WEGO-ITN publications 2018-2022

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS AND OUTPUTS

ESR-publications-and-outputs.pdf

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You can find the full list of WEGO-ITN articles in journals here (pdfs).

To see the full list of WEGO-ITN’s conference presentations, click on the respective years: 2019 – 2020 – 2021 – 2022

WEGO-ITN books can be seen here.

Forthcoming 2022-2023

2022

Books

2022-Book-Feminist-Methodologies.pdf

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Articles

Padmanabhan, M., Dinkelaker, S., Hoffmann, M., Laksmana, D., Maimunah, S., Rudakova, E., Still, E., Trotier, F., (2022), ‘Principles of Critical Development Studies: A Minifesto‘. Asien

Videos

Irene Leonardelli, Eunice Wangari, Nick Bourguignon, Siti Maimunah, Marlene Becerra, ‘Unheard voices: feminist political ecology and the invisibilized stories of social change‘, 2022

Multimedia

Elmhirst, R., Owen, A., Ekowati, D., Hoover, E. and Maimunah, S. (2019-2022), Extracting Us-website.

Interviews

Siti Maimunah, ‘Tubuh Tanah Air’, Inside Indonesia, 16 April 2022

2021

Books

Daniela Allocca, Nicola Capone, Gaia Del Giudice, Nina Ferrante, Ilenia Iengo, Giuseppe Orlandini, Roberto Sciarelli, Daniele Valisen (2021), “TRAME – Pratiche e saperi per un’ecologia politica situata“, Tame Edizione.

Articles

2021-Journal-Practices-of-Care-in-Times-of-COVID-19.pdf

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Covid-in-Rural-India-Algeria-and-Morocco.pdf

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Lyla Mehta, Wendy Harcourt (2021) “Beyond limits and scarcity: Feminist and decolonial contributions to degrowth“, Political Geography, 102411

Wendy Harcourt, Irene Leonardelli, Enid Still,  Anna Voss, “Degrowth and Feminist Political Ecology and Decoloniality: Some reflections by the Wellbeing Ecology Gender and cOmmunities (WEGO) innovation training network“, DEVISSUES, vol. 23, n. 2, November 2021.

Siti Maimunah “Krisis Tidak Direspon dengan Pemulihan Tapi Diperdagangkan”, Siej.or.id, November 2021, (in Indonesian).

Elia Apostolopoulou & Panagiota Kotsila (2021) “Community gardening in Hellinikon as a resistance struggle against neoliberal urbanism: spatial autogestion and the right to the city in post-crisis Athens”, Greece, Urban Geography. (Aknowledgment)

Marlene Gómez Becerra and Esteban Gómez Becerra (2021) “Resistencia a la pandemia en el contexto del estrés hídrico en la Ciudad de México”, Ecología Política #62. Cuadernos de debate internacional

Glynn T, Maimunah S. “Unearthing conscious intent in women’s everyday resistance to mining in Indonesia”. Ethnography. August 2021. doi:10.1177/14661381211039372

Siti Maimunah; Sarah Agustiorini (2021), ‘Durian und die Kolonialität der Macht (Teil I)‘, Südostasien

Siti Maimunah; Sarah Agustiorini (2021), ‘Durian und die Kolonialität der Macht (Teil II)‘, Südostasien

Ankita Shrestha (2021), ‘When honesty is not the best policy: the ethical dilemma of sharing research findings‘, Undisciplined Environment.

Wendy Harcourt, Irene Leonardelli, Enid Still and Anna Voss (2021), ‘Degrowth and Feminist Political Ecology and Decoloniality: Reflections from the WEGO network‘, Undisciplined Environment

Eunice Wangari, (2021), ‘Gender and climate change adaptation responses in Kenya“, Institute of Development Studies.

Enid Still (2021), ‘Gunda, Babe and Val Plumwood: on Communicative Status, Ethical Relations with the More-than-human and Being Food‘, Undisciplined Environment

Interviews

Siti Maimunah for Mongabay Indonesia, “COP26 Tengah Berlangsung, Bagaimana Langkah Indonesia?“, November 2021. (In Indonesian)

Siti Maimunah for IndoProgress TV, “Wawancara IndoProgress: Krisis Iklim di Indonesia”, November 2021. (In Indonesian). Wawancara IndoProgress: Krisis Iklim di Indonesia – YouTube, Wawancara IndoProgress: Krisis Iklim di Indonesia – IndoProgress | Podcast on Spotify, Sejarah Perubahan Iklim adalah Sejarah Sistem Kapitalis – IndoPROGRESS

Siti Maimunah, Salsabilla Khoirunnisa, “‘Kita Butuh Perubahan Sistem, Bukan Perubahan Iklim’ – Project Multatuli, projectmultatuli.org, November 2021.

Conference papers

Becerra, M., (2021) ‘Violencias y Desigualdades en El Trabajo Delhogar Remunerado: El Testimonio de Mi Abuela‘, Conferencia Interamericana de Seguridad Social

Videos

Marlene Gómez, Dian Ekowati, Enid Still, Anna Katharina Voss, John Akerman, “Lecture by Prof. Katherine Gibson on Feminist Political Ecology“, 22 Mar 2021.

Marlene Gómez, Dian Ekowati, Enid Still, Anna Katharina Voss, John Akerman, “Situated knowledges. What does Feminist Political Ecology mean to us?“, 22 Mar 2021.

Marlene Gómez, Dian Ekowati, Enid Still, Anna Katharina Voss, John Akerman, “Who cares? Debating multiple feminist perspectives on care“, 22 Mar 2021.

Marlene Gómez, Dian Ekowati, Enid Still, Anna Katharina Voss, John Akerman, “What is our research about? Presenting WEGO-ITN’s PhD projects“, 22 Mar 2021.

Andrea Nightingale, Karin Hueck, “6 Common Mistakes in Writing Academic Journal Articles“, 4 May 2021.

Andrea Nightingale, Karin Hueck, “7 Tips for Writing Academic Journal Articles“, 4 May 2021.

Feminist Political Ecology Dialogues on Rethinking Food 1-2 July 2021: https://www.digital.uni- passau.de/en/stories/2021/wego-itn-fpe-dialogues/ 

Podcasts

Karin Hueck, “The Feminist Political Ecology Podcast“, Spotify, Soundcloud, 2021  

 

Multimedia

Enid Still, Irene Leonardelli, Arianna Tozzi, Sneha Malani, “Troubling Waterscapes“, online exhibition.

2020

Books

Dupuis, C., Harcourt, W., and Gaybor Tobar, J (ongoing, ed.), Feminist methodologies – experience, and reflection in the series ‘Gender, Development and Social Change’, London: Palgrave.

Maimunah, S.‘Doing’ PhD research in the Global South: ethicalities of care, reciprocity and reflexivity, by Maimunah, S., Still, E., and Milora, C. (UEA) first draft research ethics sponsored by EADI.

Resurrección, B. P., & Elmhirst, R. (2020). Negotiating Gender Expertise in Environment and Development: Voices from Feminist Political Ecology (p. 272). Taylor & Francis. Available December 21, 2020: https://www.routledge.com/Negotiating-Gender-Expertise-inEnvironment-and-Development-Voices-from/Resurreccion-Elmhirst/p/book/9780815386124

By Routledge
Chapters in books

Nightingale, A. and Harcourt, W. , ‘Gender, nature, body’ for the Handbook on Critical Agrarian Studies.

Padmanabhan, M. , Affects affecting feminist family fieldwork – staying collaboration troubled in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In: Harcourt, W. ed. Feminist methodologies – experience, and reflection in the series ‘Gender, Development and Social Change’.

Sato, C. and Tufour, T.. Migrant women’s labour: sustaining livelihoods through diverse economic practices in Accra, Ghana. In: Gibson-Graham, J. K. and Dombroski, K. eds. The Handbook of Diverse Economies. Cheltenham: Elgar Publishing.

Articles

2020-Journal-Reflecting-on-the-ethics-of-PhD-research-in-the-Global-South.pdf

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Kotsila, P., Hörschelmann, K., Anguelovski, I., Sekulova, F., Lazova, Y., ‘Clashing temporalities of care and support as key determinants of transformatory and justice potentials in urban gardens’, Cities.

Elmhirst, R. (2020) Dimensions of Political Ecology Annual Conference, February 2020. University of Kentucky, USA. Opening address on Beyond Handbook Tyrannies: disciplining the practice of Feminist Political Ecology.

Yousefpour, R., Nakamura, N., & Matsumura, N. (2020). Forest Management Approaches for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: a Comparison Between Germany and Japan. Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 39(6), 635-653.

Maimunah, S., Uriep, M. (2020) “Business as usual” im Kohle-Revier“,  Südostasien, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/soa.2020.1.11407

Südostasien

Siti Maimunah and Sarah Agustiorini (2020), ‘From the commons to extractivism and back: The story of Mahakam River in Indonesia‘, Hypothesis

Enid Still, Sandeep Kumar, Irene Leonardelli and Arianna Tozzi (2020), ‘A pandemic of blindness: uneven experiences of rural communities under COVID-19 lockdown in India‘, Undisciplined Environment.

Gustavo García-López, Irene Leonardelli and Emanuele Fantini (2020), ‘Reimagining, remembering, and reclaiming water: From extractivism to commoning‘, Undisciplined Environment

Conference/Workshop papers

Voss, A. K., Harcourt, W., and de Nooijer, R , ‘Relations of care: ethical food production in Flevoland, The Netherlands and Tuscia, Italy’, paper to be presented at the Sixth Annual Conference of the World-Ecology Research Network, Bonn, Germany, 28-30 July 2020.

Maimunah, Siti (2020) Co presenter with Tracy Glynn (University of New Brunswick Canada) at European Association of Social Anthropologis (EASA) Conference, Lisboa 2020, “No One Can Say the Karonsi’e Dongi Were Not Here”: A Photovoice Study of Gendered Resistance to Mining in Indonesia, 22-26 July 2020. https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easa2020/paper/53165

Wendy Harcourt, Irene Leonardelli, Enid Still and Anna Voss (2021), ‘Degrowth and Feminist Political Ecology and Decoloniality: Some reflections by the Wellbeing Ecology Gender and cOmmunities (WEGO) innovation training network’.

Videos

Iengo, Ilenia (2020) Presentation of the Rural feminism collective “tutte giù per terra” for the Radio Iafue Perlaterra broadcast. https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=374882170519780&ref=watch_permalink

Kotsila, Panagiota (2020) Què es l’ecofeminisme? (in Spanish). Interview @ Diari de Barcelona.

Maimunah, Siti (2020) A presenter at Webinar of Business and Technology Institute of Ahmad Dahlan Jakarta: Fishersfolk and Farmer in COVID-19 Situation, Who Care? 16 May 2020. https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=292906565205431&ref=watch_permalink

Maimunah, Siti (2020) Participating in the Women Movement 2020 to Demand Justice for Women Raped in 1998 by reading a poem, in the minutes: 8.16 – 9. 42, 16 May 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qekFKjXiHY

Maimunah, Siti (2020) Co-reading a poem at Resister dialogue Cultural Night to celebrate Human Women Right Defender in South East Asia, 29 November 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhzQaLa0tds

Nakamura, Nanako (2020), ‘Multispecies commoning in aging rural Japan. A postcapitalist feminist political ecology’s perspective’, ‘Postcapitalist Feminist Approaches to Commons and Commoning in Rural India and Japan‘, Presentation at CERN online conference LiViAnA, November 2020.

Voss, Anna Katharina (2020) ‘Relations of Care. Ethics and Food Production in Europe’ by Rosa de Nooijer, Wendy Harcourt and myself presented at the Degrowth Vienna and Future For All conferences 2020.

Mainunah, Siti (2020), ‘Climate Controversies in SEA: Gender and Struggles over Coal in Indonesia‘, Stiftung Asienhaus.

Multimedia

Elmhirst, R., Owen, A., Ekowati, D., Hoover, E. and Maimunah, S. (2019-202s), Extracting Us-website.

Maimunah, S., Ekowati, D., Hoover, E., Owen. A. and Elmhirst, R. (2021), ‘Extracting Us – Extraction: Tracing the Veins’, Pollen PERC -Massey University.

Alice Owen, (2020), ‘Extracting Us’ Exhibition and Conversation Launches Online

Interviews

Iengo, Ilenia (2020) Interviewed Simona Lanzoni from Pangea Onlus and Stefania Prandi journalist, together with Anna Voss on the issue of violence against women in rural contexts for the radio programme Tutte giù per terra, part of the Radio Iafue Perlaterra broadcast: https://iafue.perlaterra.net/cassetta-attrezzi/tutte-giu-perterra-la-rubrica-delle-donne-contadine-3/

Iengo, Ilenia (2020) Interviewed Stefania Barca on the Care Income Campaign for the Non una di Meno radio programme. https://www.mixcloud.com/NAPOLINUDM/le-scappate-di-casa-31-maggio-6a-puntata/

2018-2019

Articles

Clement, F., Harcourt, W., Joshi, D., and Sato, C. 2019, ‘Feminist political ecologies of the commons and commoning’, International Journal of the Commons,vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–15, https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.18352/ijc.972/.

Elmhirst, R. 2018 ‘Ecologías políticas feministas: perspectivas situadas y abordajes emergentes [Feminist Political Ecologies – Situated Perspectives, Emerging Engagements] Ecologia Politica,No.54. Special Issue on Ecofeminism (“Ecofeminismos”), https://www.ecologiapolitica.info/?p=10162.

Nightingale, A. J., Lenaerts, L., Shrestha, A., Lama ‘Tsumpa’, P.N., Ojha, H.R. 2019, ‘The material politics of citizenship: struggles over resources, authority, and belonging, in the new Federal Republic of Nepal’. In:The special issue on Social and Political Transformation in Nepal, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies,vol. 42, no. 5, pp. 886-902, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2019.1639111.

Gerber, J.F. 2020, ‘Degrowth and critical agrarian studies’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol 47, issue 2, pp 235-264, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2019.1695601

Akbulut, B., Demaria, F. Gerber, J.F., Martinez-Alier, J. 2019, ‘Theoretical and political journeys between environmental justice and degrowth: what potential for an alliance?’ Ecological Economics.

Harcourt W. ‘Feminist political ecology practices of worlding: art, commoning and the politics of hope in the classroom’, International Journal of the Commons,vol. 13, no 1: 153–174, https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.18352/ijc.929/.

Sato, C., Alarcon, J. M.S. 2019, ‘Toward a postcapitalist feminist political ecology’s approach to the commons and commoning’, International Journal of the Commons,vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 36-61,https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.18352/ijc.933/.

Leonardelli, I. (2019), ‘Between drought and monsoon: the embodied hardship of seasonal work in Maharashtra’s sugar cane plantations‘, Entitle Blog. Alice Owen, Anna Voss, Constance Dupuis and Nick Bourguignon, (2019), ‘Summer School Bolsena: Notes from a Feminist Writing Retreat’, Undisciplined Environment

Books

Baudhardt, C. and Harcourt, W. (eds.) 2019, Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care. In Search of Economic Alternatives.Routledge, London. ISBN: 9781138123663.

towards a political economy of degrowth

Chertkovskaya, E., Paulsson, A. and Barca, S. (eds.) 2019, Towards a Political Economy of Regrowth. Rowman & Littlefield International. ISBN: 9781786608956

Nightingale, A.J. (ed.) 2019, Environment and Sustainability in a Globalising World. Routledge.  ISBN 9780765646446

Harcourt, W. and Nelson, I.R. (eds.) 2015, Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the ‘Green Economy. Zed Books ISBN 9781783600885

Book reviews

Gómez Becerra, M., Bauhardt, C. and Harcourt, W. (eds.) 2019 Feminist political ecology and the economics of care. In:Search of economic alternatives. Oxon/New York: Routledge, 2019. – 298 pp., ISBN: 978-1138123663. Germany: Published in the intern bulletin of the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, https://www.gender.hu-berlin.de/de/publikationen/gender-bulletin-broschueren/bulletin-info/info-59/bulletin-59-finale-gesamtdatei-deckblatt.pdf,pp.74-79.

Papers presented in conferences

Mehta, L. 2019, ‘Keynote speaker: Climate change, uncertainty and the city: challenges and opportunities for transdisciplinary co-production and transformation’, paper presented at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, 17 October 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJnIpPts-gs.

Dupuis, C., and Harcourt, W. 2019, ‘Care and the commons in troubling times: confronting whiteness’,paper presented at the European Conference on Politics and Gender, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 4-6 July 2019.

Mehta, L. 2019, ‘: Keynote speaker: The Political Ecology of climate change, uncertainty and transformation in marginal environments’, paper presented at the Political Ecology in Asia conference, Bangkok, Thailand, 11 October 2019, https://www.csds-chula.org/announcement/2019/9/25/full-agenda-political-ecology-in-asia-plural-knowledge-and-contested-development-in-a-more-than-human-world-bangkok-10-11-october-2019.

Sato, C. and Bergeron, S. 2019, ‘Rethinking the socio-ecological relations of care and commoning: engaging Feminist Political Ecology and Feminist Global Political Economy approaches to social reproduction’, paper presented at the European Conference of Politics and Gender, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 4-6 July 2019.

Still, E. 2019, ‘Beyond networks and chains, towards webs of relation: food, belonging and care in the city’, paper presented at the RC21 Delhi: Informal networks, urban coalitions and governance in South Asia, New Delhi, India, 18-22 September 2019.

Shrestha, A. 2019, ‘Nation without government: how is governing achieved in Nepal?’, paper presented at the sixth annual Governance at the Edge of the State Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark, 28-30 August 2019.

Bulletin

Sarah Agustio & Siti Maimunah, ‘Antara Kampret, Karst, Karbon dan Politik Gang’, Article on Mongabay

Siti Maimunah, ‘Menjaga Komuning, Praktik Kelola Air Komunal di Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat’, Article on Mongabay

 

The final training lab: a moment of reflection in an era of disruption

The final WEGO training lab,  attended in person by 20 people in The Hague in April, was a time to take stock of all that WEGO-ITN had achieved as well as to plan for the final months of WEGO-ITN as PhDs complete their thesis, and the network looked forward to what is to come.

The five days together allowed members of WEGO to reflect on the experience of being part of an ITN during an era of disruption – disruptions which are fast  becoming the ‘new normal’. The training was a moment to consolidate what WEGO as a network has learnt about how to do meaningful and care-full research as the world faces on-going climate crisis, future pandemics, wars, economic and political uncertainty and reversals on gains made. The time together in The Hague was an opportunity to move forward, soberly aware and thankful that the network’s years together provided tools that will guide our individual and collective resilience in the future.

As the training lab showed, WEGO has kept going despite disruptions. It has adapted and innovated – and as the many website posts testify, WEGO has produced a lot.  WEGO has built a network and made connections that have proved resilient. WEGO had to become experimental in it research approach and in the activities PhDs could do, proving to be flexible, dealing with individual, institutional and global uncertainties. WEGO found personal, academic and activist skills as it went virtual, and found ways to do research on-line, participating in many on-line dialogues, and reaching out to the people inside and outside the academe.

WEGO-ITN training lab in the Attic at ISS

The flow of the meeting

The training lab proved to be valuable space to harvest the lessons on how WEGO individually and collectively learnt over this period to find resilience. The meeting was a hybrid one, physically taking place in the WEGO coordinating Institute – the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. The plenaries took place in the attic and big Aula and some of the class rooms where people could join on-line. As well as plenary discussions and working groups there were the face to face discussions in the ISS Butterfly Bar, including the launch of Feminist Methodology book. WEGO also frequented different local venues to eat together enjoying the different cuisines that an international community city like the ISS and the surroundings in the centre of the Hague can provide.

Relaxing at Wendy’s house for an informal supper together

It was an intense few days together. For many of those who came to  The Hague, it was the first face to face meeting after two and more years of  Covid. Recognising that, participants tested each day and wore masks. Two PhDs and several mentors joined on-line for specific events and trainings. For those in The Hague it felt very special to be together. There were many walks and informal  conversations. There was a chance to discuss the research of each PhD and mentor (the summaries of which were shared ahead of time) but also time to discuss the strategies of how we coped emotionally and need to continue coping in this new normal of living with Covid and climate crisis.

As well as plenary discussions and workshops there was also material for thinking creatively – with crochet and drawing and painting as well as clay available for those who wanted to use their hands while thinking and discussing. As a research network it was instructive to think about how each of us navigated the sudden disruptions and changes to what an ITN ‘should’ be as all academic and activists meetings and research went on-line.  We discussed how we created new spaces such as on-line exhibitions, conferences, research meetings on-line, vlogging etc. We wondered if this was just about learning new tools or did it mean finding new ways to connect and do research? As a feminist network that spoke about care, did WEGO provide not only technological but also emotional support for ourselves and others to survive difficult times?  What kinds of relationships did WEGO build,  virtually, in-place – politically and culturally? How do we plan to give feedback to communities/ academic institutions/ allies/ EU administration?

WEGO training lab – also some creative engagements as people listen

The Lab Programme

The 5 day programme was planned in the preceding monthly on-line meetings  and via a shared google doc. The meeting reflected this collaborative process with a strong sense of inclusion and collective responsibility. Each day was designed to engage and focus on content and process, with space for many different kinds of conversations as well as time to enjoy each other’s company. Each day there was at least one (formal) social moment, most of them outside the ISS, including a trip down to the beach.

Map of where WEGO visited

Cheers!

Day one was devoted to getting to know each other again and how we have engaged as a network of FPE scholars. The idea was a slow start with time to talk and discuss what has happened over the last years. The ombudsperson created some ground rules which were shared and discussed. In the first session her guidelines were established about how to respect and hold space for a creative learning time together ‘living the talk’ of a feminist network that centres relations of care.

Day two focused on the chapters of the FPE Contours book – with detailed feedback on the draft by other authors and chance for authors to meet together to discuss the required changes. The book will be out end of the year. See the latest table of contents:

Day three featured network business – ethics, an executive meeting and a discussion around the Ombudperson report on how we learnt to work as a network ‘with care’.

Day four was on skills building for the PhDs to complete their PhD and meet EU requirements. There was a parallel hybrid supervisory meeting where mentors shared what they learnt from WEGO and what direction they wanted the future of the network to take.

The ISS staff shared the following tips and tricks on how to do a funding proposal for the PhDs. See:

Day five looked at where WEGO will go as a network – putting together a ‘wish list’ and further reflections on how to give back to communities.

Mentors and PhDs working together

 

WEGO-ITN future research and networking

The concluding session put together the ideas for where the network can expand which was further elaborated in the June retreat (link to web report).

The following ideas for research and networking have emerged from WEGO to date and it was proposed they can be developed over the next two years.

Collaborative teaching and writing
  • develop FPE on-line course/collective teaching curriculum/ teaching tools/ videos etc.
  • organise an annual encounters /writing retreats/ learning how write for different audiences
Researching further topics such as:
  • Feminism as transformation
    Feminist theory; Feminist and subaltern movements and Intersectional feminist ethics of care)
  • Alternatives to capitalism/mainstream development processes
    Degrowth; Decoloniality (indigenous cosmologies); Pluriverse (post development); Community economies and Commoning
  • Climate justice and critical agrarian studies
    Climate colonialism; extractivism; Gender and pastoralism; Politics of food and Farming and necropolitics
  • Body politics
    Embodiment, health and technologies; Ageing  and generations; crip politics and ableism; Sexual and reproductive justice; population and kinning
  • More-than-human relations
    Co-becoming with water; Earthcare; Learning otherwise and Queer ecologies
Engaging with communities:
  • organise dissemination workshops
  • do podcasts, radio shows
  • design FPE comics/zines/school modules
  • write stories for non-academic audiences
  • write timely policy briefs
  • translate FPE to and from different languages
  • plan subversive research actions (ie guerilla archeology)
Networking
  • support exchanges among WEGOinstitutions and partners for future research projects
  • consolidate relations with research partners already engaged with WEGO such as degrowth, Undisciplined Environments, CERN, POLLEN, Decolonial Cost Action etc.
  • join partners’ summer schools/ seminars/conferences/encounters/campaigns/
  • Expand to more places in the Global South (To date the network has institutional links in the Global North: The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, UK, Spain, Norway, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan – and Global South: Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, India, Nepal, Indonesia, Kenya, South Africa.

Time to say good-bye

Final WEGO-ITN event in Rome, “Wangari Maathai” workshop on feminism and ecology

Rome, 17 June 2022 – Pangea Foundation and WEGO-ITN organized the “Wangari Maathai” workshop in collaboration with the association A Sud.
The aim of the event was to create a space for women working in different fields linked to feminism and ecology to come together and exchange experiences, practices, knowledge and opinions.

Women activists, entrepreneurs, politicians, researchers met and created new nexuses between theories and practices, new definitions and possible actions. Around 40 women working on gender and the environment participated in the workshop (take a look at some of their bios below), some coming from different parts of Italy and abroad. Participants presented and positioned themselves and shared their definition of ecofeminism.

They shared how they stood with respect to their struggles, their territories and themselves. They searched for new words and meanings, exchanged practices and identified those in which they recognised themselves the most.

The workshop was an opportunity for all participants to gather, meet new people, find new energy and connections to act collectively for environmental and gender justice.

A preliminary look into the future

During the encounter, participants discussed the future of WEGO-ITN project and proposed a preliminary plan of action for the next two years. At the core, it was proposed that the network continued developing their FPE Dialogues, by expanding them to different spaces and undertaking activist research with people engaged in intersectional intergenerational environment justice in communities/ institutional arenas. The idea is to bring together their stories and strategies in a series of FPE Dialogues and to focus on local/global engagements expanding the spaces where WEGO-ITN engage, particularly in the global south..

List of participants

Ana Agostino
Dr. Ana Agostino is the Ombudsperson for Montevideo, Uruguay and lecturer in Development and Culture at the University CLAEH. She graduated as a Social Worker from the University of the Republic, Uruguay, did postgraduate studies at the University of Bremen, Germany, and has a PhD in Development Studies from the University of South Africa (UNISA). She was a research fellow at UNISA at the departments of Latin American Studies (2000) and Development Studies (2005-2006) and Guest Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany (2013).

Gulay Çaglar, Freie Universität Berlin
Gülay Çaglar is Professor for Gender and Diversity at the Otto-Suhr-Institute of Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin. Caglar studied political science and economics and received her PhD in political science in 2007 from the University of Kassel, where she also worked as a research associate. Her research interests include Critical Food Studies, Feminist International Political Economy, Transnational Feminisms and International Governance. In her current research she investigates how shifts in gendered food practices (production, consumption, food preparation) and food activism affect policy priorities in international food governance.

Khayaat Fakier, Cattedra “Price Claus”, ISS
From 1 September 2021 Dr Khayaat Fakier will hold the Prince Claus Chair (PCC) for a period of two years at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), part of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her thematic focus will be ‘Putting care at the center of equity and development’. The two-year research project will examine how to build an ethics of care not only for people, but also for the environment. The intent of the research will be to see in what ways care work is ‘the alternative’ value to growth. The analysis will specifically take into account local communities’ responses to the pandemic. Dr Fakier is a sociologist with a focus on research in women’s care for others and the environment. She is currently senior lecturer at Stellenbosch University and teaches modules on sociology of work, feminisms and women’s engagement in the South African economy. Dr Fakier’s research examines the value of social reproduction in a global society where the unpaid work and care conducted by women is not recognised. Her work has featured in renowned international journals such as Antipode: Journal of Radical Geography, the International Journal of Feminist Politics, and Capitalism Nature Socialism.

Serena Caroselli
Balia dal Collare is an activists’ group located in Rieti’s province. The group was founded in opposition to TSM2 (Terminillo Mountain Station). It is engaged in a dispute against the construction of new ski-lifts in the mountains of the municipalities of Leonessa Cantalice Micigliano e Vazia. The group has been working for years on the construction of new visions of mountain and rural areas through the valorisation of collective goods. Its activism and research practices concern the issues of mountains, water and energy autonomy, and environmental and local memories.

Giovanna Di Chiro, Swarthmore College (USA)
Giovanna Di Chiro is a Professor at Swarthmore College where she teaches courses on environmental justice theory, action research methods, and community sustainability. She is a faculty partner and policy advisor for Nuestras Raíces (our roots), a community organization that focuses on urban agriculture, food justice, and resiliency in the Puerto Rican/Latino community of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Di Chiro has published widely on the intersections of environmental science, policy, and activism addressing issues of human rights, food security, and environmental and climate justice.

Wendy Harcourt, Coordinator of the WEGO-ITN project 
Wendy Harcourt is Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at ISS-EUR in The Hague. She is currently Chair of the Institute Council, member of the Research Committee, CIRI Research Group Coordinator and Coordinator of the Marie Curie ITN ‘WEGO’ project. Prof. dr. Wendy Harcourt joined the ISS in November 2011 after 23 years at the Society for International Development, Rome as Editor of the journal Development and Director of Programmes. She has edited 10 books and her monograph: ‘Body Politics in Development: Critical Debates in Gender and Development’ published by Zed Books in 2009, received the 2010 Feminist Women Studies Association Book Prize. She is series editor of both the Palgrave Gender, Development and Social Change and the ISS-Routledge Series on Gender, Development and Sexuality, a member of the International Governing Council of the Society for International Development as well as actively involved in gender and development journal boards and civil society networks.

Sharmini Bisessar-Selvarajah, ombudsperson WEGO
Sharmini Bisessar-Selvarajah joined the ISS in November 1998. From 2013 until 2017, she was the research programme manager for the Political Ecology research group. In January 2018 she became the project officer for WEGO. In her over 20-year career at the ISS, she has worked with academic staff, PhD researchers, MA students, management, support colleagues and external relations. She is currently a member of the Institute Council of the ISS. She holds a Master’s degree in Children and Youth Studies, Master’s degree in Management and a professional certificate in total quality management. Her interest in anthropological research lies in children and young people, women, political ecology and sustainable development.

Salima Cure
Mother, Colombian anthropologist, master in Amazonian studies, doctor in anthropology. Collaborator of CEPAM – Centro de Estudios de Pensamiento Amazonico – of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. I have done research mainly in the Colombian Amazon, with indigenous peoples. I collaborated with the truth commission in Colombia to understand the dynamics of war in the Amazon, mainly on gender violence. I am interested in issues related to the plurality of the senses of peace and on community-based, black, ecological feminisms that place biocentric perspectives. With my family we lived in the Amazon, in the Brazilian northeast and currently in the Abruzzo’s mountains, where I’ve met the feminist collective “Fuori Genere” of which I am part.

 

Questions of age, generation and population: a look into FPE Dialogues – Netherlands

The Dutch edition of our Feminist Political Ecology Dialogues happened on May 17th 2022, in Wageningen, focusing on age, generation and population. Organized by and based on the interests and research of three WEGO PhDs candidates –  Constance Dupuis (ISS), Milja Fenger (ISS) and Nanako Nakamura (WU) – the event wanted to bring  different, but equally essential, discourses around life-making into the Feminist discussions about care, everyday practices, climate discussions, and social reproduction.

In part, it did so by showing the researcher’s cases and approaches, while evoking questions and discussions from the participants. The PhDs shared a similar standpoint of critical view on normativity, inspired by situated own notions and experiences. 

The first session, “Stories of Aging”, conducted by Constance and Nanako, centered on FPE’s intersectional thinking and the resistance against simple binary to see gendered and aging practices as relational construction of social differences. Both Nanako and Constance used socionatural understandings of the people/place intersection though the meanings presented in Japan and Uruguay.

The second session, “Exploring Controversies Around Population”, by Milja, paid attention to the everyday, to the embodied, to emotions. Milja focused on how FPE methodologies do not recognise the written text as the only or primary means of conducting knowledge production – and how FPE is able to be “performed” in multiple ways including through experimentation with art and creativity.

Despite sharing the understanding and FPE’s perspective, the three PhD researches are distinctive in terms of context, methodology, and research question. The multiplicity in FPE application contributes to diversifying the approach and the theoretical grounds of the Dialogues. 

Questions and reflections

Why and how questions of justice in later stages of life intersect with questions of environmental justice were briefly touched during the event. Both Nanako’s and Constance’s work suggested that aging concerns should feature in environmental justice research, with elderly being key actors in the struggles for environmental justice, as well as important knowledge holders. 

The Dutch edition laid out key concepts around human and non-human life. Environment can be diverse, beyond the natural environment, relationally shaped by a social-ecological political process. The discussions teased out some of those relational processes suggesting that any specific environment entails experiences of human and non-human interactions that make life continue in various ways. 

Photo by Sharmini Bissessar

With this notion in mind, WEGO-ITN PhDs can start looking at what makes a new way of living, unraveled not through relying on the popular notion of anti-aging or regeneration of the population, but through relating to different bodily experiences as an ethical approach (Nanako’s work).

In the second session, the FPE dialogue complicated questions by looking into the relationship between art and research and how methodologies from the former can be used in the latter. Milja Fender suggested that research on environmental justice would do well following the developments in wider academia around the use of creative methodologies in research, but that careful thought around what counts as research outputs are necessary.

The Dialogues were open to everyone interested in joining, so as to invite more people to conversations about FPE, and our interests around age and population. The organizers used mailing lists, personal contacts, and social media, e.g. Twitter and Facebook, to share the event announcement.

Final WEGO-ITN training lab starts today

After four years of intense work, discussions, pandemic-related challenges and exciting new experiences, WEGO-ITN early-stage researchers and mentors gather today for a week of in-peron and online meetings, workshops, trainings and celebrations.

PhDs students will have the opportunity to share the development of their work not only with their mentors, but with all the members of the network. There will be small group discussions on research:  what has worked so far, what were the joys and difficulties, how they developed their skills as a FPE Scholar, where to go from now on.

There will also be a number of hands-on sessions, mainly the ones presented by Prof. Andrea Nightingale on how to write up field work and how to write up research into an article, or by Prof. Rebecca Elmhirst on how to move from PhD to applied research or by Prof. Lyla Mehta on how to fund FPE research. The group will work on the writing and conceptualizing of book chapters and contributions to academic journals.

The programme also includes training sessions designed specifically to help PhDs in furthering their careers after the WEGO-ITN network, focused in communication, in how to find funding opportunities for their research, how to succeed in job interviews, how to use social media in your favor, among others.

We are looking forward to an exciting week ahead. And make sure to join us today, April 25th, for the official launch of the “Feminist Methodologies”- book.

What we can learn from women in grassroots environmental justice movements

Notes from “Women in Graassroots environmental justice movements”, CSW66 parallel event, organized by Pangea Foundation and WEGO-ITN, March 22nd, 2022.

Women from marginalized territories are often overlooked when speaking of women’s leadership, but they are often at the frontline of environmental justice movements. To share their powerful stories, Pangea Foundation and the EU funded Innovative Training Network WEGO – Well-being Ecology Gender and cOmmunity on feminist political ecology have organised an online parallel event in the context of the 66th Session of the United Nation Commission on the Status of Women. 

The webinar was introduced by Simona Lanzoni, Pangea Foundation’s vice-president, followed by a roundtable discussion moderated by Wendy Harcourt, Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, Netherlands, both members of the WEGO network. Speakers were from different backgrounds: researchers, activists, and farmers and they shared their story of activism or research with women grassroots movements for environmental and social justice. Ana Agostino, WEGO’s ombudsperson, from Uruguay, who has been ombudsperson of the city of Montevideo for five years, shared a story about Vecinas (female neighbours), a grassroot group of women of the city of Montevideo, concerned about what was happening not only to them personally, but to the community at large. Khayaat Fakier, Prince Claus Chair on Equity and Development 2021-3 at ISS, from South Africa, spoke about the Rural Women Assembly, a self-organizing movement of women farmers, spread across thirteen countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Miriam Corongiu, a farmer from the so-called Land of Fires, Campania, Italy, shared her experience as a farmer and activist in an environmentally degraded territory within the networks Citizenship and Community, Stop Biocide and the ecofeminist group Georgica. Seema Kulkarni, from India, national facilitation team member of MAKAAM – Forum for Rights of Women Farmers, spoke about women coming from farmer suicide households. Agustina Solera, Post Doc Prince Claus Chair on Equity and Development at ISS, from Argentina, shared her experience with the Mapuche Community in Patagonia, Argentina. Siti Maimuna, WEGO PhD student at the University of Passau, from Indonesia, told her experience with the local anti-mining movement, the women’s organization TKPT, working with women in communities affected by mining, the indigenous people’s organization OAT, led by indigenous women in the island of Mollo and other NGOs in Kalimantan Island, campaigning for water justice. 

Siti Maimuna’s story is a story of resistance, a story of women resisting extractivism. When mining companies arrived in Indonesia, women opposed the destruction of nature by occupying the territory with their own bodies. According to Siti Maimuna the human body is part of nature, therefore “opposing the destruction of nature is the same as refusing the destruction of the human body” and “the human body and the body of nature cannot be separated”. In Indonesian, “we call the human body Tubuh, and the nature or the territory where the body belongs is Tanah Air, Tanah means soil, and Air implies water. We call[ed] this the resistance to defend Tubuh-Tanah Air. Defending the bodies”. Women led the resistance against mining, activists organized demonstrations and created songs that were sung in every forest as a form of protest and resistance. Some of them decided to bury their feet in cement in protest mining companies and this act became a symbol of resistance. Eventually some companies left the area and since then, every two or three years, women organize a festival to celebrate the resistance and its success.

Women at the Ningkam Haumeni Festival, Indonesia

Agustina Solera’s experience refers to the time of her PhD research, in the Andean area of Patagonia, Argentina, with the Mapuche community and their schools in rural areas. She wanted to learn from the Mapuche’s ‘way of being in relation’, a way of being sustained on care and respect for the weave of life and its regeneration. When Agustina Solera got the opportunity to meet the population she learnt the fear, the stigma and the shame associated with being Mapuche. She recounted that “schools in Argentina played a main role in “civilizing” the surviving indigenous populations, erasing, denying or, in the best case, devaluing ancestral ways of being in relation (between humans and other-than-humans)”.  Now, instead, “rural schools have become places of belongings in which struggles for resistance and re-existence germinate; have become fertile spaces where people from different cultures encounter each other.” Here, we see that the struggle for the reconstitution of language, knowledge, history and culture silenced in the past are not separable from other struggles of environmental and social justice.

Rural Schools, Andean Patagonia, Argentina

Seema Kulkarni’s experience with MAKAAM and women farmers from suicide affected households in the state of Maharashtra, India is a story of agrarian distress, caused by the commercialisation of agriculture. The lobbying from the pesticide and the chemical industries led to an increase in the cost of cultivation and to a transition from a decentralized model to a corporate model of food production. All these factors contributed to an increase in farmers’ suicides, in particular in those states that were rapidly industrialising, and agriculture was increasingly seen in the commercial space.

The women of farmer suicide households are never visible. The state and its programs have not recognised them as workers and farmers in their own right. “Makaam story starts from there, politicizing this issue, centralizing the question of women farmers as farmers and not just as widows of these farmers,” said Seema Kulkarni. These women were dispossed of their rights, the majority of them never had access to the land that belonged to their family, and they were suffering also the stigma associated with their husbands’ suicide. 

The movement’s action that took place in the capital of the Maharashtra state got a lot of attention from policy makers. These women started to be seen as a political category that demanded attention and a different kind of policies. But there was more. Women were saying that during the Covid-19 pandemic the commercialisation of agriculture left them without food, and they wanted real change. They said no to chemical fertilizers and no to chemical pesticides because they didn’t want to be controlled by corporations, they wanted their knowledge and their understanding of their farms to be at the forefront. 

Miriam Corongiu’s story is of resistance and care from the so-called Land of Fires, Italy, a land where two million people live, characterized by toxic fires of illegally discharged waste, big polluting mega infrastructures (such as incinerators and gas power plants), and a phenomenon called ecomafia, organized crime connected to corrupt politicians and irresponsible managers. “It’s right here that agroecology is more necessary” stated Miriam Corongiu, “especially agroecology made by women, because of its attention to the regeneration of the relationship between nature and human beings, not only to the organic techniques to cultivate the land.” She is a member of several grassroots movements in Terra dei Fuochi, such as Stop Biocide and Citizenship and Community network, and part of an ecofeminist group of women, Georgica, all of them cultivating gardens, trying to fight for food sovereignty and agroecology.

Miriam Corongiu, Land of Fires, Campania, Italy

Khayaat Fakier shared the story of the Rural Women Assembly of South Africa, a country deeply affected by the consequences of climate change that make farming and the provision of healthy food and nutrition to children and communities extremely difficult. A group of women coming from a very arid land not far from Cape Town tried to engage with the local and national government in order to obtain access to land for the production of food, but they were quite unsuccessful. Then, thanks to the interaction with a group of fisherwomen through the Rural Women Assembly, they started aquaponics production of vegetables, a mode of production where plants are planted in water. The water is populated by fishes, which feed from the nutrients and the oxygen that the plants emit into the water and, at the same time, the fishes fertilize the water. Both groups of women benefited from the initiative. This is an example of how the idea and notion of agroecology isn’t separate from food production for the communities and “demonstrates a way in which women working in nature can build collaboration in order to not just improve their own conditions and the conditions of the community but to collectivize the struggle for access to production” said Khaayat Fakier. 

Ana Agostino’s story takes place in Montevideo, Uruguay, where the Vecinas, a group of local women, gave the impetus to an urban regeneration project in the city center. Women from the neighborhood brought to the attention of the ombudsperson of the city of Montevideo the problem of abandoned houses in the city center. This led to the creation of a program called Fincas Abandonadas, a project with the purpose of recovering abandoned deteriorated houses located in the central area of the city and restoring their social function. The municipality organized consultations with the local citizens and found three uses for these abandoned houses. First, dispersed housing cooperatives: houses owned collectively that in spite of being all in the same plot, were dispersed within the neighborhood; second, a Trans House, in response to the LGBTIQA+ community’s need to have a collective space for people who had someone in the process of gender change in their families. Third, a Half-way home, a secure home for people facing difficult situations, such as domestic violence, homelessness, having come out of different types of institutionalizations, etc. 

The story of the Vecinas of Montevideo and their complaints about abandoned houses “is a clear example of this continuum between the day-to-day life of women who inhabit their space with a sense of community, and how they help in the definition and implementation of policies that contribute towards a better life for their communities and for the environment,” said Ana Agostino. Moreover, this case demonstrates that care for the environment where women live in, is not limited to the rural space, but it also includes the urban. 

In conclusion, the speakers highlighted what emerged from the discussion and the stories shared during the webinar. Miriam Corongiu stressed the importance of care: care for the land, the community, loved ones and family; Khayaat Fakier the need of enhancing transnational solidarity, making connections within and across movements, between the rural and the urban spaces; Siti Maimuna stated that we have to learn how to reconnect with each other and nature, underlining that “knowledge restitution is very important and we have to start thinking about how the resistance and the struggle is experienced in our bodies.” Seema Kulkarni pointed out that “all of these stories are powerful stories saying that women are organizing, women are collectivizing, and they are looking at alternative ways of living, creating this world”. Ana Agostino concluded by saying that these stories were stories of women’s resistance, but “the resistance we are talking about is a creative resistance reconstituting a way of being in relation with others and to nature”.  

Register now for the “Despite Extractivism” online exhibition

The Despite Extractivism online exhibition assembles expressions of care, creativity and community from diverse sites of extraction and geographical contexts. Extractivism is characterised by the violent accumulation of resources, which often devastates and disrupts affected communities and the natural world. Collectively, the works in this exhibition illuminate and explore ways of questioning, subverting and resisting the logics and impacts of extractivism.Can artistic interventions help foster new sensibilities and solidarities with distanced extractive contexts? Can sites of extraction be a fertile ground for alternatives?

Accompanying the exhibition, our events series is an unfolding opportunity for collective learning and solidarity building with artists, activists, academics, communities and active audiences.

Between an online launch event and a closing event, three webinars will explore the stories, ideas and practises of the Despite Extractivism contributors and the communities they engage with. The events, featuring performances, presentations and discussions, focus in turn on expanding but intersecting scales, from the body to the global. Presenters and further information to be announced.

Register now and don’t miss it!

 

Check out the exhibition’s program

Welcome
Thursday 20th January |12-1.30pm (UK)
The curatorial collective will be joined by contributors to launch the website and open the exhibition to the public. Together we will take a guided journey through the online exhibition spaces, meet the artists and explore the themes and questions at the heart of the exhibition.

Embodiment
Thursday 27 January |12-1.30pm (UK)
Embodied, sensory or emotional experiences can evoke (new) sensibilities to extractive realities at a personal level. In this webinar we will explore how particular kinds of creative practises and strategies not only portray such experiences but also motivate embodied persistence or resistance , because of – or despite – extractivism.

Community
Thursday 3 February |12-1.30pm (UK)
Communities of place are often at the centre of stories about impacts and resistance to extractivism. When we ask what persists ‘despite extractivism’, the question also invites us to think about what we mean by ‘community’ in our stories.

Worlding
Thursday 10 February |12-1.30pm (UK)
Extractivism describes a singular and toxic way of being in and relating to the world. Each Despite Extractivism contribution invites us to relate and act ‘otherwise’ in different ways and through different registers. Working with the Zapatista definition of the pluriverse – ‘the world we want is a world in which many worlds fit’ – this webinar provides a common space to share stories and conversations across our differences.

Closing
Tuesday 8 March – International Women’s Day (Time TBA)
This event will bring together the collective learning of the exhibition and accompanying events. Rather than marking the end of the project, the event will consider what new ideas, connections or questions have unfolded and how we might cultivate these.

Thinking visually at the 8th Degrowth Conference

The 8th International Degrowth Conference that took place in The Hague between August 24th and 28th was an immersive and comprehensive event  around the central theme of “Caring Communities for Radical Change”. During the five days of the conference, debates focused on care and justice as a way of thinking of degrowth as a collective project promoting sustainable, decolonial, feminist and post-capitalist modes of flourishing.

WEGO-ITN was one of the organizers and our PhD worked for months to guarantee that it would run smoothly – you can read Anna Katharina Voss’ insights here and here, for more details on the organizations.

Panels, plenaries, movie screenings and art installations helped deepen the discussions and broaden the ways that informations got spread. WEGO-ITN added another layer into this visual thinking by inviting artist Carlotta Cataldi to produce an artistic representation of three of the plenaries.

Feminist Political Ecology Perspectives on Degrowth:

Decoloniality and Degrowth Plenary: Resonating and Listening:

And the Closing Plenary:

You can take a look on how Carlotta creates her work on video as well.

 

 

 

Caring in the time of Covid, in Indonesia

July 2021

This morning, like every morning in the past weeks (I can’t remember exactly how many), when I get my phone to view my WhatsApp messages, I prepare myself to see and hear death. My relatives’ death, my friend’s death, my friend’s families, my friend’s friend, my neighbours, my neighbours’ families. And the list continues.

My ears go numb from hearing ambulance’ sirens, announcement of neighbors’ death from nearby mosques. It feels numb now to listen to such stories of death, how they were well, healthy, kind people. How they struggled at the end of their lives to find the care they needed (not all, but many, mostly). How they were alone (without their loved ones) in their final days of struggle.

My eyes are exhausted from reading death, pain, suffering and precarity. The news is full of death. Crowdfunding is filled with stories of people losing jobs that can not afford food for their families. Twitter is flooded with sad, desperate updates. I want to close my eyes and stop listening.  But closing my eyes makes the demon even bigger and scarier.

My heart used to feel anger. But now I feel scared. It feels like days go by and I wait for my turn. What if I need medical care (which is almost impossible to get now)? What if I don’t make it? What would it feel like to leave my two young children forever?

My head is just full, no space left there.

I and I see people have done what they can do, we try to care more. But nothing we do is enough. People are still starving. People are still struggling. People are still in pain. And those in power do not seem to understand the weight of ordinary people in their everyday life. They live in their bubble.

The day I finished this draft, a friend passed away (Monday evening, 19 July 2021, Bogor, Indonesia). He was a kind, loving husband and father to his 4 years old son. Healthy, young, just started a small workshop that provided income for 5 employees and their families. I contacted him at the end of last month, June, when I heard that his wife was infected with Covid and needed to self-isolate, and he was fine back then. He asked me to pray for him and his family to make it through. A week or so ago I knew that he was admitted to the hospital because he was infected and had problems breathing. Then he got worse – but not too worse – judging from the video he showed in his WhatsApp status. I kept on sending him messages (I asked him not to reply). I sent prayers. Then he said to his wife that he got better, tested negative, but was still in the hospital to improve his health. Two days later, he departed.

I got angry with the government, with God, with him. What an untrusted ruler to let their people dying to breathe and survive. What a cruel God to take him away when he had so much to live on. I got angry at him for not fighting harder, how dare he leave his very young son behind. People are unfair, the world is unfair. Every day is really hard to navigate. I got so many questions in my head in these terribly difficult times. I can’t even start to understand.

 

24 Aug 2021

I find it hard to decide whether I should share it or keep it in my folder, contained safely – suppressing my emotions and not letting it show – as the world tells us to do – be strong, be resilient. But then, two days ago, a good friend’s husband passed away, after two weeks of struggle in the hospital. Their sons are similar in age with mine and used to be in the same class in their school. That’s how I met my friend (the wife). She offered me her friendship, despite our differences. This gives me a push to share these small notes, to grieve and to remember them.

 

16 Sept 2021

Thinking and acting Care with FPE

My journey with FPE (Feminist Polirical Ecology) tells me to be reflective, to listen to stories embodied by others, my own stories. María Puig de la Bellacasa said that care is a matter of innocence as well as non-innocence and situatedness of care. 

Covid changes the way of caring. I do not have many friends but meeting occasionally and especially when we are in difficult times has always been a feature of our relationship. Being close and looking into their eyes, listening to their lived struggles, are a way of caring that I found healing – or at least it helps me to survive another day (both as the recipient or giver of care). But then Covid rules say that being close to each other, and having physical contact, is the opposite of caring. We struggle to connect and sense through words in our WhatsApp and voices over the phone, as video calls seems too much during bad days.

And therefore we scramble trying to find ways to stay with the trouble (famously said by Donna Haraway) – do we have other options anyway? (As I read from Anna (Tsing, 2015) in her book in ruin of capitalism context): Continue or maintain life – forget repair. At that point when my friends even find it hard to breathe, to survive. I just want to continue life (make every day bearable) and leave repairing to another time and space.

“in the most general sense,  care is a species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we may live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web.”
Berenice Fisher and Joan C. Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring,” in Circles of Care, ed. Emily K. Abel and Margaret Nelson (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990) in (Tronto, 2015) emphasis added.

Caring is indeed not necessarily a feel-good thing, Bellacasa mentions this in her book Matters of care (Bellacasa, 2017). Caring means being emotionally drained for days when your good friend is ill and you see them pass away. Caring means that no matter how I feel shattered, I need to get up and be there for my young children.

Reciprocity is something in care that FPE scholars have attended to, and I find it in my everyday experience of care for my young children. The time I care for my young children (who are not able to take care of themselves yet), it is also the time I feel cared for. Maybe it is the kind of reciprocity that might be different with the conventional reciprocity “This is because reciprocity involves giving, receiving, and returning what has been given” (Mauss, 1974 in (Gómez Becerra & Muneri-Wangari, 2021)). My young children at this care relation do not necessarily return what I gave to them, but still their mere existence fuels my everyday life (in positive and negative sense) – me talking from the perspective of a mother from the Global South, with a partner attending to one school age child (online school for 1.5 year now) and one toddler. After all the pain of losing I experience, I might not be whole now if not for my children.

 

Readings that helped me with this piece:

Bellacasa, M. P. de la. (2017). Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. The University of Minnesota Press.

Gómez Becerra, M., & Muneri-Wangari, E. (2021). Practices of Care in Times of COVID-19. Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 3(June), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2021.648464

Tronto, J. C. (2015). Who Cares? How to Reshape a Democratic Politics (First). Cornell University Press.

Tsing, A. L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. In PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS (Vol. 1). Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004

 

Opening: Post-doctoral researcher in the field of Equity and Development

Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), is an internationally oriented university with a strong social focus in its education and research. Inspired by the dynamic and cosmopolitan city of Rotterdam, our scientists and students work in close collaboration with internal and external parties to solve global social challenges. Our mission is therefore “Creating positive societal impact”. Our academic education is intensive, active and application oriented. Our research increasingly takes place in multidisciplinary teams, which are strongly intertwined with international networks. With our research impact and thanks to the high quality of education, EUR ranks amongst the top European universities. Erasmian values ​​function as our internal compass and make Erasmus University recognizable to the outside world: engaged with society, world citizen, connecting, entrepreneurial and open-minded.  

The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) is a leading academic center for international development studies. While based in The Hague, the ISS is part of Erasmus University Rotterdam. ISS was established in 1952 as a post-graduate institute of policy-oriented critical social science and development-oriented research. ISS brings together a highly diverse international community of scholars and students from both the global South and the global North, on average originating from over 50 different countries. The Institute brings together people, ideas and insights in a multi-disciplinary setting which nurtures, fosters and promotes critical thinking and innovative research on fundamental social problems. The strong partnerships with organizations and individuals in developing countries make up a vibrant network where we co-create knowledge so that teaching and research remain socially relevant. Key to the ISS philosophy and practices is the wish to contribute to achieving social justice and equity on a global level.

NWO-WOTRO Science for Global Development is a cross-domain initiative within the Dutch Research Council (NWO), WOTRO Science for Global Development programmes, finances and facilitates research for inclusive global development. The WOTRO research programmes are aimed at providing knowledge and skills that contribute to sustainable solutions for social and ecological problems in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).

The Prince Claus Chair (PCC) of Equity and Development (2021-2023) seeks to employ a post-doctoral fellow for two years starting in January 2022 to be based at the ISS in The Hague, The Netherlands, with field work in South Africa or another country in the Global South. The post-doc researcher is partly funded (40%) by NWO-WOTRO Science for Global Development and 60% by ISS.

We are inviting applications for a post-doctoral fellow (fixed term, 2 years I FTE) who have attained a PhD in the last 5 years on a topic which would complement the research agenda of the PCC (2021-2023). See: https://www.iss.nl/en/media/2020-08-pcc-21-23-background-paper-website-docx

Duties:
  • Writing and publishing peer-reviewed publications emanating from the research of the PCC 2021-3
  • Conducting fieldwork with the PCC in South Africa and working closely with the PCC and host of the PCC at ISS in The Netherlands 
  • Strengthening and developing links with networks and organisations related to the work of the PCC 2021-3 in Europe and South Africa
  • Performing relevant PCC administrative and committee duties
Requirements:
  • PhD in Development Studies or related discipline with a focus on care, environmental justice and feminist methodology 
  • Ability to do sustained collaborative research 
  • Strong publication record in English 
  • Appropriate communication and language skills to engage with stakeholders at community, academic and policy levels 
  • Availability to live and work in The Hague, The Netherlands for dedicated periods
Recommendations:
  • Expertise in the fields of gender, community development and environmental justice;
  • Demonstrated interest in feminist environmental and social theory and feminist research methods
  • Existing relationship with community based and non-governmental organisations in Europe and South Africa
How to apply?

To apply, please send your application package to vacancypccpostdoc@iss.nl

Please make sure all required documents are combined in one PDF in the order mentioned below.

To be considered for the Postdoc positions, applicants must submit:

  • A motivation letter illustrating expertise in the fields of gender, community development and environmental justice; knowledge of feminist environmental and social theory and feminist research methods and community based organisations.
  • A CV in English (including the names of two referees)
  • A recent publication in English
Please submit your applications with all required documents in one pdf file to the Selection committee by email 

Deadline for submitting your application is 15 September 2021

Short-listed candidates will be interviewed online. The interviews are expected to take place early-mid October 2021. 

The International Institute of Social Studies is committed to building and sustaining a community based on inclusiveness, equity and diversity and believes this will contribute to our mission and vision of being the best institute in our field. ISS is an equal opportunities employer and encourages applications from candidates of all genders, ethnicities and nationalities.

Additional information

For further information regarding the position please also contact Wendy Harcourt harcourt@iss.nl 

Conditions of Employment

An internationally oriented and varied job in an enthusiastic team, with good working conditions in accordance with the Collective Labor Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO NU).

The start date of this position is as soon as possible, and you will be based at The International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. The successful candidate will be offered a temporary fulltime contract for two years, at the level of Post-doc with Erasmus University Rotterdam. 

In accordance with the conditions applied at Erasmus University Rotterdam as indicated in the Collective Labour Agreement (CAO NU) of the Dutch universities, the salary is dependent on the candidate’s experience and is set at a maximum of CAO NU scale 11 with a minimum of € 3.746, – and a maximum of € 5.127,- gross per month, on a fulltime basis. In addition, EUR pays an 8% holiday allowance and an end-of-year payment of 8.3% and offers excellent secondary benefits, like a very generous leave scheme. Furthermore, EUR is affiliated with ABP for the pension provision, and we offer partially paid parental leave. Employees can also use EUR facilities, such as the Erasmus sports center and the University library.

EUR offers a Dual Career Programme (DCP) to assist the life partners of new academic staff (on pay-roll) in finding employment in The Netherlands. The programme is offered in close cooperation with nearby universities of Delft and Leiden.