of the most insightful advocates of this perspective to illuminate ecofeminism as a valuable component of literary criticism.
Garcia-Guadilla, Maria Pilar, 1995
"Gender, Environment, and Empowerment in Venezuela."
In Engendering Wealth and Well-Being: Empowerment for Global Change, edited by R.L. Blumberg, C.A. Rakowski, I. Tinker, and M. Monteon. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc.
The author asserts that ecological organizations in Venezuela
have a Westernized view of the environment; they stress the conservation
of rich and unique ecosystems, the creation of national parks,
the fight against pollution, and so forth. However, she also acknowledges
that women's environmental organizations and urban associations
approach environmental issues from a Third World perspective of
poverty, quality-of-life, and day-to-day domestic problems. In
this article, the author examines the four major women's environmental
organizations in Venezuela, their strategies - domestic and strategic - and degree of political success. She then discusses organizations
that vary by gender composition, ranging from women-only to mixed-gender
memberships with varying levels of active participation by women
and men, and their political and social impacts. Finally, the author
concludes the article by discussing the major factors contributing
to the success of women's environmental campaigns and the multifarious
ways in which women mobilize to effect environmental change.
Hanchett, Suzanne, Jesmin Akhter, and Kazi Rozana Akhter, 1998
"Gender and Society in Bangladesh's Flood Action Plan." In Water, Culture, and Power: Local Struggles in a Global Contest, edited by John M. Donahue and Barbara Rose Johnston. Washington, DC and Covelo, CA: Island Press.
This chapter discusses the integration of gender-related issues and other social constructions into a national-scale development program, Bangladesh's Flood Action Plan (FAP). The program, based on 30 different studies of flooding in Bangladesh, began in 1989 and ended in 1995. Every phase of the FAP, which was originally intended as an engineering and planning exercise, was marked by complex machinations of several economic, political, and social interest groups. In response to criticism, a Gender Study was added to one component of the FAP, the Flood Response Study, in 1991. The results of the Gender Study focused attention on the unrecognized role of women in agricultural production. Although the effects of the Gender Study on the FAP were mixed, it may serve to broaden the social perspective of future development programs.
Hanks, Sharon La Bonde, 1996
Ecology and the Biosphere: Principles and Problems. Boca Raton, FL: St. Lucie Press.
A valuable one-semester course text for non-science majors. It is concise, focused on material that will enable students to make intelligent choices about the future of the earth, and written in a style that will enable students to make connections to their own lives. Students want to know how science relates to their own lives, how the biosphere works, what is wrong with it, and what they can do to make a difference. This text provides the information students need and gives real-life examples that make the learning process more interesting and relevant.
Harcourt, Wendy, Editor, 1994
Feminist Perspectives on Sustainable Development. London:
Zed Books.
Contributions on resource management, power, knowledge production,
culture, development institutions and politics, health, and economics
show how gender relations are not simply a footnote to our understanding
of history and societies, but must be central to the development
discourse. In so doing, diversity itself is necessary to the creation
of new paradigms of development that are built upon gender equity,
secure livelihoods, ecological sustainability, and political participation.
Harrison, Elizabeth, 1997
"Fish, Feminists and the FAO: Translating 'Gender' Through Different Institutions in the Development Process." In Getting Institutions Right for Women in Development, edited by Anne Marie Goetz. New York: Zed Books.
hooks, bell, 2000 (second edition)
"Chapter 1. Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory" and "Chapter 2. Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression." In Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Hynes, H. Patricia, 1989
"The Recurring Silent Spring." In Silent Spring: A Feminist
Reading. New York: Pergamon Press.
Preserving genetic diversity in a species-endangered world is
one part of the mythology which encases biotechnology development.
The other element of the mythology is that this "green-gene
revolution" will solve the growing world population's food
needs. This is, again, a technical band-aid offered for the profound
human tragedy of hunger and malnutrition. People dying from hunger
when surplus food stands in silos elsewhere is not a failure of
agricultural technology. This tragedy is caused by militarism,
which uses hunger as a weapon and siphons off countries' economic
resources for guns, tanks, and planes that should be used for
sustainable agriculture. It is caused by economic and agricultural
development which depletes and erodes soils rather than replenishing
and sustaining their fertility. It is caused by structures of
poverty which drive people in developing countries to live in
and wear out fragile ecosystems. It is caused by agricultural
policies in the West which use food surpluses as cheap aid to
developing countries and, thus, undercut their indigenous agricultural
economies.
Jackson, Cecile, 1994
"Gender Analysis and Environmentalism." In Social Theory and the Global Environment, edited by Michael Redclift and Ted Benton. London and New York: Routledge.
The coupling of women and environment in development discourses, popular, academic, and practical, has created an illusion of gender awareness. Yet women and gender are, of course, distinct, and this chapter aims to examine this illusion more closely. The author focuses on assumptions about women and environments but also raises the wider question of coercion in environmental management and regulation. A secondary theme of this chapter is to query the adequacy of the view that poverty is the cause of environmentally unfriendly behavior. This leads to assumptions that poverty alleviation will result in more positive environmental management, and that therefore development and conservation are inherently compatible. A gender perspective, however, suggests that environmental behavior is also formed by other social relations which can disrupt such an equation. It also suggests that environmental conservation is frequently predicated upon social inequality.
Jackson, Cecile and Molly Chattopadhyay, 1998
"Identities and Livelihoods: Gender, Ethnicity and Nature
in a South Bihar Village." In Agrarian Environments: Negotiating
Conflicts Over Resources and Identities in India, edited by A. Agarwal and K. Sivaramakrishnan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
One of the challenges for gender analysis of environmental relations
is the need to steer between the structuralist approaches to land,
where land rights dominate concepts of agrarian power, and labor,
where divisions of work are taken to generate all environmental
knowledges, on the one hand, and the absorption with identity
on the other. The authors argue that there is a need for an understanding
of both material transactions as well as the force of identity
discourses in patterning existing social relations in order to
see gendered environmental change as different from the polarized
images of ecofeminism and contemporary radical environmentalism.
Towards that end, this study looks at how Dikku and Adivasi in
a south Bihar village see themselves and others, how they envisage
and justify their resource claims, what is the relationship between
actual and idealized livelihoods, and how gender identities and
relations are part of the legitimation of patterns of resource
use and access, and of representations of ethnicity.
Jiggins, Janice, 1994
Changing the Boundaries: Women-Centered Perspectives on Population
and the Environment. Washington, D.C. and Colvelo, California:
Island Press.
In this analysis, which establishes the essential need for policies
and programs based on women's experiences, knowledge, and leadership,
Jiggins leads us to the wellspring of women's redefinitions. For
women, Jiggins argues, a sustainable world is one in which societies
address issues of excessive consumption, expenditures for destruction,
and inequities based on class, race, gender, or ethnicity. Furthermore,
a definition of sustainability that encompasses principles of
social and economic justice can contribute to a more productive
dialogue among nations as they discuss population and development
issues. Women live, work, and care for their families and communities
in a rich context of relationships to people, their physical world,
and other living things. Women's development is the essential
conditions of sustainability, for only women's full participation
will lead to new ways of solving problems - ways that do not forfeit
the future of children; ways that respect the earth and the diversity
of life; ways that foster collective thought and action, thus
strengthening communities.
Joekes, Melissa, Cathy Green, and Melissa Leach, 1996
Integrating Gender into Environmental Research and Policy.
Sussex: Institute of Development Studies. (http://www.ids.ac.uk/blds/search/)
Many interventions in the environment sector have given women
a role in environmental projects in the hope that this would facilitate
resource conservation efforts as well as benefitting women themselves.
But across a whole range of sub-sectors (forestry, soil conservation,
water, rangeland management, integrated pest management, etc.),
outcomes have often been disappointing and sometimes even damaging
to women. This research seeks to understand the links between
gender relations and environmental management, which carries very
different policy implications. The authors stress that women's
property rights and natural resources need to be identified at
the outset and actively monitored throughout the life of a project,
and the importance of policymakers examining and supporting the
often little visible institutional arrangements and networks which
provide channels for women to press their concerns in situations
of ecological stress or environmental change. The authors also
emphasize the importance in widening women's range of livelihood
choices, and the necessity of women being paid for any current
labor contributing to a project on the same terms as men.
Kaufman, Polly Welts, 1998
National Parks and the Woman's Voice: A History. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
Since 1857, when San Francisco teachers Harriet Kirtland and
Anna Park rode sidesaddle into Yosemite Valley, women have played
major roles in the national park story. As travelers, mountain
climbers, park founders, environmentalists, wives, and park rangers,
women have helped to shape the National Park System the US knows
today. Some parks owe their existence to women; others were protected
by women with a commitment to the future. This study provides
a missing chapter in the history of the US's preservation of historic
space and wild and scenic landscapes. Drawing on extensive research,
including hundreds of personal interviews, Kaufman presents the
story of women's contributions, often in their own words. She
documents their struggle to gain professional positions and equal
authority in a male-dominated organization that evolved from a
military culture. From symbolic issues such as women's right to
wear the distinctive ranger uniform to concrete problems of protecting
wildlife, Park Service women have insisted on having a voice in
policy decisions.
Kettel, Bonnie, 1995
"Gender and Environments: Lessons from WEDNET."
In Engendering Wealth and Well-Being: Empowerment for Global Change, edited by R. L. Blumberg, C.A. Rakowski, I. Tinker, and M. Monteon.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc.
The author asserts that African women's environmental knowledge
offers a potentially significant contribution to the protection
of the continent's natural habitats and to the improved well-being
of its people. In examining the case of Africa, the author presents
a new paradigm for women, environment, and development research
and for policy analysis. This new approach, which the author refers
to as "gender-and-environments analysis," addresses
the promotion of secure livelihoods, the protection of biodiversity,
and women's recognition and authority as environmental decision
makers. In this article, the author draws on the emerging results
of WEDNET research to develop the gender-and-environments paradigm
of African women's involvement in the "production of life"
and "nature." In addition, the central features of the
WEDNET conceptual framework are presented, and the early results
of the WEDNET research outlined. It focuses largely on women's
environmental decision making and outlines the implications of
the new paradigm for research and policy formulation.
Leach, Melissa, 1996
Rainforest Relations: Gender and Resource Use Among the Mende
of Gola, Sierra Leone. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
This book brings forest dwellers' own differentiated perspectives
to current rainforest debates. After reviewing changing conservation
agendas and gender and environment approaches, it draws on detailed
fieldwork to examine the importance of forest resources to local
economy and society, and how dynamic gender relations condition
women and men's different environmental relations. It shows
that neither an understanding of forest use and change, nor adequate
conservation policies, can be achieved without concern for gender.
Lele, Jayant, and Wisdom Tettey, Editors, 1996
Asia - Who Pays for Growth? Women, Environment and Popular Movements. Brookfield, VT: Dartmouth Publishing Co.
The conference, "Asia in the 1990s: Meeting and Making a
New World," held at Queens University, Canada in October 1993,
brought together academics and policy makers from Asia and North
America to engage in presentations and discussions spanning a
variety of issue areas, such as strategies of development adopted
by countries on the continent and lessons to be drawn from them;
the role of Asia in geopolitics of the 1990s and beyond; and the
position of Asian women in the international division of labor,
new social movements, and the environment. The conference gave
participants an opportunity to seek theoretical coherence for
the enormous intellectual, political, and economic diversity of
Asia with a view to improving understanding of the dramatic changes
occurring in that part of the globe, and helping focus on their
relevance to the rest of the world.
Lorber, Judith, 1998
"The Social Construction of Gender." In Race, Class and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study, edited by Paula S. Rothenberg. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Martin, Emily, 1997
"The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles." In Situated Lives: Gender and Culture in Everyday Life, edited by Louise Lamphere, Helena Ragone, and Patricia Zavella. New York: Routledge.
Mellor, Mary, 1997
Feminism and Ecology. Washington Square, NY: New
York University Press.
This work explores the history and development of various strands
of ecofeminism and their relationship to elements of feminism(s)
and ecologism(s) to suggest that ecofeminism offers a radical
social critique and a basis for a reformulated socialism. Ecofeminism
emerged in several locations around the world in the 1970s in
response to both local and global issues. These efforts are described
less as a coherent grassroots environmental movement than as a
series of networks sharing ideas, theories, and practices. Various
strands of ecofeminism have stressed both biological and social
constructions of the relationship between women and nature, but
all varieties engage in some way with women's embodiment as sexed
beings. It is generally agreed by ecofeminists that women have
a special relationship to nature and the consequences of human
actions in nature. Ecofeminists have contradicted much of the radical social constructionism
in feminist theory in that they argue for a special ontological
status for women vis-a-vis nature and call themselves more aligned
with the deep ecology of the Green movement. A synthesis of ecofeminism
with ecosocialism is proposed as a powerful materialist-socialist
theory that speaks to pressing issues facing human society. According
to this theory, women hold a privileged position because they
cross boundaries between society-nature and public-private, and
so compose the foundation of a new ecological/social movement.
Merchant, Carolyn, 1995
Earthcare: Women and the Environment. New York: Routledge.
Merchant examines historical associations of women with nature,
beginning with Eve and continuing through to environmental activists
today. She also discusses women's commitment to environmental
conservation, and the problematic assumptions of women as caregivers
and men as the dominators of nature. This book challenges humanity
to revise the ways the Western world has produced, reproduced,
and conceptualized its past relations with nature, and suggests
a new partnership ethic of environmentalism which men and women
alike can embrace.
-- 1989
Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender,
and Science in New England. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
This book explores some of the themes in Merchant's earlier book,
The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution: the roots of the environmental crisis, the roles of women in history,
the change from nature as mother to nature as machine, and the
place of science in the creation of the modern world. This book
also offers a new synthesis of ways that humans and the biosphere
have interacted over time. Merchant examines how different human
cultures - native American and Euramerican - occupied the same geographic
space in close succession with differing effects on the environment.
She uses feminist insights to analyze reproduction and show how
it interacts with production to give magnitude and direction to
ecological transformations. She also places science in the broader
context of human consciousness and asks how different cultures
knew nature and how these ways of knowing have changed over time.
Mies, Maria and Vandana Shiva, 1993
Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books and Halifax,
Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publications.
This book argues that ecological destruction and industrial catastrophes
constitute a direct threat to everyday life, the maintenance of
which has been made the particular responsibility of women. In
both industrialized societies and the developing countries, the
new wars the world is experiencing, violent ethnic chauvinisms,
and the malfunctioning of the economy also pose urgent questions
for ecofeminists. The authors ask, should women see a relationship
between patriarchal oppression and the destruction of nature in
the name of profit and progress? How can they counter the violence
inherent in these processes? Should they look to a link between
the women's movement and other social movements? Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva offer us a thought-provoking analysis
of these and many other issues from a unique North-South perspective.
They critique prevailing economic theories, conventional concepts
of women's emancipation, the myth of 'catching up' development,
the philosophical foundations of modern science and technology,
and the omission of ethics when discussing so many questions including
advances in reproductive technology as well as biotechnology.
In constructing their own ecofeminist epistemology and methodology,
these two internationally respected feminists and environmental
activists look to the potential of movements advocating consumer
liberation and subsistence production, sustainability, and regeneration;
they argue for an acceptance of limits and reciprocity, and a
rejection of exploitation, the endless commoditization of needs,
and violence.
Moore, Henrietta L. and Megan Vaughan, 1994
Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change
in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
This major study of household production, gender, and nutrition
traces detailed changes in the agricultural system of Zambia's
Northern Province over a period of 100 years. The authors
assess the ecological, social, and political changes affecting
the region, and provide one of the first studies to integrate
contemporary development initiatives with long-run interventions.
They further examine local responses to global processes of change.
Norwood, Vera, 1993
Made from this Earth: American Women and Nature. Chapel
Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press.
According to the author, the broad sweep of environmental and
ecological history has until now been written and understood in
predominately male terms. Here Norwood seeks to reclaim the contribution
American women have made to the study of nature from the early
19th century to the present.
Pena, Devon Gerardo, 1997
The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology
of the US-Mexico Border. Austin, TX: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas.
This book explores the complex intersections of technology, class,
gender, and ecology in the transnational milieu in Mexico's maquiladoras,
foreign-owned assembly plants located along the US border. The
author analyzes the political, cultural, and environmental effects
of maquila industrialization, and calls for alternative modes
of development that are ecologically sustainable and culturally
appropriate.
Rao, Nitya and Luise Rurup, Editors, 1997
A Just Right: Women's Ownership of Natural Resources and Livelihood
Security. New Delhi: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
Access and effective control over natural resources, land, water,
and forests, are crucial factors in the complex process of empowering
women. In the near absence of social security measures for the
poor in rural areas, ownership of land particularly constitutes
an important measure of security in times of crisis. This collection
of essays seeks to bring together conceptual analyses of resource
control by women, along with legal dimensions and a few examples
of local initiatives seeking to negotiate the process of resource
control by the marginalised, particularly women. It also brings
together experiences from different parts of India, in the process
of highlighting the criticality of regional variations, and the
need to take them into account both at the levels of policy formulation
and program implementation.
Reardon, Geraldine, 1993
Women and the Environment: Gender and Development. London:
Oxfam.
Although there is a growing awareness that relief and development
programs not only affect women and men differently, but also have
an impact on gender relations, the situation of poor women continues
to worsen. This book is designed to provide a forum for development
practitioners, students, and all concerned with the theory and
practice of gender-just development, to exchange views, record
experience, describe models of good practice, and disseminate
information about networks and resources. In doing so, the author
attempts to record some of the challenges surrounding development
issues and design a vision of development which does justice to
all, both women and men.
Rocheleau, Dianne, Barbara Thomas-Slayter and Esther Wangari, Editors, 1996
Feminist Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences. London and New York: Routledge.
This book explores the gendered relations of ecologies, economies,
and politics in communities as diverse as the rubber tappers in
the rainforests of Brazil and activist groups fighting environmental
racism in New York City. The contributors demonstrate how environmental
struggles occur throughout the world, from industrial to agrarian
societies. Women are often at the center of these struggles concerning
local knowledge, everyday practice, rights to resources, sustainable
development, environmental quality, and social justice. This book bridges the gap between the academic and rural orientation
of political ecology and the largely activist and urban focus
of environmental justice movements. It aims to bring together
the theoretical frameworks of feminist analysis with the specifications
of women's activism and experiences around the world.
Rodda, Annabel, 1991
Women and the Environment (Women and World Development Series).
London; Zed Books.
Women and the environment have a vast, rich history together,
and the author suggests that up until the Industrial Revolution this
connectedness was not an issue but a natural way of being. This
symbiotic relationship is slowly being torn apart, she argues,
and nowhere is this more evident than in the Third World countries
across the globe. In this book, this connectedness is looked at
primarily through the eyes of the women whose lives are most profoundly
affected by problems such as overgrazing, desertification, and
soil erosion. To walk four hours a day, three or four times a
week, to gather enough fuel to cook the meals or heat the home
is not something that many Western women have had to face. With
the help of very expressive photography, this book not only examines
the effects that environmental degradation will have on all people,
but also highlights what women all over the world can do to help
heal the planet.
Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Editor, 1996
Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism,
and Religion (Ecology and Justice). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
This volume of essays by women in Latin America, Asia, and Africa
on religion, ecology, and feminism presents an effort at cross-cultural
communication and solidarity between women of the "First
World" and women in those countries that are struggling against
the effects of Western colonization. This book is not only about
making the voices of women in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
audible to women of the North; it is also an opportunity for women
in the South to put together their own perspectives and to communicate
with and learn from one another. There is no suggestion in this book that these essays represent
an ecofeminist "movement" in the "Third World"
parallel to ecofeminism in North America. Rather, there is a variety
of movements dealing with ecological crises from several perspectives,
and within those movements, there are women who make a conscious
critique of the movements' androcentrism and seek to show the
connections between women's domination and the domination of nature. In short, Ruether suggests women deal modestly and truthfully
but also transformatively with who they are, culturally and economically.
Women need to reject what is oppressive but also make creative
syntheses of what is liberating in their heritages that can be
in positive reciprocity with the very different but complementary
syntheses being made by women who are both Shona and Christian
in Zimbabwe, who are Christian, Buddhist, and Shamanist in Korea,
who are Mayan and Methodist in Mexico. Only this way, Ruether
contends, can women begin to find how to be true friends and sisters
with women - with people - of other worlds, no longer as oppressors
trying to suppress other peoples' identities but also not as "white
blanks" seeking to fill our own emptiness at the expense
of others.
Sachs, Carolyn E, 1996
Gendered Fields: Rural Women, Agriculture, and Environment
(Rural Studies Series). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Rural women's experiences, largely overlooked by feminist and
rural scholars alike, provide fresh insights for understanding
gender relations and rural places. Rural women's lives have changed
in many ways in response to shifts in gender divisions of labor
and environmental degradation. Understanding the strategies rural
women use to negotiate these difficulties furthers feminist approaches
that derive predominantly from urban contexts. Recent developments in feminist epistemology, especially the
move from feminist standpoint theory to a more complicated understanding
of women's situational perspectives, create new avenues for understanding
rural women's lives and perspectives. Women's knowledge and practices,
which have been marginalized by scientists and development planners,
may well generate solutions to environmental and health problems. Feminist recognition of multicultural differences among women
suggests new strategies for analyzing complex social relations
in rural places. Use of ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic variables
insufficiently captures the complicated positions of rural women
of different classes, races, ethnicities, and sexualities. Scholars
studying rural women's lives would do well to keep abreast of
new developments in feminist theory and to promote scholarship
that incorporates rural women's actions and knowledge into feminist
theory.
Sachs, Carolyn E., Editor, 1997
Women Working in the Environment. Washington, DC: Taylor and Francis.
Sachs argues that understanding the gendered nature of human relationships
with the environment seems particularly critical for resolving
environmental problems. Whereas many of the initial efforts to
resolve environmental problems focused on technical and biological
solutions, scholars and activists are increasingly looking to
social causes for solutions. The author examines the major threads
in feminist theory in relation to environmental problems, including
ecofeminism, women and development, and postmodern feminism. Additionally,
this book introduces a framework for understanding women's connections
to the environment, and explores five major areas of concern,
including gender divisions of labor, access and control over resources,
knowledge and strategies for survival, participation in social
movements, and policy issues.
Salleh, Ariel, 1997
Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern.
London and New York: Zed Books.
Why is an alliance between ecology, peace, feminism, socialism,
and postcolonial movements so slow in coming? In this polyphonic
text, Salleh tells us why. Informed by a critical postmodern reading
of the Marxist tradition, her ecofeminism integrates discourses
on science, the body, culture, nature, and political economy. Salleh,
who is known internationally for her gender critiques of ecopolitics,
explores here the philosophical challenge of ecofeminism, and
shows how confusion over the implications of 'difference' has
held back radical change. The book opens with an account of the
so far invisible history of ecofeminist politics; the second part
establishes ecofeminsm's status as an embodied materialism; while
part three argues that a way forward exists in the common agency
of women's and indigenous struggles. Salleh carries the terms of political argument to a new plane;
the analysis provides an antidote to neo-liberal complacency
and is as essential for activists in an era of globalization as
it is for scholars of social theory, women's studies, environmental,
and postcolonial studies.
Schmink, Marianne and Charles H. Wood, 1992
Contested Frontiers in Amazonia. New York: Columbia University
Press.
An interdisplinary analysis of the process of frontier change
in one region of the Brazilian Amazon, the southern portion of
the state of Par. The authors show how deforestation, settlement
patterns, and the intensity of rural violence were outcomes of
the competition for resources among social groups such as ranchers,
peasants, loggers, Indians, goldminers, rubber farmers, bureaucrats,
and investors, all of whom were capable of mobilizing varying
degrees of power.
Schroeder, Richard A., 1999
Shady Practices: Agroforestry and Gender Politics in the Gambia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Shady Practices is a revealing analysis of the gnedered political ecology brought about by conflicting local interests and changing developmental initiatives in a West African village. Between 1975 and 1985, while much of Africa suffered devastating drought conditions, Gambian women farmers succeeded in establishing hundreds of lucrative communal market gardens. In less than a decade, the women's incomes began outstipping their husbands' in many areas, until a shift in development policy away from gender equity and toward environmental concerns threatened to do away with the social and economic gains from the garden boom. Male landowners joined forestry personnel in attempts to displace the gardens and capture women's labor for the irrigation of male-controlled tree crops. This carefully documented microhistory draws on field experience spanning more than two decades and the insights of disciplines ranging from critical human geography to development studies. Schroeder combines the "success story" of the market gardens with a cautionary tale about the aggressive pursuit of natural resource management objectives, however well intentioned. He shows that questions of power and social justice at the community level need to enter the debates of policymakers and specialists in environment and development planning.
Seager, Joni, 1993
Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms with the Global Environmental
Crisis. New York: Routledge.
A powerful argument for looking at "agency" in understanding
our environmental affairs by avoiding essential notions about
the "inherent natures" of men and women. Takes a careful
look at the environmental movement, critiquing the policies and
masculinist presumptions that have been shaped by many of the
organizations that have grown out of it.
Sen, Amartya, 1997
"Population, Delusion and Reality." In The Gender and Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy, edited by Roger N. Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo. New York: Routledge.
The school of thought that follows Thomas Malthus predicts that as food
supplies rise, population will increase. Sen argues against the Malthusian prediction and maintains that food has been abundant in some parts of the world but population has not increased correspondingly. The alarmist predictions of those who talk about a "population bomb" have not taken place. Sen considers two approaches to population control: override and collaboration. He favors the collaborative approach, an approach consistent with the principle of autonomy. The override approach removes voluntary cooperation and imposes economic or legal coercion. China's one's child policy illustrates the policy of override: housing is refused to families with too many children. Another example is India's requirement of sterilization before providing any form of medical assistance, but this restraint was voted down in democratic elections. The collaboration approach preserves voluntary cooperation. It relies on the rational choices of individuals and encourages open dialogue and public discussion. Economic development has been associated with decreases in population, but this may be a long-term rather than a short-term solution. Increased income has been associated with decreases in population, but incomes have grown unevenly in "low-income countries." Sen concludes that education and health care are more effective ways of reducing world population than coercive measures.
Sen, Gita, 1994
"Women, Poverty and Population: Issues for the Concerned
Environmentalist." In Population and Environment: Rethinking
the Debate, edited by Lourdes Arizpe, M. Priscilla Stone and David C. Major. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
The author claims that despite the dissonance provoked by the
population-environment debate, there is much in common between
feminists and environmentalists in their visions of society and
the methods they use. Both groups have a healthy critical stance
toward ecologically inequitable patterns of economic growth, and
have been attempting to change mainstream perceptions in this
regard. Furthermore, the author asserts that both use methods
that rely on grassroots mobilization and participation, and are
therefore sensitive to the importance of political openness and
involvement. As such, both believe in the power of widespread
knowledge and in the rights of people to be informed and to participate
in decisions affecting their lives and those of nations and the
planet. The author affirms that greater mutual understanding on the population
question can result from a greater recognition that the core problem
is that of development within which population is inextricably
meshed. The author insists that taking into account the perspectives
of poor women can help ground this recognition in the realities
of the lives and livelihoods of many within the South. This means
that the population issue must be defined as the right to determine
and make reproductive decisions in the context of fulfilling secure
livelihoods, basic needs (including reproductive health), and
political participation.
Shiva, Vandana, 1989
Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London:
Zed Books.
Examining the position of women in relation to nature - the forests,
the food chain, and water supplies - the author links the violation
of nature with the violation and marginalization of women, especially
in the Third World. Both arise from assumptions in economic development,
a process the author argues should more aptly be described as
maldevelopment. One result is that the impact of science, technology,
and politics, along with the workings of the economy itself, are
inherently exploitive. Every area of human activity marginalizes
and burdens both women and nature. Shiva argues that there is only one path to survival and liberation for nature, women, and men, and that is the ecological path of harmony, sustainability, and diversity. She explores the unique place of women in the environment of India, in particular, both as its saviors and as victims of maldevelopment. Her analysis is an innovative statement of the challenge that women in ecology movements are creating and she shows how their efforts constitute a non-violent and humanly inclusive alternative to the dominant paradigm of contemporary scientific and development thought.
Shiva, Vandana and Ingunn Moser, Editors, 1995
Biopolitics: A Feminist and Ecological Reader on Biotechnology.
London: Zed Books.
Biotechnology is the most powerful bundle of new technologies
currently under development. It is also the most intrusive and
determinative technology relating to nature generally and the
human body specifically. While commercial and scientific publicity
has stressed the potential gains, a growing number of scientists,
thinkers, and activists have been warning of the grave risks and
difficult ethical issues at stake. This book assembles some of the most important work from feminists
and environmentalists critical of the headlong rush into what
is likely to prove a technological minefield. A distinguished
cast of contributors presents much-needed frameworks for understanding
and contextualising the debates on biotechnological development.
They explore the hidden implications and likely consequences of
defining biotechnological development, and they consider the hidden
implications and likely consequences of defining biotechnology
as the latest wonder cure for the environmental and developmental
crisis. The first part of the book explores the nature of biological
knowledge and the relationship between knowledge and nature. Part
two looks at discourses of risk in biotechnology, while the third
part examines ethical issues and the notion of responsibility.
Finally, the contributors explore biotechnology within the discourses
on sustainable development and North-South relations.
Silliman, Jael and Ynestra King, Editors, 1999
Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population,
Environment, and Development. Boston: South End Press.
This collection of original critical essays by well-known feminist
scholars and activists presents a multicultural, international
scope on the major global issues of the day: environment, development,
and population control. The book provides alternative voices and
approaches to the short-sighted policies supported by many mainstream
politicians and NGO policies that focus on the fertility of poor
women of color, North and South, as the primary threat to the
ecological viability of the planet. The authors make a reasoned
yet impassioned argument for making women the central agents of
their own fate and the fate of the planet. Contributors include:
Asoka Bandarage, Marsha J. Tyson Darling, Marlene Gerber Fried,
Betsy Hartmann, H. Patricia Hynes, Joni Seager, Jael Silliman,
Andy Smith, Justine Smith, April Taylor, Meredeth Turshen, and
Meredith Tax.
Sittirak, Sinith, 1998
The Daughters of Development: Women and the Changing Environment. London: Zed Books.
The goal of this study is to integrate and synthesize the components
of Sittirak's area of concentration, that is, the exploration
of the conceptual background and concrete conditions of development,
women, and environment as they are related to, affected by, or reflected
in each other. Using the example of Thailand's three decades of
neo-colonization and the importation of Western ideology and technology
which came with the former's drive to become one of the 'developing'
countries, i.e. to pull itself out of 'backwardness' into the
forward momentum of global economic progress, Sittirak argues
that instead of achieving progress, our physical and cultural
environments have been destroyed in order to serve the consumerist
habits of a few hegemonic interests. This study utilizes a feminist critique by integrating several
Thai perspectives to explicate the changing role of the Thai women
resulting from social, political, economic, and environmental changes
brought on by development. To bring these changes into relief,
Sittirak focuses on a study of prostitution in Thailand in terms
of global militarism and consumerism. Thai women had originally
been maintainers of environmental indigenous knowledge. Many have
now become either primary producers whose labor is exploited to
produce commodity goods for others, or 'commodities' (i.e. prostitutes)
themselves. Additionally, in order to sharpen this critique, Sittirak incorporates the personal history of her mother and herself to
emphasize the changes that have occurred in Thailand as a result
of development. As Sittirak asserts, this crisis directly affects
women the most, as they are the ones who work in close relation
to nature and who are the poorest among the poor.
Sontheimer, Sally, Editor, 1991
Women and the Environment: A Reader. Crisis and Development
in the Third World. New York: Monthly Review Press.
This reader tells the rarely heard story of women living and
coping with growing ecological stress, limited food, fodder, wood,
and water, and less access to productive land than they have had
in the past. Those who have migrated to urban areas confront pollution,
miserable housing, and poor sanitation and water supplies. This
book represents women not as passive victims but as resourceful
and courageous fighters and organizers in the face of 'natural'
disaster, uncaring bureaucracy, development agencies and governments
whose priorities lie elsewhere, and traditional structures that
subordinate their need within both family and society. The women and their organizations described in this collection
have produced demonstrably effective approaches for more sustainable
uses of natural resources, and in doing so have challenged conventional
accounts of the role of women. Contributers include Sally Sontheimer, Shobita Jain, Bina Agarwal,
Irene Dankelman, Joan Davidson, Marie Monimart, Caroline Moser,
Frances Dennis, Dulcie Castleton, and Nalline Singh.
Steady, Filomina Chioma, 1993
Women and Children First: Environment, Poverty, and Sustainable
Development. Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books.
The twin processes of poverty and environmental degradation are
among the most formidable challenges facing humanity today. The
publication of this book, which is largely the outcome of the
Women and Children First symposium and the recommendations of
the 1992 Earth Summit, will provide valuable insights into and
modalities with which to study how aspects of gender and age can
be incorporated in regional, national, and international strategies
for the eradication of poverty and the halting of environmental
degradation. It will also bring into sharper focus the hitherto
unrecognized contributions of women and children to sound environmental
management and conservation.
Stein, Rachel, Editor, 2004
New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality and Activism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Women make up the vast majority of activists and organizers of grassroots movements fighting against environmental ills that threaten poor and people of color communities. New Perspectives on Environmental Justice is the first collection of essays that pays tribute to the enormous contributions women have made in these endeavors. The writers offer varied examples of environmental justice issues, such as children's environmental health campaigns, cancer research, AIDS/HIV activism, the Environmental Genome Project, and popular culture, among many others. Each one focuses on gender and sexuality as crucial factors in women's or gay men's activism and applies environmental justice principles to related struggles for sexual justice. The contributors represent a wide variety of activist and scholarly perspectives, including law, environmental studies, sociology, political science, history, medical anthropology, American Studies, English, African and African American studies, women's studies, and gay and lesbian studies, offering multiple vantage points of gender, sexuality, and activism. Feminist/womanist impulses shape and sustain environmental justice movements around the world, making an understanding of gender roles and differences crucial for the success of these efforts.
Steingraber, Sandra, 1997
Living Downstream: A Scientist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
In her early 20s, Steingraber was afflicted with cancer, a disease that has afflicted other members of her adoptive family. Writing from the twin perspectives of cancer survivor and concerned scientist, she traces the high incidence of cancer and the terrifying concentrations of environmental toxins in her native rural Illinois. She goes on to show similar correlation in other communities, such as Boston and Long Island, and throughout the United States, where cancer rates have arisen alarmingly since the mid-century. At once a deeply moving personal document and a groundbreaking work of scientific detection, Living Downstream will be a touchstone for generations, reminding us of the intimate connection between the health of our bodies and the integrity of our air, land, and water.
Sturgeon, Noel, 1997
Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political
Action. London: Routledge Press.
This book emphasizes that when ecofeminism is viewed as a political
intervention into male-dominated discourses, such as deep ecology
or United Nations discussions of environment and development,
certain seemingly essentialist symbols and language can be seen
as products of an urgent need for political alliances among women
of profoundly different racial, class, and national backgrounds;
these "essentialist moments" help create a shifting,
strategic relationship between "women" and "nature"
for political purposes. Sturgeon also critiques certain essentialist
constructions of racial difference within ecofeminist practice
(the WomanEarth Feminist Peace Institute) and theory (the discourse
of "indigenous women" as the "ultimate ecofeminists"),
while also acknowledging them as real efforts to confront the
implications of race for ecofeminism. Finally, Sturgeon examines
numerous recent academic texts in which feminists create typologies
that charge ecofeminists with essentialism, or in which ecofeminists
use typologies to resist such changes.
Thomas-Slayter, Barbara and Dianne Rocheleau, 1995
Gender, Environment, and Development in Kenya: A Grassroots
Perspective. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Given the roles of women in managing rural resources and producing
food, and given the long-established division of labor by gender
in rural Africa, it is critical to determine the relationships
among women's roles and elements of effective village-based resource
management. This book focuses on ways community institutions - specifically
women and their groups or organizations - respond to changing resource
conditions and their strategies for regulating access to resources
for themselves and others and for gaining control of critical
resources such as soils, water, and woodlands. This book also
examines the impact of these responses on local decision making,
changing gender roles, rural stratification, community relations,
and other variables within the broader social and political environment.
Turpin, Jennifer E. and Lois Ann Lorentzen, Editors, 1996
The Gendered New World Order: Militarism, Development, and
the Environment. New York: Routledge.
The case studies in this volume demonstrate that the links between
gender and militarism, development, and the environment prove
to be the critical problems in the new world order. The authors
contend that environmental crises, misguided development strategies,
and the militarization of global culture all affect women disproportionately.
However, it is argued that militarism, the environment, and development
are linked and gendered. Moreover, the authors assert that people
can no longer think about women and development without considering
both direct and structural violence. This violence, in turn, cannot
be divorced from the impact on the environment. War destroys the
physical and social environment, consumes massive sums of money,
and shatters development progress. All of this exacerbates the
structural violence women experience. And both militarism and
environmental deterioration are rooted in development models that
emphasize capital accumulation for the few. Thus, the global forces
of militarism, the accumulation of capital, and the exploitation
of natural resources depend on a gendered order.
Venkateswaran, Sandhya, 1995
Environment, Development and the Gender Gap. New Delhi:
Sage Publications.
In developing nations, issues of survival are inextricably linked
to the state of the environment for an overwhelming proportion
of the population. This is especially true for women who interface
extensively with the environment, which directly affects their
physical, social, and political well-being. In this comprehensive study, women's predominant role in activities
relating to the environment, the impact of environmental degradation
on them, and their almost complete marginalisation from policies
and programs that seek to manage the environment is explored.
The author then argues against the common practice of grouping
all women together and points out the diversity between urban
and rural women and even amongst rural women of different classes,
showing the differential impact of resource degradation and environmental
policies on each of these disparate groups of women.
Ward, Martha C., 1999
"'What's For Dinner Honey?' Work and Gender." In A World Full of Women. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Warren, Karen J., Editor, 1997
Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
The strengths and weaknesses of the growing ecofeminist movement
are critically assessed by scholars in a variety of academic disciplines
and vocations. Writers explore the real-life concerns that have
motivated ecofeminism as a grassroots, women-initiated movement
around the globe; the appropriateness of ecofeminism to academic
and scientific research; and philosophical implications and underpinnings
of the movement.
-- 1994
Ecological Feminism (Environmental
Policies). London: Routledge.
"Ecological feminism" is an umbrella term which captures
a variety of multicultural perspectives on the nature of the connections
within social systems of domination between those humans in subdominant
or subordinate positions, particularly women, and the domination
of nonhuman nature. Ecofeminism has come to refer to a variety
of so-called "women-nature connections" - historical,
empirical, conceptual, religious, literary, political, ethical,
epistemological, methodological, and theoretical connections on
how one treats women and the earth. Furthermore, Ecofeminist analyses
of the twin domination of women and nature include considerations
of the domination of people of color, children, and the underclass.
Thus, this book seeks to dismantle patriarchal, human social systems
of domination by extending the analyses of such domination in
various ways to include nonhuman nature, generally, and "women-nature"
connections specifically. Warren argues that what makes ecological feminism feminist is
its twofold commitment to the recognition and elimination of male-gender
bias wherever and whenever it occurs, and to the development of
practices, policies, and theories which are not male-gender biased.
What the entries in this volume provide, then, is a distinctively
philosophical approach to ecofeminist concerns, which is especially
valuable for theorizing, theory-building, or policy-making for
feminism, environmentalism, and philosophy. The various articles
included in this book get at the basic beliefs, values, attitudes,
and assumptions - the conceptual and justificatory underpinnings - of
mainstream and alternative environmental, feminist, and philosophical
positions on reason, the self, knowledge, ethics, politics, and
language.
Wickramasinghe, Anoja, 1995
Deforestation, Women and Forestry: The Case of Sri Lanka.
Utrecht, NL: International Books.
In recent centuries, the rapid denudation of the earth's forest
cover has aggravated numerous environmental problems that threaten
human survival. The clearing of vast areas of forests for agricultural
use and human settlement and their harvesting for commercial timber
are widespread around the globe, while the need to conserve biodiversity
and ensure environmental sustainability remains nothing more than
a set of slogans. As a development sector, forestry is male dominated. Decisions
made at the level of policy planning and regional implementation
are accepted as infallible. Women, who form the lowest strata
of society, must implement decisions that ignore their own urgent
needs. The supremacy given to technical and scientific knowledge
over traditional practices has denied rural women a role in decision making
on land matters and discredited their expertise. They are thus
unable to contribute to a sector in which they have a great deal
of experience. Hence, in order to restore balance between the
needs and the availability of forest sources, it is essential
that women be promoted in forestry.
back to top
Issues and Concepts: Articles
Aboud, Abdillahi, Andrew J. Sofranko, and Serigne Ndiaye, 1996
"Effects of Gender on Adoption of Conservation Practices by
Heads of Farm Households in Kenya." Society and Natural Resources, 9:447-463.
This study explores the extent to which gender is a factor in
the adoption of a set of conservation practices in an area of
Kenya that is experiencing increased population density. The finding
from a comparison of male and female farm household heads reveal
that female-headed households have slightly higher levels of adoption
of several conservation practices. Although gender itself was
not shown to be a significant explanatory factor in predicting
adoption, the results of separate analyses suggest that male-female
differences in adoption are shaped in different environmental
conditions and experiences.
Adams, William M., Elizabeth E. Watson, and Samuel K. Mutiso, 1997
"Water, Rules and Gender: Water Rights in an Indigenous Irrigation
System, Marakwet, Kenya." Development and Change, 28:707-730.
The management of indigenous irrigation systems has received
increasing attention both from social science researchers and
from those development agents who seek to change them, or to find
in them a model for organizing newly developed irrigation schemes.
This article discusses how water is allocated within one such
irrigation system, the hill furrow irrigation of the Marakwet
escarpment in Kenya. It describes the 'formal rules' of water
rights, giving particular attention to the issue of gender with
respect to water rights. It then discusses the 'working rules'
relevant to water allocation, involving various informal practices
of sharing, buying, and stealing. The implications of this complexity
for understanding the operation of indigenous farmer-managed irrigation
systems are examined.
Agarwal, Bina, 1997
"Environmental Action, Gender Equity and Women's Participation."
Development and Change, 28:1-44.
For poor households, and especially for the women who own little
private land, forests and village commons have always been critical
sources of basic necessities in rural India. However, the availability
of these resources has been declining rapidly, due both to degradation
and to shifts in property rights away from community control and
management to state and individual control and management. More
recently, though, there are small but notable reversals in these
processes toward a re-establishment of greater community control
over forests and village commons. Numerous forest management groups
have emerged, initiated variously by the state, by village communities,
or by non-governmental organizations. However, unlike the old
systems of communal property management which recognized the usufruct
rights of all villagers, the new ones represent a more formalized
system of rights based on membership. In other words, under the
new initiatives, membership is replacing citizenship as the defining
criterion for establishing rights in the commons. This raises critical questions about participation and equity,
especially gender equity. Are the benefits and costs of the emergent
institutional arrangements being shared equally by women and men?
Or are they creating a system of property rights in communal land
which, like existing rights in privatized land, are strongly male
centered? What is women's participation in these initiatives?
What constrains or facilitates their participation and exercise
of agency? This article provides pointers. It also demonstrates
the relevance of the feminist environmentalist perspective, as
opposed to the ecofeminist perspective, in understanding gendered
responses to the environmental crisis.
Birkeland, Janis, 1995
"The Relevance of Ecofeminism to the Environmental Professions."
The Environmental Professional, 17:55-71.
Environmental theorists generally believe that a sustainable
society will require fundamental social and institutional change.
However, the debate over how to bring about that transformation
has occurred largely within a male-centered perspective. As a
result of this limited perspective, the political analyses and
strategies of environmentalists are often flawed. This is because,
with the exception of ecofeminism, green theory is still largely
androcentric (male-centered) and gender-blind and therefore retains
certain premises of mainstream thought that work against its program
for change. Environmental professionals, in attempting to apply the new insights
of ecophilosophy to their vocations, have been similarly handicapped
by the limitations of androcentric environmental theories. Ecologically
sound policies mean nothing if the institutional structures, methods,
and processes within which the environmental planners and advisers
work are inherently biased against sustainability. This paper
argues that ecofeminist theory and practice provide a more useful
paradigm for guiding the social and institutional transformation
that is required if we are to create a sustainable society.
Bjornerud, Marcia, 1997
"Gaia: Gender and Scientific Representations of the Earth."
NWSA Journal, 9(3):89-106.
This article examines the relation of gender and culture in the evolution
of scientific thought through the prism of the Gaia hypothesis,
developed in the 1960s by James Lovelock, Dian Hitchcock, and
Lynn Margulis. According to the hypothesis, Earth is best viewed
as a superorganism capable of regulating its chemistry and temperature.
Developed in scientific circles in the 1960s and 1970s, the hypothesis
has been objected to on the grounds that it is teleological, ill-defined,
unparsimonious, and unscientific. It is suggested that scientists
are fearful of this hypothesis because it challenges the fundamental
machine metaphor that lies at the center of the Western scientific
imagery. In stressing interconnection rather than hierarchy,
diffusion rather than centralization, the hypothesis inverts the
prevailing gender categories that structure current scientific
thought. The popularity of the hypothesis outside scientific circles
is taken to indicated its spiritual appeal. Despite its current
unpopularity among scientists, it is concluded that the Gaia metaphor
may yet make a significant contribution to scientific thought
and practice.
Blocker, T. Jean and Douglas Lee Eckberg, 1997
"Gender and Environmentalism: Results from the 1993 General Social
Survey." Social Science Quarterly, 78(4):841-858.
This research tests the proposal that women will be more concerned
about the environment than men because of their socialization
to the caregiver role and because of their structural position
relatively outside the labor market and in the home. Previous
research has produced mixed results. The authors used
data from the 1993 General Social Survey to explore the issue
of gender differences in environmental concern in more depth.
They looked specifically at effects of social status, knowledge,
trust in science, and religiosity and found that, while women do
tend to show somewhat more personal concern than do men for the
environment, they are no more likely to engage in environmental
action than are men. Women (and men) of higher social status,
with more knowledge, and with greater trust in science are more
likely to engage in proenvironmental action, not less. Further,
the authors replicated some findings of adverse effects of homemaker
status and parenthood on environmental orientations. They concluded
that, while there appear to be a few gender differences in environmental
orientations, these are not strong or consistent, and they do
not extend to actions.
Bord, Richard J. and Robert E. O'Connor, 1997
"The Gender Gap in Environmental Attitudes: The Case of Perceived
Vulnerability to Risk." Social Science Quarterly, 78(4):830-840.
Surveys demonstrate somewhat consistent gender differences in
environmental concern, but there is no consensus on reasons for
these differences. This research makes the case that differences
in perceived vulnerability to risk explain the gender gap found
in environmental surveys and other, quite distinct, areas of potential
risk as well. Two national surveys, administered simultaneously and each involving
very different environmental risks (hazardous waste sites and
global warming), are analyzed in terms of gender differences.
In both surveys, in every question that involves reactions to
a specific risk, women are more concerned than men. Standard deviations
also are consistently smaller for women. When health-risk perceptions
enter equations accounting for environmental concerns, however
the gender gap disappears. Questionnaire items that imply specific
risks tend to produce significant gender differences. These types
of survey results can be construed as communication events in
which respondents who feel vulnerable answer in ways that urge
caution on policymakers.
Brown, Phil and Faith I. T. Ferguson, 1998
"Making a Big Stink:" Women's Work, Women's Relationships,
and Toxic Waste Activism. Gender and Society, 9(2):145-172.
Women constitute the majority of both the leadership and the
membership of local toxic waste activist organizations; yet, gender
and the fight against toxic hazards are rarely analyzed together
in studies on gender or on environmental issues. This absence
of rigorous analysis of gender issues in toxic waste activism
is particularly noticeable since many scholars already make note
that women predominate in this movement. This article is an attempt
to understand how women activists transcend private pain, fear,
and disempowerment and become powerful forces for change by organizing
against toxic waste in their communities. This article systematically
looks at these connections by examining data from survey research
and case studies. The authors are particularly interested in the
transformation of self of these women, with an emphasis on "ways
of knowing." They also examine the potential of existing
social movement theories to explain women's activism against toxic
waste.
Burgos, Rita and Laura Pulido, 1998
"The Politics of Gender in the Los Angeles Bus Riders' Union/Sindicato
de Pasajeros." Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 9(3):75-82.
The issue of environmental justice has entailed significant debate
over the relationship of race and class. Questions arise over
whether race or class is responsible for disparities in environmental
quality, as well as which analytical category best serves as a
basis for political mobilization. While such debates have reaffirmed
the continuing saliency of racism and have furthered our understanding
of the intersection of race and class, the role of gender has
not been equally considered. In this commentary we explore the
politics of gender in an urban grassroots movement that has articulated
its politics largely around race and class. The Bus Riders' Union/Sindicato
de Pasajeros (BRU) directly organizes to challenge the intersection
of racism and class bias. In this commentary, we first discuss
the BRU in general, and then consider the gender politics of the
BRU.
Campbell, Constance E., in collaboration with The Women's Group
of Xapuri, Acre, Brazil, 1997
"On the Front Lines but Struggling for Voice: Women in the
Rubber Tappers' Defense of the Amazon Forest." The Ecologist,
27(2):46-54.
Prevalent images of the rubber tappers' movement in western Brazil,
which gained renown under the leadership of Chico Mendes, are
of men. Yet women also tap rubber, gather Brazil nuts, defend
the forest, and are members and elected leaders of the rural workers' union. Despite their various contributions and activities, however,
women have tended to remain in the background of economic and
political arenas, almost invisible to environmentalists, researchers,
and even the movement itself. Many women are now working for women's
more active political and economic participation in the rubber
tappers' movement and the recently established extractive reserves.
Cooney, Catherine M, 1999
"Still Searching for Environmental Justice." Environmental
Science and Technology, May 1, 1999:200-204.
In 1982, angered African Americans protested the proposed dumping of PCB's
in their community in Warren County, NC. Although the landfill
was eventually created despite the local community's outrage,
the situation spurred the creation of the Environmental Justice
movement. Realizing the underlying connections between racism,
poverty, and environmental degradation, the conflict between industrial
entities and environmental, health, and social justice advocates
has become even more heated within recent years. This article
explores the movement's roots, economics and housing dynamics,
the role of the government in ending environmental injustice,
the firestorm of opposition by mayors, governors, and business
groups who benefit from the environmental degradation of certain
communities, and the pockets of progress the Environmental Justice
movement is making in eradicating unjust environmental policies
affecting defenseless and disadvantaged groups.
Cornwall, Andrea, 2003
"Whose Voices? Whose Choices? Reflections on Gender and Participatory Development." World Development, 31(8):1325-1342.
Efforts to promote participation in projects, programs, and policy consultation would appear to offer the prospect of giving everyone who has a stake a voice and a choice. But community-driven development, participatory planning, and other fine-sounding initiatives that make claims of "full participation" and "empowerment" can turn out to be driven by particular gendered interests, leaving the least powerful without voice or much in the way of choice. Bringing a gender perspective to bear on the practice of participation in development may assist in identifying strategies for amplifying voice and access to decision making of those who tend to be marginalized or excluded by mainstream development initiatives. Yet "gender" - like "participation" - has multiple meanings. In this article, the author explores some of the tensions, contradictions, and coplementarities between "gender-aware" and "participatory" approaches to development, suggesting that making a difference may come to depend on challenging embedded assumptions about gender and power, and on making new alliances out of old divisions, in order to build more inclusive, transformatory practice.
de Sherbinin, Alex, 1996
"Human Security and Fertility: The Case of Haiti." Journal
of Environment and Development, 5(1):28-45.
This article examines environmental security in Haiti and specifically
the connection between human security and fertility. Rather than
viewing population growth as a causal factor leading to the breakdown
in Haiti's social order, this article examines the ways in which
the lack of social order in Haiti has created a context in which
fertility rates have remained high. It attempts to move beyond
simplified views of population-environment-security links to a
fuller appreciation of the institutional factors that have contributed
to the country's socioeconomic decline and the breakdown of public
order. The principal conclusion is that the tremendous human insecurity
in Haiti - which is due to failures in governance, widespread poverty,
and environmental degradation - has contributed to large desired
family size. To succeed, future efforts to reduce fertility rates
will need first to address the economic and environmental security
of poor Haitians and particularly women.
Dodd, Elizabeth, 1997
"The Mamas and the Papas: Goddess Worship, the Kogi Indians,
and Ecofeminism". NWSA Journal, 9(3):77-88.
This article investigates the rising concern for the environment
and nature, which embraces stereotyped generic roles in goddess
and earth mother imagery, drawing on an analysis of Alan Ereira's
BBC documentary, From the Heart of the World:
The Older Brother's Warning (1990) and the accompanying book,
The Elder Brothers (1990). Ereira's project focuses on the Kogi,
a tribal people living in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of New York,
who have developed a cosmology in which the mother stands as both
a progenitor of nature and an intelligence that shapes nature.
However, Ereira ignored the intellectual importance of women,
in favor of concentrating attention on important cultural rituals
performed by male priests. Moreover, he has missed the fact that,
despite the central role of the mother figure, women actually
live unequal lives in Kogi society. It is concluded that images
of the goddess and earth mother poorly serve the needs of contemporary
ecological movements, because they imply a false separation between
culture and nature and contribute to misogynist forms of thought.
Epstein, Barbara, 1997
"The Environmental Justice/Toxics Movement: Politics of Race
and Gender." Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 8(3):63-87.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s a new grassroots environmental
movement began to emerge, involving constituencies previously
distant from environmentalism: lower middle class and working
class whites; people of color; rural poor people, white and of
color. Though the environmental movement of the late 1960s and
1970s had made the question of pollution a priority, and while
some federal legislation was achieved on this issue during the
1970s, hazardous waste did not become a focus of activism, or
of public concern, until 1978, when an environmental scandal at
Love Canal, Niagara Falls, New York was uncovered. This article
examines the problems faced by people who have been typically
ignored or forgotten within the environmental justice/toxics movement,
and the greater implications this marginalization has had on freedom
and democracy in general.
Filemyr, Ann, 1997
"Unmasking the Population Bomber: Analyzing Domination at the
Intersection of Gender, Race, Class, and Ecology." NWSA Journal,
9(3):138-155.
This essay proposes to build on initial efforts in women's studies
and environmental studies to investigate patterns of sociocultural
domination and privilege within a critical framework in order
to examine more carefully the ideology of domination. The focus
is on expanding our social and cultural analyses of sexism, racism,
classism, heterosexism, anthropocentrism, and other "isms"
to examine the underlying ideological assumptions that sustain
the practice of domination. The intellectual task of deconstructing
domination across areas of privilege gives vital support to activists
engaged in social change efforts, whether they be involved in
feminist organizing or environmental advocacy.
Fuller, Norma, 2000
"Work and Masculinity Among Peruvian Urban Men." The European Journal of Development Research, 12(2):93-114.
This paper analyzes the representations of masculinity and work characteristic of the urban the middle class and popular sectors in Peru. The middle class is defined as those people dedicated to small or medium-sized commerce and industry, middle and upper level white-collar workers, and professionals. In order establish a clear difference between the middle class and popular sectors. The popular sector is defined as those sectors of the population that do not have a higher education and hold lower level white-collar jobs, are workers or small vendors. Popular sectors represent 80% of the population in Peru and have the highest levels of poverty. The central question posed is how men belonging to these sectors reaffirm or reproduce their gender identity in a context in which work, as the way to enter into the public sphere and the masculine circles, and as the basis of male authority within the family have been questioned as result of the emergence of new discourses of masculinity and gender relations that contest men monopoly of the work market and, specially to the impact of the neoliberal adjustment and the so-called "flexibilization" that threw men out of their jobs and forced women to enter massively into the market job.
Gaard, Greta, 1997
"Toward a Queer Ecofeminism." Hypatia, 12(1):114-137.
Although many ecofeminists acknowledge heterosexism as a problem,
a systematic exploration of the potential intersections of ecofeminist
and queer theories has yet to be made. By interrogating social
constructions of the "natural," the various uses of
Christianity as a logic of domination, and the rhetoric of colonialism,
this essay finds those theoretical intersections and argues for
the importance of developing a queer ecofeminism.
Greig, Alan, Michael Kimmel, and James Lang, 2000
Men, Masculinities & Development: Broadening Our Work Towards Gender Equality. United Nations Development Programme, Gender in Development Monograph Series #10.
Thinking about masculinities and men's roles in working towards gender equality is relatively new in the development field. This paper has presented a review of the meanings and uses of masculinity to catalyze thinking around these issues, to inspire new conversations and debate, and to offer a conceptual background for practitioners engaged in work with men. To carry this work forward, continued efforts should be made to publicize and advocate for the importance of men's responsibilities and roles in work towards gender equality in international fora, local and national policy debates, and development programming. Making masculinities visible and men more conscious of gender as it affects their lives and those of women is a first step towards challenging gender inequalities.
Hartmann, Betsy, 1996
"Population, Environment and Security: A New Trinity." Environment
And Urbanization, 10(2):113-127.
This paper critically examines the literature which claims that
internal conflict in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is often
the result of population pressures and resource scarcities, focusing
particularly on the work of Thomas Horner-Dixon. This literature
largely fails to consider the underlying economic and political
causes of environmental degradation and violence, including the
role of international companies, development assistance agencies,
and militaries. Yet, as the paper describes, this literature has
a growing influence. It provides a convenient rationale for sustaining
US military expenditures, which are threatened by the end of the
Cold War, and gives hardliners in the population control lobby
a justification for moving away from the new, broader focus on
reproductive health back to more coercive population policies.
It has also been used by journalists to
present inaccurate and racist images of Africa. The paper ends
with a discussion of why it is important to challenge this ideology
before it exercises a firmer hold on public policy and consciousness,
not least because it leads to negative stereotypes of women and
'peasant' farmers and could lead to the militarization of environmental
policy.
Hassanein, Neva, 1997
"Networking Knowledge in the Sustainable Agriculture
Movement: Some Implications of the Gender Dimension." Society
and Natural Resources, 10:251-257.
Knowledge issues are a critical dimension in the politics of
the sustainable agriculture movement. Recent research has examined
how sustainable farming networks facilitate the creation and exchange
of local knowledge about alternative practices and ideas. This
article extends those analyses by exploring the role of social
location in that knowledge creation and exchange process, based
on field research in a sustainable farming network organized by
and for women farmers. Different experiences in everyday life
may create multiple and partial perspectives from which local
knowledge for sustainability is generated and exchanged.
Hawkins, Ronnie Zoe, 1998
"Ecofeminism and Nonhumans: Continuity, Difference, Dualism,
and Domination." Hypatia, 13(1):158-197.
The dualistic structures permeating western culture emphasize
radical discontinuity between humans and nonhumans, but receptive
attention to nonhuman others discloses both continuity and difference
prevailing between other forms of life and our own. Recognizing
that agency and subjectivity abound within nature alerts us to
our potential for dominating and oppressing nonhuman others as
individuals and as groups. Reciprocally, seeing ourselves as biological
beings may facilitate reconstructing our social reality to undo
such destructive relationships.
Jackson, Cecile, 1993
"Doing What comes Naturally? Women and Environment in Development." World Development, 21(12):1947-1963.
The idea that there is a positive synergy between women's interests and environmental conservation is examined here at two levels. First, the article discusses the two main arguments in women, development, and environment (WDE) literature, i.e. that women have a special and close relationship with nature, and that women are particularly altruistic and caring in their environmental management. The author then scrutinizes the WDE view that women are therefore the "natural" constituency for conservation projects and programs by demonstrating how a gender analysis provides both a superior framework for understanding women and men's environmental relations and a potentially contrary view of the synergy between gender interests and environmental conservation.
-- 1995
"Radical Environmental Myths: A Gender
Perspective." New Left Review, 210:124-140.
Environmental activism has reached high levels of public visibility
since late 1994 when protests over the transport of live animals
at Coventry, Shoreham, and Brightlingsea attracted new supporters
to the animal-rights movement, revealing the growth of Green politics
in unexpected social corners and the changing content of Green
activism. Public commentary on these protests has also raised
the objection that society should be more concerned about the
ill treatment of people - children, the poor, ethnic minorities
- before mobilizing over the protection of animals. Jackson argues
that whilst the rejoinder of, for example, Compassion in World
Farming that these are not exclusive alternatives is reasonable,
the underlying concern over priorities is justified. The central
issue in radical Green politics is indeed the question of human
and non-human rights. Animal-rights groups have of course existed
for some time, but older organizations like the RSPCA and the anti-vivisection
campaign are now part of a much larger, broader, and more militant
movement. Ted Benton claims, "There has been a fundamental
shift in moral concern in Britain for the non-human world,"
and Geoffrey Mulgan of Demos states that "The Green movement is
going towards a post-humanist agenda." What does this new
face of post-humanist environmentalism imply for feminist environmentalism?
This article addresses a series of related issues in radical environmentalism;
in particular, the extent to which a bioethical position, and
much that this entails, is contrary to the interests of women
as relatively disadvantaged humans.
-- 1998
"Gender, Irrigation and Environment:
Arguing for Agency." Agriculture and Human Values, 15(4):313-324.
This paper is not a critique of water policies, or an advocacy
of alternatives, but rather suggests a shift of emphasis in the
ways in which gender analysis is applied to water, development,
and environmental issues. It argues that feminist political ecology
provides a generally stronger framework for understanding these
issues than ecofeminism, but cautions against a reversion to materialist
approaches which, like ecofeminism, can be static and ignore the
agency of women and men. The paper draws attention to the subjectivities
of women and their embodied livelihoods as a more useful approach
to understanding the ways in which women relate to water in both
irrigated agriculture and domestic provisioning.
Johnson, Barry L., Heraline E. Hicks, and Christopher T. De Rosa,
1998
"Key Environmental Human Health Issues in the Great Lakes and
St. Lawrence River Basins." Environmental Research, 80(2):S2-S12.
In May 1997, Health Conference '97-Great Lakes/St. Lawrence,
an international conference on the effects of the environment
on human health in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basins,
was held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This was the third international
conference on this topic sponsored by agencies in the United States
and Canada. More than 120 platform and poster presentations were
given by scientists of different disciplines from the Great Lakes
region and elsewhere. The presentations represented the most current
research findings on the effects of the Great Lakes environment
on human health. The reports covered environmental contaminant
levels of persistent toxic substances (PTSs), routes and pathways
of exposure, exposure assessment and human tissue levels of PTSs,
human health outcomes, risk communication and assessment, and
approaches to scientific collaboration. Reports indicate that
levels of contaminants in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River
basins have generally declined since the 1970s, although certain
contaminants have plateaued or slightly increased. The findings
include elevated body burden levels of contaminants in persons
who consume large amounts of some Great Lakes sport fish, developmental
deficits and neurologic problems in children of some fish-consuming
parents, nervous system dysfunction in adults, and disturbances
in reproductive parameters. The findings underscore the need for
better public health intervention strategies.
Kanti Paul, Bimal, 1999
"Women's Awareness of and Attitudes Towards the Flood Action
Plan (FAP) of Bangladesh: A Comparative Study." Environmental
Management, 23(1):103-114.
Bangladesh has recently tested a program called the Flood Action
Plan (FAP) to solve its chronic flood problem. The FAP envisages
that all the major rivers of Bangladesh will eventually be embanked
on both sides in order to prevent flooding. This paper reports
on the responses of rural women to the possible impacts of the
proposed embankment projects as outlined in the FAP. A further
attempt is also made to compare their responses with the results
of an earlier survey conducted among male respondents. Data for
this study were collected from two rural areas in Bangladesh.
It shows that almost all respondents had heard about the proposed
construction and that they overwhelmingly support the embankment
project of the FAP. Respondents are also aware of both positive
and negative impacts of embankment construction. Similar findings
were also reported by a previous study dealing with male responses
to the embankment project.
Kendie, S.B., 1996
"Some Factors Influencing Effective Utilization of Drinking
Water Facilities: Women, Income, and Health in Rural North Ghana."
Environmental Management, 20(1):1-10.
In the examination of the implementation of rural drinking water
facilities, not enough attention has been paid to analyzing the
socioeconomic and political relationships that affect the effective
utilization of the facilities, particularly as these relate to
women in rural society. This paper suggests that much of the difficulty
in instituting the utilization of safe water supply sources has
to do with the rather low economic status of women - the main water
collectors. Poverty consigns women to long periods of work in
activities or jobs that bring little reward. This makes it difficult
to effectively digest the messages delivered by program staff
and limits the extent of usage of the safe water facilities.
Koerner, Elaine, 1997
"Silent Partners." The Environmental Forum, March/April
1997:18-23.
Though women's clubs played a pivotal role in fighting pollution
and protecting public health more than a century ago, their contributions
have been largely ignored by historians. Yet the evidence is compelling.
Club histories, newspaper articles, and books are beginning to
be dusted off and a startling picture is emerging. Moreover, upon
close examination, the story of these clubs' environmental
work is unerringly contemporary both in process and language.
The problems that they addressed were problems that continue to
bewilder policy makers today: polluted drinking water, inadequate
waste disposal, risks from environmental toxins, and other multimedia
quandaries. Thus, this article seeks to explore the contributions
of women's clubs in laying the foundation of community-based environmental
and health protection in the United States, and the importance
of women's participation in environmental politics.
Korovkin, Tanya, 2003
"Cut-Flower Exports, Female Labor, and Community Participation in Highland Ecuador." Latin American Perspectives, 30(4):18-42.
Kurian, Priya A, 1999
"Environmental Impact Assessment in Practice: A Gender Critique."
The Environmental Professional, 17:167-178.
The author evaluates the extent to which environmental impact
assessment (EIA), as conceptualized by EIA systems, is a gendered
process. Through a discourse analysis of in-depth interviews with
bureaucrats, technocrats, and activists involved with the Sardar
Sarovar dam project in India, she examines the practice of EIA
in a Third World country. In practice, the author argues EIA is
marked by gender biases that ignore the gender-specific nature
of impacts. Such biases distort the impact assessment process,
making environmental sustainability difficult, if not impossible,
to achieve.
Locke, Catherine, 1999
"Constructing a Gender Policy for Joint Forest Management in
India." Development and Change, 30:265-285.
Policy makers and advocates of joint forest management (JFM)
agree that women should be full participants and that their involvement
is especially important because of the nature of women's work.
This article examines how JFM policy has addressed gender in India.
It argues that policy has been informed by instrumentalist positions
in the debate over women's relationship to the environment. Consequently,
gender planning in JFM has focused on two issues: formal representations
for women in local institutions, and identifying women's 'special'
values, knowledge, and uses of forest resources. The scant evidence
suggests that the impact of JFM on women has generally been negative.
Finally, the article suggest that gender policy in JFM needs to
be based on a more sophisticated understanding of gender relations
and a wider examination of the gendered context of JFM processes.
Mellor, Mary, 1997
"Women, Nature and the Social Construction of 'Economic Man'."
Ecological Economics, 20:129-140.
This paper argues that the social construction of 'economic man'
is the product of a hierarchical dualism in Western society that
has also created 'rational man' and 'scientific man'. Women and
the natural world form the subordinated half of these dualisms.
Central to this paper is the claim that this dualism is not only
a cultural/theoretical one, but also a material one. The social
construction of 'economic man' is the product of a bifurcated
knowledge system and a materially divided society. 'Economic man'
reflects a society in which the embeddedness and embodiedness
of humanity is hidden by the division of mind from body, and science/culture
from the natural world. For this reason it is not possible to
incorporate women and nature into the 'economy' through the commodity
form by according them a value as price. It is argued that the
economic system can only exist if women and nature remain externalized,
as women form the bridge between an autonomous individualized
'man' and the biological/ecological underpinning of his existence.
Central to the analysis is the distinction between social and
natural/biological time. 'Economic' man lives in social time (clock
time) while women are responsible for biological time. This is
not because women are closer to nature/biology in an essential
sense. Rather, this relationship is imposed upon them by a male-dominated
society.
-- 1997
"New Woman, New Earth - Setting the
Agenda." Organization and Environment, 10(3):296-308.
Rosemary Radford Ruether's (1975) New Woman, New Earth was one
of the first ecofeminist texts. This collection of essays identified
many of the key issues for future ecofeminsts and asserted the
core of ecofeminist thinking: the subordination of women and degradation
of the planet were linked. Ruether explores this connection through
an analysis of women's history, a critique of the sexism of the
ideologies of Christian theology, classical philosophy, psychoanalysis,
and a socioeconomic analysis of industrial society. Central to
her ideas are the hierarchical dualisms in Western culture that
divide a feminized nature from masculine culture and the apparent
masculine need to seek transcendence from the bodiliness of human
existence. Here, the continuing relevance of Ruether's ideas are
explored, and some of the contradictions and dilemmas they contain
are highlighted. Among these are the relationship between the
experiences of women in contemporary industrial society and women
in other social and historical contexts, whether women have a
special understanding of ecological dynamics, whether the existence
of male domination rests on a discernible social base or represents
a deeper aspect of the male or masculine psyche, and the motivations
for and the mechanisms of achieving a sustainable and egalitarian
society.
Mitchell, Jennifer D., 1997
"Nowhere to Hide: The Global Spread of High-Risk Synthetic Chemicals." World Watch, March/April 1997:26-36.
The mounting risks of exposure to synthetic chemicals - through accidental contact, bioaccumulation, and unpredictable synergies - suggest that tens of thousands of compounds now at large in the environment can no longer be considered "harmless until proven guilty."
Murphy, Patrick D, 1997
"Ecofeminism and Postmodernism: Agency, Transformation, and
Future Possibilities." NWSA Journal, 9(3):41-59.
This article considers the relation of ecofeminism to various
strands of postmodernist theorizing. It is suggested that a basic
division between the two theoretical traditions is that, while
postmodernism is generally dedicated to a negative critique of
the present, ecofeminism is oriented to a positive statement for
the future. This movement beyond the present is founded on an
optimistic view of human agency that can act in the world to effect
economic and political change. Postmodern theorizing can be useful
to ecofeminists, particularly its insistence on the situatedness
of knowledge; however, the use of postmodern theory must avoid
its limiting view of human agency and the potential for change
beyond the present. In so doing, ecofeminism may continue to serve
as a practical movement for social transformation that flexibly
draws on important insights of social theory. Uses of postmodern
theory for ecofeminist literary analysis are briefly demonstrated.
Nabane, Nontokozo and Gordon Matzke, 1997
"A Gender-Sensitive Analysis of a Community-Based Wildlife
Utilization Initiative in Zimbabwe's Zambezi Valley." Society
and Natural Resources, 10:519-535.
Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE program is a grassroots natural resource
management initiative promoting the utilization of natural resources,
usually wildlife, as an economic and sustainable land use option
in Zimbabwe's rural areas. Under CAMPFIRE, the village of Masoka
developed a plan to allocate a large portion of the land under
its control to leased hunting safari operations. A smaller portion
was protected by a wildlife fence and allocated to cultivation
and settlement. This study examines the development consequences
of this initiative with reference to the differential outcomes
for men and women. The program, and associated development activity,
has initiated many changes in village life. Some of these have
led women into opportunitiess that were formerly not available,
including formal education, cash payments, and paid employment.
Although the process of change points to greater inclusion of
women, men still have substantially greater access to money from
CAMPFIRE.
Nelson, Julie A., 1997
"Feminism, Ecology and the Philosophy of Economics." Ecological
Economics, 20:155-162.
The contemporary discipline of economics pays little heed to
either the natural environment or to the work of women. A review
of the literature on the historical development of Western concepts
of self and science shows that this is not coincidental. Rather
than suggesting that ecological economics reinforce the identification
of women with nature, however, feminist thought suggests that
dualistic thinking about men and women, humans and nature can
and should be replaced with a fuller picture of human identity
and knowledge.
New, Caroline, 1996
"Man Bad, Woman Good? Essentialisms and Ecofeminism." New
Left Review, 216:79-93.
This article asks the question, "Can socialists, radical
environmentalists, and feminists from other traditions safely dismiss
ecofeminism?" In this paper, the author offers both a critique
of ecofeminism and a modified defense. On the one hand, she suggests
that ecofeminism is riddled with essentialism, and open to all
the philosophical critiques leveled at any position that attributes
timeless natures to women and men. She shows that even 'social'
ecofemnists, in Mellor's terminology, who steadfastly denounce
essentialism and dualism, frequently fall back on their own versions
of these. Yet she also suggests that ecofeminism must be taken
seriously, both theoretically and strategically.
Plumwood, Val, 1995
"Has Democracy Failed Ecology? An Ecofeminist Perspective."
Environmental Politics, 4(4):134-168.
The superiority of democracy over other political systems in
detecting and responding to ecological problems lies in its capacity
for correctiveness. That this correctiveness is not operating
well in liberal democracy is a further reason for questioning
its identification with democracy. The radical inequality that
increasingly thrives in liberal democracy is an indicator not
only of the capacity of its privileged groups to distribute social
goods upwards and to create rigidities which hinder the democratic
correctiveness of social institutions, but is also an indicator
of their ability to redistribute many ecological ills downwards
and to create similar rigidities in dealing with ecological ills.
It is therefore not democracy that has failed ecology, but liberal
democracy that has failed both democracy and ecology. Ecological
denial is structured into liberalism in multiple ways, particularly
through its reason/nature dualism, its limitation of democracy,
its disposition of public and private spaces, and its marginalization
of collective forms of life. A radical democratic alternative
would reshape the public/private distinction to open the way for
a public as well as a private ethics of environmental responsibility,
for the diffusion of practices of responsibility and care through
crucial areas from which liberalism strips them, and for the development
of a democratic culture that displaces reason/nature dualism.
Reddy, V. Ratna, 1996
"Quenching the Thirst: The Cost of Water in Fragile Environments."
Development and Change, 30:79-113.
Public policy has often addressed the problems of water supply
and sanitation from the supply-side to the neglect of demand-side
aspects in developing countries like India. This policy has not
only rendered a large number of projects financially unviable, but
has also resulted in inadequate coverage of aspects such as population
and ecological insustainability. This article, based on household-level information from six villages in a water-scarce region of
India (Rajasthan state), examines inter- and intra-village variations
in water use and the costs, direct and indirect, involved in obtaining
water. It also estimates households' willingness and ability to
pay for water, using the contingent valuation method (CVM). Using
qualitative as well as quantitative methods, it is argued that
it is the failure of government policy and of institutions that
has led to severe water shortages in harsh environments rather
than supply or financial bottlenecks per se. While the estimates
of price elasticity of water use indicate the feasibility of water
pricing in the rural areas, the willingness to pay estimates questions
the general assumption that rural households are willing to pay
5% of their income/expenditure for water. Various economic
and extra economic factors such as household income, low opportunity
costs of women and children, and attitudes towards female labor
and public goods are vital in influencing the households' willingness
to pay for water.
Richter, Judith, 1996
"'Vaccination' Against Pregnancy: The Politics
of Contraceptive Research." The Ecologist, 26(2):53-58.
For the past 25 years, scientists have been developing a new
class of birth control methods - immuno-contraceptives, also
know as an anti-fertility "vaccines" - which aim to turn
the body's immune system against reproductive components. Immuno-contraceptives are already being heralded as a breakthrough
in contraceptive research, although it is debatable whether they
will ever be sufficiently effective as a contraceptive. From what
is known about immune responses in general, however, immuno-contraceptives are likely to be unreliable as far as an individual is concerned
and to entail an unprecedented potential for abuse; severe health
risks cannot be discounted. Anti-fertility "vaccines"
are thus a clear example of the impact "population control"
has had on contraceptive research.
Rocheleau, Dianne, 1995
"Maps, Numbers, Text and Context: Mixing Methods in Feminist
Political Ecology." Professional Geographer, 47(4):458-466.
Feminist post-structuralist theory, feminist empiricism, and field practice can all contribute to insights on the value of quantitative and qualitative methods in feminist geographical research. A political ecology study of gendered interests in a social forestry program in the Dominican Republic illustrates the methodological dilemmas and potentials of feminist research on environmental change. The study combined qualitative and quantitative data collection and analytical techniques. Examples from the case study address three methodological questions in feminist geography: (1) Should identity or affinity be the basis for situating ourselves and the subjects of our research? (2) How can we reconcile multiple subjectivities and quantitative methods in the quest for objectivity? and (3) Can we combine traditional positivist methods with participatory mapping and oral histories? The paper draws on theoretical literature as well as field experience to answer these questions.
Salleh, Ariel, 1996
"Social Ecology and 'The Man Question'." Environmental
Politics, 5(2):258-273.
Salleh argues that, on a global scale, the freedom that men and
few women in a postmodern commodity culture believe they enjoy
still rests on the labors of an underclass of women domestics,
food growers, and silicon slaves. She claims that we live in a
material world and freedom has material parameters. Beyond women's
labors stands the resource substrate of nature, next in the chain
of appropriation. Salleh asserts that in order to arrive at a
green society, where gender equity is global and a sustainable
reciprocity is established with nature, we may have to rethink
the unbridled Eurocentric fetish for the transcendent. True freedom
involves limits and an acceptance of our embodied condition. Without
awareness of this, the most enlightened citizenry is as free as
infant children are.
Sandilands, Cationa, 1997
"Mother Earth, the Cyborg, and the Queer: Ecofeminism and (More)
Questions of Identity." NWSA Journal, 9(3):18-40.
This article critically assesses the tendency of some ecofeminists
to engage in an essentialist project that identifies women with
nature. It is suggested that this traditional myth of identity
has recently been rejected by many feminists in favor of a new
myth, one in which identity is performed. In this queer view of
identity, the subject is performed in a kind of parodic repetition
of compulsory categories that define social existence. In this
light, political alliances between women and other groups are
not the natural conjoining of sympathetic identities, but instead
represent a disruption of identity and an articulation of new
subject positions. Adopting this manner in ecofeminsim demands
a strongly parodic identity. The result will be the development
of an ecofeminist position that serves as an ironic statement
of joint subversion rather than the naturalization of preexisting
identities.
Schneiderman, Jill S., 1997
"The Common Interests of Earth Science, Feminism,
and Environmental Justice." NWSA Journal, 9(3):125-137.
The author states that the intersection between earth science
and feminism lies in the fact that feminism is a political movement
that aspires to end oppressions based on power discrepancies,
race, sex, and class and that geologists understand the causes
and implications of environmental degradation. Poor people, frequently
women and children living in developing countries, are especially
vulnerable to a degraded environment since they are responsible
for providing fuel and clean water for daily living. She insists
that it is incumbent upon geologists, with their understanding
of earth's "physiology" and the implications of global
change, to help alleviate the human suffering that comes with
environmental degradation. In this article, the author asserts
that integrating gender studies within the earth science field
is crucial in developing a viable and holistic module for contending
with environmental problems that chiefly impact women and children.
Silverman, Carol, 2000
"Researcher, Advocate, Friend: An American Fieldworker Among Balkan Roma, 1980-1996." In Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Postsocialist States, edited by Hermine G. DeSoto and Nora Dudwick. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Sluka, Jeffrey A., 1995
"Reflections on Managing Danger in Fieldwork: Dangerous Anthropology in Belfast." In Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival, edited by Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius C.G.M. Robben. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Taylor, Dorceta E., 1997
"American Environmentalism: The Role of Race, Class and Gender in Shaping Activism - 1820-1995." Race, Gender & Class, 5(1):16-62.
Taylor's article provides a sweeping history of the intersection of race, gender, and class with the rise of American environmentalism. Taylor argues that the white, middle-class environmental movement failed to recognize and address the needs of working-class whites, people of color, and some middle-class communities. Taylor shows that though people of color, women, and other marginalized communities were largely excluded from participation in and benefits of traditional environmentalism, they did, nonetheless, make significant contributions to environmental change throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She concludes that the potential for bringing about a future that is both socially and environmentally just depends on the development of a more inclusive, culturally sensitive, and broad-based environmental agenda in the United States.
Thapa, Keshari K., Richard E. Bilsborrow, and Laura Murphy, 1996
"Deforestation, Land Use, and Women's Agricultural
Activities in the Ecuadorian Amazon." World Development, 24(8):1317-1332.
Migrant women's participation in agricultural activities in the
Ecuadorian Amazon frontier is examined using 1990 household survey
data. A recursive model is developed to test women's participation
in agriculture as a function of household's land use and land
area cleared (deforested), women's characteristics, use of hired
labor, and household income. Results suggest that both hired labor
and off-farm income "substitute" for women's labor in
agriculture. Women who have more young children are more likely
to be involved in agriculture. Conversely, women are less likely
to work in agriculture the larger the proportion of the cleared
area in pasture versus crops, partly because raising cattle requires
less labor than crops. Some implications of these results for
policies to develop the frontier, provide better infrastructure
and services, and conserve the rainforest are discussed in the
conclusion, and suggestions are provided for improved future data
collection and analysis to examine the linkages between women's
work, frontier agriculture, and land use.
Theobald, Sally, 1996
"Employment and Environmental Hazard: Women Workers
and Strategies of Resistance in Northern Thailand." Gender
and Development, 4(3):16-21.
This article explores women's experience of employment within
the electronics industry's export processing zones (EPZs) of
northern Thailand. Is the preference shown by many employers for
women really 'good for women'? Does the increasing feminization
of labor open up new opportunities for women, or is it simply
exploitation?
Ulluwishewa, Rohana, 1997
"Rural Development and its Consequences for Women:
A Case Study of a Development Project in Sri Lanka." Geography,
82(2):110-117.
Using a development project in Sri Lanka as a case study, this
article highlights the ways in which development decisions can
adversely affect both women and the environment. In particular
the article focuses on the failure of development planners to
address women's needs in relation to fuelwood. The strategies
adopted by women to deal with fuelwood shortages can be damaging
both to the welfare of families and to the status of women.
Vance, Linda, 1997
"Ecofeminism and Wilderness." NWSA Journal, 9(3):60-76.
This article critically assesses the philosophical foundation of wilderness
preservation in the US, drawing on ecofeminist theory. It is suggested
that wilderness is generally defined in the US as both a category
of land use and as an idealization of perfect nature. This definition
tends to serve a dualistic mode of thought that separates culture
from nature and, in so doing, contributes to the logic of colonialism,
which denies human dependence on nature. By denying humanity's
intrinsic connection to nature, this mode of thought also leads
to thinking of nature in terms of incorporation, homogenization,
and instrumentalization. It is shown that even the deep ecology
movement relies on this conceptual framework. Proposed is an ecofeminist
framework that involves a close examination of wilderness as a
cultural construction and the situatedness of humans in this construct.
The value of this perspective is briefly demonstrated in a discussion
of several issues related to wilderness preservation, e.g., biodiversity,
grazing, and recreation.
van der Hoogte, Liesbeth and Koos Kingma, 2004
"Promoting Cultural Diversity and the Rights of Women: The Dilemmas of 'Intersectionality' for Development Organisations." Gender and Development, 12(1):47-55.
Work with women belonging to indigenous groups in Latin America needs to take into account both their identity as women and their identity as indigenous people, as well as the interplay between these identities. Indigenous women do not reject their culture, but want to change certain traditions in order to promote justice. Novib and Hivos, two Dutch development organizations, organized a workshop with local experts to discuss how to support indigenous women. Two important dilemmas were identified: the tension between collective and individual rights, and the need to link and address social and economic exclusion with cultural discrimination. Holistic solutions are needed. Changing power relations is a long-term process, which also needs to deal with fighting gender-based violence. NGOs need to change their attitude towards their target groups, and think and work for the long term. This is a challenge, given the current emphasis on short-term, measurable results.
Wasserman, Ellen. 1997.
"Environment, Health, and Gender in Latin America:
Trends and Research Issues." Environmental Research, 80(3):253-273.
Over the past several decades, Latin America underwent rapid
urbanization, a demographic shift led by women. Women now make
up almost half of the economically active population and the feminization
of urban poverty is being reported as well. The majority of men and
women now work in unregulated, unorganized "informal"
and nontraditional industries and services lacking occupational
and environmental regulations. There is a marked paucity of health
studies examining possible hazardous exposures, especially where
gender-based social etiologies are concerned. This is true even
in concentrated industries such as manufacturing assembly plants
and in potentially hazardous occupations in mining and nontraditional
agricultural exports, for which data from other disciplines are
available and raise serious concerns. The need to ensure enough
jobs at sufficient levels of income to alleviate poverty will
remain a major challenge at the turn of the century and the environmental
health implications of doing so could be far-reaching. What data
are available and, more strikingly, the paucity of published epidemiologic
studies warrant deep concern and support calls for urgent, multi-disciplinary research into the health effects of the combined,
multiple assaults of hazardous industrial waste, inadequate water
and sewage treatment, and occupational exposures. Given the complex
and varied work roles of women, the information reviewed also
points to the need to conduct such research in the region within
a social-etiologic framework of gender analysis.
Williams, Terry Tempest, 1995
"The Clan of One-Breasted Women." The Ecologist,
28(2):110-112.
In this narrative, the author declares that she belongs to a
Clan of One-Breasted Women. She provides a family history in which
she describes how her mother, grandmother, and six aunts have
all had mastectomies, seven of them dying from breast cancer,
and she herself confronting problems with breast tumors. Challenging
mainstream views that breast cancer is genetic or attributed to
lifestyle choices, such as a high-fat diet, childlessness, or late
pregnancy, she traces this alarming rate of cancer among the women
in her family to above-ground atomic testing in Nevada that continued
from 1951 to 1962.
Wily, Liz Alden, 2001
Making Progress - Slowly: New Attention to Women's Rights in Natural Resource Law Reform in Africa. Presentation to the CTA/GOU Regional Conference on the Legal Rights on Women in Agricultural Production, Kampala, Uganda, February 19-23.
This paper analyzes how the decentralizing and democratizing effects of reforms that directly change laws or indirectly change the balance of authority over land and landed resources can be significant in improving women's resource rights. Critical shifts are affecting rural resource rights in Africa through reform in land, forestry, and other laws. Recognition that equity in domestic land relations may be a prerequisite to the modernization of subsistence agriculture in agrarian economies is the thesis underlying analysis of legal texts in this paper. More pervasive improvement in women's resource rights is emerging through indirect changes to the law, particularly those which alter the balance of authority over land and landed resources between state and people. Greater accessibility to tenure administration, dispute resolution machinery, and resource management functions occurring through devolution of centres of control from center to periphery is particularly important for women. Also important is the changing status of customary rights in land, and restrictions on practices which discriminate against women's land rights. These are still new and incompletely implemented developments. The paper highlights the challenge of making the most of the opportunities they present to secure tenure over local resources for rural women.
Zweifel, Helen, 1997
"The Gendered Nature of Biodiversity Conservation."
NWSA Journal, 9(3):107-123.
This article explores gendered roles, skills, and knowledge in
the fields of conservation, development, and management of genetic
resources in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, drawing on an actor-oriented
framework in which women and men are conceived as social actors
attempting to solve problems in specific contexts, using the limited
means at their disposal. However, the author argues, the genders
are socially constructed, and their roles in ecological management
have varied over time and across contexts. Typically, women have
retained traditional knowledge of local environmental practices
and so must play a central role in current conservation and preservation
efforts. They must be empowered, and their local knowledge respected,
so that they may play a decisive role in research, decision-making,
and implementation processes.
back to top
Methodology and Application: Books and Chapters
Abramson, Allen, 1993
"Between Autobiography and Method: Being Male, Seeing Myth and the Analysis of Structures of Gender and Sexuality in the Eastern Interior of Fiji." In Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography, edited by Diane Bell, Pat Caplan, and Wazir Jahan Karim. London and New York: Routledge.
Amadiume, Ifi, 1993
"The Mouth that Spoke a Falsehood Will Later Speak the Truth: Going Home to the Field in Eastern Nigeria." In Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography, edited by Diane Bell, Pat Caplan, and Wazir Jahan Karim. London and New York: Routledge.
Anderson, Kathryn and Dana C. Jack, 1991
"Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analyses." In Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, edited by Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai. London and New York: Routledge.
Anderson, K., et al., 1990
"Beginning Where We Are: Feminist Methodology in Oral History." In Feminist Research Methods: Exemplary Readings in Social Sciences, edited by J.M. Nielsen. Boulder, CO, San Francisco, and London: Westview Press.
Anderson et al. introduce oral history as being ideally suited to the purposes of feminist inquiry. The authors' development of the dialectical nature of female consciousness - for example, the realization that housework is considered work but yet not work - is especially well developed. They emphasize women as experts on their own behavior. Contrast this with traditional theories, which suggest that, because of such things as unconscious motives and false consciousness, subjects cannot really know themselves. This chapter also realistically describes dilemmas experienced by the researches themselves - for example, their need to generalize from particular experiences. Indeed, oral history itself is described as neither a psychological interview nor secondary documentation. Thus the oral historian walks a narrow line between these two. "Beginning Where We Are" is not just about feminist methods; these authors exemplify feminist self-scrutiny and awareness, both in their interdisciplinary collaboration and their sharing of the inside story of their research experiences.
Back, Les, 1993
"Gendered Participation: Masculinity and Fieldwork in a South London Adolescent Community." In Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography, edited by Diane Bell, Pat Caplan and Wazir Jahan Karim. London and New York: Routledge.
Batliwala, S. and S. Patel, 1997
"A Census as Participatory Research." In Participatory Action Research: International Contexts and Consequences, edited by Robin McTaggart. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Bell, Diane, 1993
"Yes Virginia, There is a Feminist Ethnography: Reflections from Three Australian Fields." In Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography, edited by Diane Bell, Pat Caplan and Wazir Jahan Karim. London and New York: Routledge.
Bentz, Valerie Malhotra and Jeremy J. Shapiro, 1998
"Research: The New Context and a New Approach." In Mindful Inquiry in Social Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Berdahl, Daphne, 2000
"Mixed Devotions: Religion, Friendship, and Fieldwork in Postsocialist Eastern Germany." In Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Postsocialist States, edited by Hermine G. DeSoto and Nora Dudwick. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Blackwood, Evelyn, 1995
"Falling in Love with an-Other Lesbian: Reflections on Identity and Fieldwork." In Taboo: Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork, edited by Don Kulick and Margaret Willson. London and New York: Routledge.
Bolton, Ralph, 1995
"Tricks, Friends and Lovers: Erotic Encounters in the Field." In Taboo: Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork, edited by Don Kulick and Margaret Willson. London and New York: Routledge.
Cook, Bill and Uma Kothari, 1988
Participation: The New Tyranny. New York: Zed Books.
The book is about participatory development's potential for tyranny,
showing how it can lead to unjust and illegitimate exercise of
power. It addresses the gulf between the almost universally fashionable
rhetoric of participation, which promises empowerment and appropriate
development on the one hand, and what actually happens when
consultants and activists promote and practice participatory development
on the other.
Cornwall, Andrea, 1998
"Gender, Participation and the Politics of Difference." In The Myth of Community: Gender Issues in Participatory Development, edited by Irene Guijt and Meera Kaul Shah. London: Intermediate Technology Publications.
DeWalt, K.M. and B.R. DeWalt, 2002
Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers. Walnut
Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
The book provides a summary of the theoretical and historical
background of participant observation, focusing especially on
the practical applications and acquisition of the techniques of
participant observation. Some topics covered include explanations
of becoming a participant (involvement) and an observer (detached)
in fieldwork, sampling techniques, gender and sex issues in the
field, and designing research.
Dubisch, Jill, 1995
"Lovers in the Field: Sex, Dominance, and the Female Anthropologist." In Taboo: Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork, edited by Don Kulick and Margaret Willson. London and New York: Routledge.
Feldstein, Hilary S. and Janice Jiggins, Editors, 1994
Tools for the Field: Methodologies Handbook for Gender Analysis
in Agriculture. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.
This book offers 38 cases that demonstrate the use of
research tools focused on gender differentiation, designed to
examine small farm dynamics. Its dominant message is that understanding
gender differences is important in helping science
shape improved technologies to meet the needs and fit the circumstances
of small farm households.
Flinn, Juliana, 1998
"Introduction: The Family Dimension in Anthropological Fieldwork." In Fieldwork and Families: Constructing New Models for Ethnographic Research, edited by Juliana Flinn, Leslie Marshall, and Jocelyn Armstrong. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn, 1998
"Ethics." In Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, edited by H. Bertrand Russel. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Fonow, Mary M. and Judith A. Cook, Editors, 1991
Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
In this interdisciplinary collection of articles by internationally recognized feminist scholars, the authors examine efforts to apply feminist principles to the research act. Each stage of the research process is examined, from sampling techniques to mass media packaging and marketing of feminist research. The essays address both abstract philosophical questions and the more practical ways theories are translated into feminist inquiry.
Gearing, Jean, 1995
"Fear and Loving in the West Indies: Research from the Heart (As Well as the Head)." In Taboo: Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork, edited by Don Kulick and Margaret Willson. London and New York: Routledge.
Gianotten, Vera, et al., 1994
Assessing the Gender Impact of Development Projects: Case
Studies from Bolivia, Burkina Faso and India. London: Leusden
and IT Publications and Amsterdam: KIT Press.
An introduction to the methodology for determining how development
projects affect women, with three case studies.
Giovannini, Maureen, 1986
"Female Anthropologist and Male Informant: Gender Conflict in a Sicilian Town." In Self, Sex, and Gender in Cross-Cultural Fieldwork, edited by Tony L. Whitehead and Mary Ellen Conaway. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Goodenough, Ruth Gallagher, 1998
"Fieldwork and a Family: Perspectives Over Time." In Fieldwork and Families: Constructing New Models for Ethnographic Research, edited by Juliana Flinn, Leslie Marshall, and Jocelyn Armstrong. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Greenwood, Davydd J. and Morten Levin
"Empowerment and Liberation: Southern Participatory Action Research and Contemporary Feminist Analyses." In Introduction to Action Research: Social Research for Social Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Guerrero, S.H., Editor, 1999
Gender-Sensitive and Feminist Methodologies: A Handbook for
Health and Social Researchers. Diliman, Quezon City: University
Center for Women's Studies, University of the Philippines.
This handbook consists of essays, analyses, and reflections of
social researchers on methodologies that are gender-sensitive,
participatory, and feminist user-friendly. This book is intended
for health and social researchers who wish to integrate in their
own studies, designs and methods of collecting and analyzing data
that are informed by feminist perspectives and experiences in
the field.
Harding, Sandra, 1987
"Introduction: Is There a Feminist Method?" In Feminism and Methodology, edited by Sandra Harding. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
Kirsch, Gesa E., 1999
Ethical Dilemmas in Feminist Research. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
By addressing ethical dilemmas in a wide range of situations - qualitative research studies, interview studies, studies of classroom practice, studies of student writing, and feminist work - Kirsch explores some important questions: Can researchers represent the experiences of others without misrepresenting, misappropriating, or distorting their realities? What are researchers' responsibilities toward research participants, students, and readers? What ethical principles can guide researchers when they encounter participants who share highly confident information or work with institutions who wish to conceal relevant information?
Krueger, Richard A. and Mary Anne Casey, 2000
"Chapter One: Overview of Focus Groups." In Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Kuehnast, Kathleen, 2000
"Ethnographic Encounters in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan: Dilemmas of Gender, Poverty, and the Cold War." In Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Postsocialist States, edited by Hermine G. DiSoto and Nora Dudwick. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Lather, Patricia, 1991
"Research as Praxis." In Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy With/in the Postmodern. London and New York: Routledge.
Lederman, Muriel and Ingrid Bartsch, Editors, 2001
The Gender and Science Reader. London and New York: Routledge.
The Gender and Science Reader brings together key writings by leading scholars to provide a comprehensive feminist analysis of the nature and practice of science. Challenging the self-proclaimed objectivity of scientific practice, the contributors uncover the gender, class, and racial prejudices of modern science. The book draws from a range of media, including feminist criticism, scientific literature, writings about scientific education, and the popular press. Articles are grouped into six thematic sections which address:
* Women in Science - women's access to study and employment in science, combining both analytical evidence and personal testimonies
* Creating Androcentric Science - exploring gendered origins of science at the time of the Enlightenment
* Analyzing Gendered Science - feminist methodologies and epistemology for the study of science
* Gendered Praxis - examples of how gender bias can affect and distort scientific work
* Science and Identity - how science reinforces gender and racial stereotypes
* Feminist Re-Structuring of Science - what is the future of feminist science studies?
In addition to a general introduction by the editors to the volume and introductions to each of the thematic sections, the book also includes a comprehensive bibliography of feminist science studies, making it an indispensible resource for anyone involved in the teaching, research, or study of science.
Lee, Rayond M., 1995
Dangerous Fieldwork. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
How can researchers gain access but mediate personal safety in the midst of violent social conflict? Under what conditions does danger occur and what can a researcher do to evade it or manage it? In Dangerous Fieldwork, Lee examines the kinds of dangers researchers face and provides strategies for reducing risk in perilous situations. He presents experiences of researchers who have worked among various groups such as outlaw bikers, youth gangs, and those infected with HIV. He also discusses the hazards of working with informants in inherently dangerous occupations. The underdocumented, but increasingly important, subject of sexual harassment and assault is addressed as well. In this volume the author avoids adopting an alarmist stance toward potentially dangerous fieldwork. Instead, he emphasizes the importance of carefully appraising research settings for possible dangers.
Linnekin, Jocelyn, 1998
"Family and Other Uncontrollables: Impression Management in Accompanied Fieldwork." In Fieldwork and Families: Constructing New Models for Ethnographic Research, edited by Juliana Flinn, Leslie Marshall, and Jocelyn Armstrong. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Maguire, Patricia, 1987
"Adjusting the Lens: Participatory Research." In Doing Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts.
Markowitz, Fran, 1999
"Sexing the Anthropologist: Implications for Ethnography." In Sex, Sexuality, and the Anthropologist, edited by Fran Markowitz and Michael Ashkenazi. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Marshall, Joan, 2002
"Borderlands and Feminist Ethnography." In Feminist Geography in Practice: Research and Methods, edited by Pamela Moss. Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Martin, Emily, 1997
"The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles." In Situated Lives: Gender and Culture in Everyday Life, edited by Louise Lamphere, Helena Ragone, and Patricia Zavella. London and New York: Routledge.
Maxwell, Joseph A., 1998
"Designing a Qualitative Study." In Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods, edited by Leonard Bickman and Debra J. Rog. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
McKay, Deirdre, 2002
"Negotiating Positionings: Exchanging Life Stories in Research Interviews." In Feminist Geography in Practice: Research and Methods, edited by Pamela Moss. Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Moreno, Eva, 1995
"Rape in the Field: Reflections from a Survivor." In Taboo, Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork, edited by Don Kulick and Margaret Willson. London and New York: Routledge.
Naples, Nancy A., 1996
"The Outsider Phenomenon." In In the Field: Readings on the Field Research Experience, edited by Carolyn D. Smith and William Kornblum. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
Oakley, Ann, 1981
"Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms." In Doing Feminist Research, edited by Helen Roberts. London and New York: Routledge.
Ann Oakley discusses methodological problems highlighted by her research on motherhood, and in particular the gap between textbook 'recipes' for interviewing and her own experience as an interviewer. Traditional criteria for interviewing, suggest Oakley, can be summarized as, first, the admonition that the interviewing situation is a one-way process in which the interviewer elicits and receives, but does not give information. Oakley illustrates the absurdity of this situation through a discussion of the questions her respondents "asked back." Second, textbooks advise interviewers to adopt an attitude towards interviewees which allocated the latter a narrow and objectified function as data. Third, interviews are seen as having no personal meaning in terms of social interaction, so that their meaning tends to be confined to their statistical comparability with other interviews and the data obtained from them. Oakley suggests that each of these paradigms of traditional interviewing practice creates problems for feminist interviewers whose primary orientation is towards the validation of women's subjective experiences as women and as people, and illustrates the lack of fit between theory and practice in this area.
Pan-Commonwealth, 1996
The Pan-Commonwealth Training Module on Women and Natural
Resource Management. Women, Ink. Books (http://www.womenink.org/envt.html).
This book examines issues in gender and natural resources, and
explains how extension workers, trainers, and policy-makers for
government, institutions, and NGOs can make use of women's knowledge
for effective resource management. The Overview provides a concise
review of women and natural resource management, discusses the
linkages between gender and environmental management, and provides
analytical tools to help policy makers evaluate the implications
of these linkages. It should ideally be used in conjunction with
one of the region manuals, each of which reviews the problems
of environmental degradation in a particular region and discusses
appropriate approaches for working with rural women. Extensive
examples, photographs, and illustrations; training activities;
figures and vignettes.
Phoenix, Ann, 1998
"Practicing Feminist Research: The Intersection of Gender and Race in the Research Process." In Researching Women's Lives from a Feminist Perspective, edited by Mary Maynard and June Purvis. Bristol, PA: Taylor and Francis.
Pierce Colfer, Carol J., 1994
"Time Allocation Studies: A Methodological Note." In Tools for the Field: Methodologies Handbook for Gender Analysis in Agriculture, edited by Hilary Sims Feldstein and Janice Jiggins. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.
Ramazanoglu, Caroline with Janet Holland, 2002
"Reason, Science and Progress: Feminism's Enlightenment Inheritance." In Feminist Methodology: Challenges and Choices. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Reinharz, Shulamit, 1992
Feminist Methods in Social Research. New York: Oxford
University Press.
The book is devoted to answering the questions of identity (what are feminist research methods?) and of difference (What is
the difference between feminist research methods and other methods
and how do feminist research methods differ from each other?).
The author answers these questions by analyzing instances of feminist
research to discover which methods they use and why they
use them.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 1987
"A Children's Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term: Managing Culture-Shocked Children in the Field." In Children in the Field: Anthropological Experiences, edited by Joan Cassell. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Selener, Daniel, 1997
Participatory Action Research and Social Change. Ithaca, NY: The Cornell Participatory Action Research Network, Cornell University.
This book explores approaches to facilitating social change through participatory action research, in which members of a group (be they educators, farmers, or community activists) also function as the main researchers in identifying problems, collecting data, proposing plans of response, and developing frames of reference to understand and solve problems of concern to them.
Slocum, R., L. Wichhart, D. Rocheleau, and B. Thomas-Slayter, Editors,
1998
Power, Process and Participation: Tools for Change. London: Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd.
The book focuses on participatory capacity building in ways that
address the practical needs and strategic interests of the disadvantaged
and disempowered. While it pays particular attention to gender
issues, it also examines how differences in class, ethnicity, race,
caste, religion, age, and status may also lead to the politics
of exclusion. It provides a brief overview of participatory approaches
to development and includes discussion of important contextual
issues, such as power relationships within a community and between
local institutions and outsiders. It explores opportunities
for using multi-media tools to strengthen the impact of the other
tools in consciousness raising, data gathering, advocacy, and
community decision making and action.
Spalter-Roth, R. and H. Hartmann, 1999
"Small Happinesses: The Feminist Struggle to Integrate Social Research with Social Activism." In Situated Lives: Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology: An Interdisciplinary Reader, edited by S. Hesse-Biber, C. Gilmartin and R. Lydenberg. London and New York: Oxford University Press.
Taylor, Steven J., 1991
"Leaving the Field: Research, Relationships, and Responsibilities." In Experiencing Fieldwork: An Inside View of Qualitative Research, edited by William B. Shaffir and Robert A. Stebbins. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Thomas-Slayter, Barbara and Andrea Lee Esser, 1993
Tools of Gender Analysis: A Guide to Field Methods for Bringing
Gender into Sustainable Resource Management. Worcester, MA:
ECOGEN (Clark University).
This guide grows out of the activities of Ecology, Community
Organization, and Gender (ECOGEN), a joint research project of Clark
University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
ECOGEN explores alternative approaches to resource management,
identifies changing forms of community organization, and clarifies
the important gender-based variables arising in community-level
management of resources. To this end, ECOGEN utilizes gender-sensitive
techniques in data gathering and analysis and links these techniques
with participatory methodologies.
Wade, Peter, 1993
"Sexuality and Masculinity in Fieldwork among Colombian Blacks." In Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography, edited by Diane Bell, Pat Caplan and Wazir Jahan Karim. London and New York: Routledge.
Whitehead, Tony L., 1986
"Breakdown, Resolution, and Coherence: The Fieldwork Experiences of a Big, Brown, Pretty-talking Man in a West Indian Community." In Self, Sex, and Gender in Cross-Cultural Fieldwork, edited by Tony L. Whitehead and Mary Ellen Conaway. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Wolf, Diane L., 1996
Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Eleven essays by economists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians,
and others provide an interdisplinary exploration of the kinds
of dilemmas feminist researchers have confronted in the field.
Through experientially-based writings, the authors unravel the
contradictions stemming from their contradictory positions as
"insiders," "outsiders," or both, and from
attempts to equalize the research relationship.
Yin, R.K., 1998
"The Abridged Version of Case Study Research: Design and Method." In Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods, edited by Leonard Bickman and Debra J. Rog. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
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Methodology and Application: Articles
American Anthropological Association, 2002
Briefing Paper for Consideration of the Ethical Implications of Sexual Relationships between Anthropologists and Members of a Study Population. Draft for Comments. Prepared by Joe Watkins, AAA Committee on Ethics.
-- 2002
Briefing Paper on Consideration of the Potentially Negative Impact of the Publication of Factual Data about a Study Population on Such Population. Draft for Comments. Prepared by Joe Watkins, AAA Committee on Ethics.
-- 2002
Briefing Paper on Informed Consent. Draft for Comments. Prepared by Laren Clark and Ann Kingsolver, AAA Committee on Ethics.
-- 2002
Briefing Paper on Remuneration to Subject Populations and Individuals. Draft for Comments. Prepared by Gail E. Wagner, AAA Committee on Ethics.
-- 2002
Briefing Paper on the Impact of Material Assistance to Study Population. Draft for Comments. Prepared by Hy V. Luong, AAA Committee on Ethics.
Bacchiddu, G., 2004
"Stepping Between Different Worlds: Reflections Before, During and After Fieldwork." Anthropology Matters Journal, 6(2). Internet document: http://www.anthropologymatters.com/journal/2004-2/bacchiddu_2004_stepping.htm
Before beginning fieldwork, the anthropology student pictures herself in a totally different dimension: an 'indigenous' world in which she will be immersed for the whole fieldwork period: she does not know the native language, she has no idea who she will meet or where she will spend most of her time. Then, the 'limbo' state ends and she finds herself suddenly active, even when she does nothing. To be doing fieldwork means to be constantly observed by other people as well as having to observe all around oneself. This paper explores issues the author lived through and experienced before, during, and after her fieldwork in southern Chile. It is a personal narrative of the contradictions that the fieldworker frequently has to face - especially when doing research in a region that has never been studied by anthropologists before. The author discusses some of the most confusing episodes that occured during the process of becoming familiar with her host culture. These events illustrate the difficulty of overcoming the 'innocence' typical of the inexperienced fieldworker and the impossibility of stepping outside one's own cultural expectations, despite months of serious professional training. Eventually the experience of fieldwork deeply transforms the fieldworker and her perceptions both of herself and the surrounding world. However, can we cope with the potentially dangerous underpinnings of adopting a different lifestyle for a long period of time? Fieldwork provides us with a chance (with all its emotional implications) to step from one world to another, and the feeling of belonging to both worlds - despite the enormous distance between them.
Barry, Christine, 2002
"Identity/Identities and Fieldwork: Studying Homeopathy and Tai Chi 'At Home' in South London." Anthropology Matters Journal. Internet document: http://www.anthropologymatters.com/journal/2002/barry2002_identity.htm
This reflexive paper presents the issues around the author's changing identity/identities during, and after, ethnographic fieldwork "at home" in South London, studying homeopathy and Tai Chi in the community. This article explores the change of identity as a rite of passage using Wengle's notion of symbolic death of identity. This analysis, while useful, is limited in that it can be seen to over-essentialize the concept of identity. The author goes on to show how her shifting identities in and after fieldwork were not solely the result of an individual psychological process, but were constructed in contextual interaction with others as an embodied participant. It is the author's belief that 'going native' aided her understanding of the embodied experience of being part of alternative groups, but made coming out of the field difficult emotionally.
Brown, Phil and Faith Ferguson, 1995
"Making a Big Stink: Women's Work, Women's Relationship and Toxic Activism." Gender and Society, 9(2):145-172.
Women constitute the majority of both the leadership and membership of local toxic waste activist organizations; yet, gender and the fight against toxic hazards are rarely analyzed together in studies on gender or on environmental issues. The absence of rigorous analysis of gender issues in toxic waste activism is particularly noticeable since many scholars already make note that women predominate in this movement. This article is an attempt to understand how women activists transcend private pain, fear, and disempowerment and become powerful forces for change by organizing against toxic waste in their communities. This article systematically looks at these connections by examining data from survey research and case studies. The authors are particularly interested in the transformation of self of these women, with an emphasis on "ways of knowing." They also examine the potential of existing social movement theories to explain women's activism against toxic waste.
Browne, Kath, 2003
"Negotiations and Fieldworkings: Friendship and Feminist Research." ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geography, 2(2):145-172.
This paper explores the micro-level operations of power where researchers speak within, rather than across, worlds. It seeks to augment geographical feminist research literature that discusses interpersonal power relations in research spaces by exploring the complexities of 'sameness' between participants and researchers on the basis of sexuality and friendships. The author argues for an understanding of power relations in the research process (recruiting, research gathering/forming, feedback, and writing up) as negotiable if not necessarily negotiated. This is premised on an understanding of research (and research fields) as constituted through performativities and intersubjectivities between the researcher and participants, what the paper calls fieldworkings. Research fields as formed through fieldworkings include, but extend beyond, recognized research fields/spaces, in this case focus groups, interviews, and coupled interviews, to wider social and personal relations including friendships. Thus, the paper concludes by contending that, rather than moving beyond research relations, dialogues regarding fieldworkings as ongoing and negotiable could be productive.
Davis, Sara, 1999
"A Return to Culture Shock." The Chronicle of Higher Education. Internet document: http://chronicle.com/jobs/99/11/99111903c.htm
The author discusses her surprise at experiencing "reverse culture shock" upon returning from a year of field research in China. Her experience gave her the push she needed to finish her dissertation, and she discusses some of the coping techniques she developed to deal with culture shock at both ends of her travels.
DeVault, Marjorie L., 1995
"Ethnicity and Expertise: Racial Ethnic Knowledge in Sociological Research." Gender and Society, 9(5):612-631.
This article is an analysis of an interview conducted by a white researcher with an African American nutritionist that points to the significance of racial-ethnic dynamics in the conduct of qualitative research. Interviewers who follow the standard methodological rule - to let findings 'emerge' from their data - may fail to hear the significance of race-ethnicity in the accounts of informants. Close analysis suggest that talk will sometimes reveal racial-ethnic dynamics even when these are not explicit topics and that active attention to such structured inequalities produces a more robust analysis. Institutional ethnography and narrative analysis are discussed as alternatives to the grounded-theory approach to qualitative analysis.
Dowler, Lorraine, 2001
"The Four Square Laundry: Participant Observation in a War Zone." The Geographical Review, 91(1-2):414-422.
Dowler reflects on her experiences of doing fieldwork in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she lived as a participant observer among members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). She details how she went about negotiating a place in the community in order to gain the community's trust so that she could conduct research.
Esim, Simel, 1997
"Can Feminist Methodology Reduce Power Hierarchies in Research Settings?" Feminist Economics, 3(2):137-139.
In this article the issues of power hierarchies and the role of feminist methodology in fieldwork are addressed. Observations from fieldwork in Turkey for research on gender-based constraints faced by women micro- and small entrepreneurs are used to identify some of the power hierarchies involved in research settings and how the use of feminist methdology can be instrumental in reducing these hierarchies. Linking research with action-oriented programs is one important aspect of this fieldwork which contributed to the communities where the research took place. The methodology used in this research also validated personal experience through qualitative interviews and the use of interdisciplinary methods. The focus group interviews proved to be the most flexible, egalitarian, and interactive of all the methods used in the fieldwork. In conclusion, while a feminist methodology cannot eliminate power hierarchies in the research process, it can be helpful in partly reducing them.
Gadio, Coumba Mar and Cathy A. Rakowski, 1999
"Farmers' Changing Role in Thieudeme, Senegal: The Impact of Local and Global Factors on Three Generations of Women." Gender and Society, 13(6):733-757.
This article focuses on the changing roles of the women farmers of Thieudeme, Senegal. Sociological concepts and methods are combined with women's perceptions to more fully understand the nature of role change from part-time subsistence farming of hardy staples to full-time farming and marketing of vegetables among three generations of women and to compare women's perceptions of change factors with those identified through research and policy analysis. The authors also consider the associations among women's traditional arenas of decision making, increased responsibilities for household maintenance, improved status in the community, and organizing and demands for greater autonomy. Women are more likely to emphasize stress from work burdens and conflicts than to conclude that change has brought them any benefits.
Gatenby, Bev and Maria Humprhies, 2000
"Feminist Participatory Action Research: Methodological and Ethical Issues." Women's Studies International Forum, 23(1):89-105.
Close relationships between researchers and participants engaged in a feminist participatory action research project have brought joy and insight, but also challenges. Through the project the authors collaborate to enhance participants' careers and, among some, develop feminist consciousness. In this paper they discuss methodological and ethical issues that derive from the closeness of the relationships between many of the participants and themselves. They explore their subjectivities, the issues associated with interpreting participants' stories, actions and conversations, the risk of perpetuating uncritical assimilation or colonization for Maori participants, and the challenge of matching practice with ideals of emancipation for all women.
Geiger, Susan, 1986
"Women's Life Histories: Methods and Content." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 11(2):334-351.
This review essay was prompted by the Signs editorial that introduced the Winter 1982 issue. Echoing speakers at the National Women's Studies Association conference of the same year, the editorial challenged feminists to check our search for commonalities among all women in the world, past and present, and to "see the individual variety in women's lives, to embrace that, to learn from it before we try to generalize - since generalizations can so easily become the imposition of self and erasure of others."
Hapke, Holly M. and Devan Ayyankeril, 2001
"Of 'Loose' Women and 'Guides', or, Relationships in the Field." The Geographical Review, 91(1-2):342-352.
Hapke and Ayyankeril discuss the ways in which their relationship as researcher/interpreter-assistant and as wife/husband informed field research in Kerala, India. They draw on recent theories of the body and performance, and on disciplinary interest in what has come to be known as researcher positionality, to discuss their relationship as it was mediated by local contingencies.
Hays-Mitchell, Maureen, 2001
"Danger, Fulfillment, and Responsibility in a Violence-Plagued Society." The Geographical Review, 91(1-2):311-321.
By investing herself in the everyday settings and lives of women street vendors, at-home informal laborers, and war survivors in Peru, Hays-Mitchell has learned far more about the value of fieldwork to understanding political-economic relationships and the daily reality of those who live them. She suggests how fieldwork informs important phenomena in ways otherwise impossible to see and survey.
Kibria, Nazli, 1995
"Culture, Social Class and Income Control in the Lives of Women Garment Workers in Bangladesh." Gender and Society, 9(3):289-309.
This article looks at the income-related experiences of women workers in Bangladesh in the export garment industry, the first modern industry in the country to employ large numbers of women. The analysis draws on in-depth interviews with 34 female sewing machine operators at five factories. Despite the traditionally low economic autonomy of Bangladeshi women, the women's ability to control their income was varied, and in fact, a substantial number of the women workers exercised full control over their wages. Socioeconomic background affected women's income control by shaping both the symbolic meaning of women's income and the ability of male kin to fulfill their traditional obligations to women. With the exception of some young unmarried workers, women's employment in the garment industry had not posed a significant challenged to patriarchal family relations.
Kovats-Bernat, J. Christopher, 2002
"Negotiating Dangerous Fields: Pragmatic Strategies for Fieldwork Amid Violence and Terror." American Anthropologist, 104(1):208-222.
As anthropology turns toward the cultural issues of the 21st century, more and more ethnographic fieldwork is and will continue to be conducted in regions fraught with conflict, instability, and terror. Despite a growing literature that seeks to develop new theories and perspectives for the study of violence, little mention is made of the practical matters of survival in perilous field sites and how the anthropologist's experience of violence in the field should be considered. What is needed is a pragmatic strategy for dealing with threats to the safety, security, and well-being of anthropologists and informants who work amid the menace of violence. Drawing on his own fieldwork in Haiti, the author suggests the adoption of new tactics for ethnographic research and survival in dangerous fields - strategies that challenge the conventional ethics of the discipline, reconfigure the relationship between anthropologist and informant, and compel innovation in negotiating the exchange of data under hazardous circumstances.
Lennie, June, 2003
"Feminist Discourses of (dis)Empowerment in an Action Research Project Involving Rural Women and Communication Technologies." Action Research, 1(1):57-80.
Women's empowerment is a central aim of feminist action research. However, due to many contradictory discourses of empowerment, it has become a contested concept. Drawing on post-structuralist theories of power-knowledge, discourse, and subjectivity, this article critically analyzes the discourses identified in an Australian feminist action research project involving rural women, academics, and industry partners. This project aimed to empower women to discuss and use interactive communication technologies (ICTs). This analysis highlights the contradictory effects of the egalitarian and expert discourses that were identified, and the multiple, often conflicting, subject positions that were taken up by the researchers and participants. Our analysis suggests that the discourses of empowerment and disempowerment intersect and interpenetrate one another, and highlights some of the dangers and contradictions associated with feminist participatory action research. We argue that a post-structuralist approach to analysis and critical reflexivity can lessen the 'impossible burden' on academic feminists engaged in emancipatory research.
Nightingale, Andrea, 2003
"A Feminist in the Forest: Situated Knowledges and Mixing Methods in Natural Resource Management." ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 2(1):77-90.
Donna Haraway's concept of partial or situated knowledges has been a major influence on feminist methdological debates within geography. In this paper, I argue that geographers can interrogate the partiality of knowledge by developing research designs that incorporate methods derived from different epistemological traditions. The silences and gaps between data sets can be explored to interrogate the partiality of knowledge produced in different theoretical and methodological contexts. Also, advocates of interpretive methodologies can add substantially to theoretical debates over epistemology by demonstrating how the results from all methods are incomplete and subject to power - and positionality - laden interpretations. Using different methods is one way to highlight this issue and to challenge the hegemony of positivist science within mainstream academic and policy circles.
Oakley, Ann, 1998
"Gender, Methodology and People's Ways of Knowing: Some Problems with Feminism and the Paradigm Debate in Social Science." Sociology, 32(4):707-731.
This paper examines the character of the debate about 'quantitative' and 'qualitative' methods in feminist social science. The 'paradigm argument' has been central to feminist social science methodology; the feminist case against 'malestream' methods and in favour of qualitative methods has paralleled other methodological arguments within social science against the unthinking adoption by social science of a natural science model of inquiry. The paper argues in favour of rehabilitating quantitative methods and integrating a range of methods in the task of creating an emancipatory social science. It draws on the history of social and natural science, suggesting that a social and historical understanding of ways of knowing gives us the problem not of gender and methodology, but of the gendering of methodology as itself a social construction.
Polier, Nicole, 1998
"True Transgressions: Refusal and Recolonization in the Narrative of a Papuan Migrant 'Bighead'." Feminist Studies, 24(3):511-534.
Stella Seliok's sexual rebuke is a silent but social story, one well-known but seldom shared among Faiwolmin, a story made more real and painful for Stella by its public deniability. For this and other reasons, the most difficult story for Stella to tell is that of her gang rape in girlhood. The narrative moments of this telling were marked by elipses, denial, and evident regret. Stella initially told the story of the patrol officer without recounting her rape. "It didn't happen," she told me once; "It happened," she said later, "and I could not stop it." The fuller story emerged over time, and despite Stella's disgust with kinsmen and a rational representation of herself as their victim, she was laden with guilt for the retributive violence of her rape. As she explained it to me and to herself, she was stubborn and promiscuous before coming to Christ, but only God should punish her. She has simultaneously opposed and internalized secular and ecclesiastical representations of herself as a rabis meri. Stella tells the story of the whore who wept at Christ's feet and was forgiven by him. Sometimes, she would tell me, she was that whore, but at other times, she would say she frankly didn't know. Thus in an Althusserian sense, Christian religious ideology has "interpellated" Stella as a Baptist subject. For her, God is the almighty and ultimate "Subject" in relationship to whom Stella sees herself - and is seen in the eyes of the religious community - as a subject subjected to him. The proof, as Louis Althusser would argue, is in the obedience of the subject herself. God will save those who recognize him and who see themselves in and through him. But nobody understands better than Stella that there are no guarantees for mercy nor any proof that she has been a good, obedient, and duly penitent Christian. Such is the "feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual" described by Max Weber in the Protestant Ethic. How does Stella imagine herself through the Almighty? As she has said, Jesus Christ can see right through her, and "I'm no good in your eyes." Her relationship to God - as a born-again, rather than, say, a Catholic - is direct and intimate not mediated by a priest or congregation. Stella sometimes addresses Christ rhetorically in the second person singular as she narrates her story. She cannot even be cleansed in the confessional but is left to wait for her probable punishment. That the kiap she once lusted for is a source of retrospective pleasure compounds Stella's guilt. That she backslides and sins in the township, occasionally acting like a "whore" and a rabis meri only makes her subjection more intense.
Rocheleau, Dianne E., 1992
"Gender, Ecology and Agroforestry: Science and Survival in Kathama." ECOGEN Case Study Series. Boston: Clark University.
The semi-arid farming communities surrounding the village of Kathama in Kenya have participated in agroforestry and related research for more than a decade. The experiences of people in Kathama during the famine in 1985 provide insights into the resourcefulness of rural women's organizations and the complexity of rural people's tactics of survival (both ecological and political). The application of that knowledge demonstrates the importance of both men's and women's participation in the research and development process in forestry, agriculture and other sectors of rural resource management and production.
-- 1995
"Maps, Numbers, Text, and Context: Mixing Methods in Feminist Political Ecology." Professional Geographer, 47(4):458-466.
Feminist post-structuralist theory, feminist empiricism, and field practice can all contribute to insights on the value of quantitative and qualitative methods in feminist geographical research. A political ecology study of gendered interests in a social forestry program in the Dominican Republic illustrates the methodological dilemmas and potentials of feminist research on environmental change. The study combined qualitative and quantitative data collection and analytical techniques. Examples from the case study address three methdological questions in feminist geography: (1) Should identity or affinity be the basis for situating ourselves and the subjects of our research? (2) How can we reconcile multiple subjectivities and quantitative methods in the quest for objectivity? and (3) Can we combine traditional positivist methods with participatory mapping and oral histories? The paper draws on theoretical literature as well as field experience to answer these questions.
Scheyvens, Regina and Helen Leslie, 2000
"Gender, Ethics and Empowerment: Dilemmas of Development Fieldwork." Women's Studies International Forum, 23(1):119-130.
For students and academics involved with development studies, fieldwork is often a critical aspect of the research process. This process, however, can give rise to a plethora of ethical dilemmas relating to power gradients between the researcher and the researched. Combined with this are complex issues of knowledge generation, ownership, and exploitation. The sensitivity of these issues may be intensified when involving women as research participants. Ethical issues regarding the validity and effectiveness of cross-cultural and cross-gendered fieldwork in Third World contexts are explored in this article, with examples drawn from recent research practice. Following this review is a critical discussion concerning whether there is potential for the fieldwork process to be empowering for research participants.
Smith, Michael D., 1994
"Enhancing the Quality of Survey Data on Violence against Women: A Feminist Approach." Gender and Society, 8(1):109-127.
A major methodological problem in victimization surveys on physical and sexual violence against women is the underreporting of violence. The first part of this article makes a case for 6 feminist strategies for improving the accuracy of self-report data on victimization within a mainstream survey research framework. The second part of the article is a presentation of data from a survey of Toronto women that is designed to show the efficacy of these feminist strategies.
Starrs, Paul F., with Carlin F. Starrs, Genoa L. Starrs, and Lynn Huntsinger, 2001
"Fieldwork... with Family." The Geographical Review, 91(1-2):74-87.
Starrs describes the experience of doing geographical fieldwork in Spain with his wife and two children. With family along, fieldwork is no longer just about the researcher and the cluster of cherished contacts - documents and archives, people and places, organizations and outlooks.
Till, Karen E., 2001
"Returning Home and to the Field." The Geographical Review, 91(1-2):46-56.
Till presents personal vignettes about conducting follow-up geographic research in Berlin, Germany. Through the vignettes, she explains how, when geographers return from the field and share their writings with research consultants, they are forced to change previously held assumptions and to negotiate new relationships. Facing their unease in such settings may be difficult, but it may also lead to new insights and more empathetic geographies and histories.
van Staveren, Irene, 1997
"Focus Groups: Contributing to a Gender-Aware Methodology." Feminist Economics, 3(2):131-135.
A focus group is an open group interview from which research hypotheses can be derived. It enables economic research to step down from its narrow theoretical assumptions and to embed research questions in a real-life context. It can also contribute to strong objectivity and when done in women's groups and/or on gender issues, focus groups can contribute to a feminist methodology. Experience from a focus group by the author held in Africa has indicated how diverse and enriching economic notions can become, when discussed in a group, before the research has started.
Wright, Mareena McKinley, 1995
"'I never did any field work, but I milked an awful lot of cows!' Using Rural Women's Experience to Reconceptualize Models of Work." Gender and Society, 9(2):216-235.
To redefine work as a concept, the author develops the theoretical contours of a multidimensional continuum model of women's work that moves away from older dual spheres models, using oral histories of older rural white women from Iowa and Missouri. Based on a grounded theory analysis, the author discusses three important dimensions of a contiuum model of work: economic benefits, location, and time control characteristics. These dimensions tend to funnel women into multiple work strategies where they combine several labor options to maximize economic benefit. A multidimensional continuum model allows us to observe some of the mechanisms operating in women's labor decision-making process. It suggests new ways of thinking about women's life course patterns. By providing us with a definition of work that more accurately reflects observed experience, it casts doubt on some of our social policies, especially those regarding the care of children and the elderly.
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Book Reviews
Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
Vandana Shiva, 1997
Cambridge, MA: South End Press
RFR/DRF 25(1/2):122, 1998, Reviewed by Heather Eaton
Changing the Boundaries: Women-Centered Perspectives on Population and the Environment
Janice Jiggins, 1994
Colvelo, CA, and Washington, DC: Island Press
American Anthropologist 98(4):879-881, 1996, Reviewed by Helen Kreider Henderson
Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990
Henrietta L. Moore and Megan Vaughan, 1994
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
American Anthropologist 97(4):801-803, 1995, Reviewed by Carolyn Martin Shaw
American Historical Review 100(2):563-564, 1995, Reviewed by Sara Berry
Economic Development and Cultural Change 45(1):227-230, 1996, Reviewed by Edith Turner
International Journal of African Historical Studies 28(2):404-406, 1995, Reviewed by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Journal of African History 36(3):516-518, 1995, Reviewed by Steven Feierman
Journal of Modern African Studies 34(4):728-730, 1996, Reviewed by James Pletcher
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1(4):871, 1995, Reviewed by Barry Sharpe
Earth Follies: Coming to Terms with the Global Environmental Crisis
Joni Seager, 1993
London and New York: Routledge
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86(2)350-352, 1996, Reviewed by Suzanne M. Michel and Sarah J. Halvorson
Economic Geography 69(4):428-432, 1993, Reviewed by Victoria S. Randlett
Gender and Society 9(2):256-257, 1995, Reviewed by Valerie J. Gunter
Journal of Women's History 7(2):164-175, 1995, Reviewed by Virginia Scharff
RFR/DRF 24(1/2):50, 1995, Reviewed by Heather Eaton
Women & Politics 18(1):104-109, Reviewed by Karen T. Litfin
Earthcare: Women and the Environment
Carolyn Merchant, 1997
London and New York: Routledge
Environmental Ethics 19:323-325, 1997, Reviewed by Sara Ebenreck
Ecofeminism
Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, 1993
London, Zed Books
Economic Geography 72(1):96-99, 1996, Reviewed by Catriona Sandilands
Women & Politics 18(1):104-109, 1997, Reviewed by Karen T. Litfin
Women's Studies International Forum 18(3):375-376, 1995, Reviewed by Patsy Hallen
Ecological Feminism
Karen J. Warren and Barbara Wells-Howe, Editors, 1994
London and New York: Routledge
Environment and Planning 30(3):568-569, 1998, Reviewed by C. Nash
Ecological Feminist Philosophies
Karen J. Warren, Editor, 1996
Bloominton, IN: Indiana University Press
RFR/DRF 25(3/4):109, 1997, Reviewed by Catriona Sandilands
Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England
Carolyn Merchant, 1989
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press
American Quarterly 43(2):302-309, 1991, Reviewed by Dana D. Nelson
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 81(3):367-369, 1991, Reviewed by Michael M. Bell
Journal of American Studies 25:296-297, 1991, Reviewed by Peter A. Coates
Journal of Women's History 7(2):164-175, 1991, Reviewed by Virginia Scharff
Technology and Culture 32(2):398-399, 1991, Reviewed by Theodore Steinberg
Feminist Perspectives on Sustainable Development
Wendy Harcourt, Editor, 1994
London: Zed Books
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88(2):338-339, 1998, Reviewed by Janet Henshall Momsen
Women & Politics 18(1):104-109, 1997, Reviewed by Karen T. Litfin
Gender, Environment, and Development in Kenya: A Grassroots Perspective
Barbara Thomas-Slayter and Dianne Rocheleau, 1995
Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Reinner Publishers
African Affairs 95(380):473, 1996, Reviewed by Lynne Brydon
Professional Geographer 49(2):265, 1997, Reviewed by Lucy Jarosz
Made from this Earth: American Women and Nature
Vera Norwood, 1993
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press
Journal of Women's History 7(2):164-175, 1995, Reviewed by Virginia Scharff
Rainforest Relations: Gender and Resource Use among the Mende of Gola: Sierra Leone
Melissa Leach, 1994
London Edinburgh University Press
African Affairs 95(378):137-139, 1996, Reviewed by Reginald Cline-Cole
Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development
Vandana Shiva, 1989
London: Zed Books
Geographical Journal 162(1):113, 1996, Reviewed by T.A.S. Bowyer-Bower
Journal of International Affairs 44(2):534-536, 1991, Reviewed by Bronwen Manby
The Politics of Water: Urban Protest, Gender, and Power in Monterrey, Mexico
Vivienne Bennett, 1995
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press
Comparative Political Studies 29(4):490-495, 1996, Reviewed by Diana Pallais
Journal of Latin American Studies 30(3):652-653, 1998, Reviewed by Jose Esteban Castro
Women, the Environment and Sustainable Development: Towards Theoretical Synthesis
Rosi Braidotti, Ewa Charkiewicz, Sabine Hausler, and Saskia Wieringa, Editors, 1994
London: Zed Books
Feminist Review 49:121-123, 1995, Reviewed by Melissa Leach
Women & Politics 18(1):104-109, 1997, Reviewed by Karen T. Litfin
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