Register now for ‘Feminist political ecology and the economics of care’ at IAFFE

WEGO-ITN’s coordinator Prof. Dr. Wendy Harcourt will be speaking on June 17th at the 29th international conference of the International Association for Feminist Economists, in Quito, Ecuador. The preconference lecture – ‘Feminist political ecology and the economics of care’ – will be online, 16:00 (Quito time) and 23:00 (Amsterdam time).

Registration for English speaking public

Registration for Spanish-speaking public

About the lecture:

Caring for climate, caring for earth and caring for people should be at the centre of economic value, not at the margins. What is required is to build caring communities for change based on solidarity economies. Such economies would value care work in all areas of live with the creation of new job sectors and climate-friendly livelihoods which challenge the gendered composition of today’s neoliberal, androcentric and capitalocentric economy.

In her lecture, Professor Wendy Harcourt will discuss how different notions of care from feminist political ecology, feminist economy and feminist degrowth profoundly challenge the neoliberal capitalist focus on growth, the free market and technological efficiency and the inadequate lip service paid to notions of gender, empowerment and inclusion. 

“Women who inspire us”: a March 8th campaign

WEGO-ITN promoted a special Twitter campaign on International Women’s Day. Partners, researchers and activists were invited to share with us their list of inspiring women for March 8th 2021. The list included artists, professors, academics and local activists. Take a look:

 

 

 

 

 

New book: “Forces of Reproduction”

“In May 2011, Zé Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espirito Santo, nut collectors and members of the agroforestry project (Projeto Agro-Extractivista, PAE) of Praialta Piranheira in the Brazilian Amazon, were brutally murdered as a consequence of their engagement in protecting the forest from illegal logging and timber trafficking (Milanez, 2015). Making a living from a non-exploitative and regenerative relationship with the forest, and passionate about the defence of the rights of both Amazonia and its people, Maria and Zé Claudio’s deaths are among the number of earth defenders whose lives are being taken, year after year, for opposing the infinite expansion of global economic growth (Global Witness, 2017; Martínez-Alier, 2002). But their lives and labour belongto an even wider class, which Ariel Salleh (2010) has called the global meta-industrial labour class, made up of those less-than-humanized (racialized, feminized, dispossessed) subjects who reproduce humanity by taking care of the biophysical environment that makes life itself possible. I call them the forces of reproduction: they keep the world alive, yet their environmental agency goes largely unrecognized in mainstream narratives of that epoch of catastrophic earth-system changes that scientists have called the Anthropocene.”

This is how WEGO-ITN’s partner, Prof. Dr. Stefania Barca, begins her new book, “Forces of Reproduction“. She presented her publication today at an online seminar attended by 50 people, organised by Environmental Justice project.
“This book is a provocation. I want to challenge the so-called ‘master’s narrative’ on climate, the ‘green economy’ discourse, which is consistent with neoliberal practice and which sees nature as an investment opportunity”, said Prof. Barca at the seminar. “Zé Claudia and Maria are part of the non-hegemonic view. They are not victims of economic growth, they are agents of a counter-hegemonic power, in a ecofeminist sense.”

In the second part of the book, Prof. Barca also highlighted how the hegemonic view of the Anthropocene denied the possibility of existing different versions of modernity, by denying colonial relations, sex and gender relations, class relations and interspecies relations in their narratives.

You can see the whole seminar on Environmental Justice’s Youtube Channel.

New book: “Negotiating Gender Expertise in Environment and Development”

Our partner Prof. Dr. Rebecca Elmhirst, from the University of Brighton, together with Dr. Bernadette Resurrección, released a new book in December 2020: “Negotiating Gender Expertise in Environment and Development – Voices from Feminist Political Ecology”, by Routledge.

This book casts a light on the daily struggles and achievements of ‘gender experts’ working in environment and development organisations, where they are charged with advancing gender equality and social equity and aligning this with visions of sustainable development.

Developed through a series of conversations convened by the book’s editors with leading practitioners from research, advocacy and donor organisations, this text explores the ways gender professionals – specialists and experts, researchers, organizational focal points – deal with personal, power-laden realities associated with navigating gender in everyday practice. In turn, wider questions of epistemology and hierarchies of situated knowledges are examined, where gender analysis is brought into fields defined as largely techno-scientific, positivist and managerialist.

An open access version of this book is freely available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351175180 

Meeting and Caring with a group of feminist activists in Indonesia

Cancelled weddings, work challenges, homesickness, menstruation talks, loss of friends to Covid-19. Even with all the hardships, our enthusiasm at the Ruang Baca Puan Collective did not subside to promote activism and cultivate feminist literacy.

Since last year, I have initiated, along with local activists from Java, Kalimantan and Sumatra Islands, the establishment of Ruang Baca Puan Collective’s, as a reading room and literacy collaboration for Indonesian women. On January 23 2021, the Ruang Baca Puan Collective had its first meeting in 2021. We are composed by ten women of different ages, professions, religions, education, and from different island, who are united by activism and feminist literacy.  Unfortunately, two of the members were unable to join the meeting: Fiqoh, a very busy labour union leader, and Sartika, who had to deal with her early pregnancy. The rest, eight of us – four people in Samarinda and Bengalon, East Kalimantan province, one person in North Sumatra province, two other people in Jakarta, a WALHI / Friend of the Earth Indonesia activist and a high school student, and I, myself, in Passau, Germany. Together, we coordinate the Collective, including organising an ecofeminist Literacy Course which will start next month.  It seems the COVID-19 pandemic has created a more shortened space and time through online platforms. The boundaries separating global and local community become thinner and even borderless, as if the air or the landscape that is originally not limited by administration.

The online meeting began with collective “care”. We shared news on what we are going through, so that we are aware and supporting one another, if needed. I use the term ‘care’ not in the shallow meaning when it translates to ‘peduli’  in Indonesian language.  ‘Care’ here is in the context of ‘politics of care’, it is beyond the meaning of “peduli”, which sounds more superficial. It is ‘care’ in a more political sense, for instance, I became an activist because I care for myself (self-care), my community, and nature. 

The collective ‘care’ was a fun and emotional part, there were many stories told. One of the members said, “I haven’t had my period for 8 months.” She then reflected on why her body reacted this way. As it turned out, this was because of her lifestyle that has changed slovenly, irregular eating, eating junk food such as soft drinks, and lack of sleep. Recently, her gout has recurred so her family was worried and took her to the doctor. However, after she changed her lifestyle into a healthier one, her body began to make peace with herself. She was celebrating the return of her menstrual cycle. 

Image: Voni Novita

Another member said that she has grown a keen interest in growing plants since she has to work from home due to the pandemic. We’re shown pictures of her small yard that looks nice and green. She has become increasingly paranoid because COVID-19 is now close to her family’s circle. The collective members who live in East Kalimantan also feel the same way. Interestingly, there are many COVID-19 clusters around coal mining sites, where many people come and go. One of the company contractors of Kaltim Prima Coal, the largest coal mine in Indonesia, is known to have more than 1000 employees affected by COVID-19. Unfortunately, these clusters have not been widely discussed because they don’t want the money machines for the oligarchs to decrease. Despite the workers falling sick, the extraction machines don’t stop. 

The capitalist economic system has always found its way to increase profits in the midst of crisis. I remember the protest against Omnibus Law in Jakarta and around Indonesia in October – November last year which was ratified by the central Government and Parliament in times of pandemic. This law is a legal product  that will make it easier for mining companies to access permits, operate without proper Environmental  Impact Assessment, and even get free royalties. In the meantime, the local communities who live in the area where the natural resources are continuously extracted, have to suffer multiple times. The Mining Advocacy Network (JATAM) in its report last year stated that the local community had been hit by mines, and now were being hit  by a global pandemic.

Another interesting story shared in our meeting is about healing after a failed wedding. One member of the collective told us, “In the last two months my life has been so hard, it’s like a roller coaster ride,” she said. She failed to get married last year, and had to heal not only herself, but also her family. On important note, she and her partner consciously agreed to cancel the wedding even though the invitation had been spread out to the public. At least she managed to calm her family down and made peace with herself. I was glad to hear her story about finding a way to heal her mother by keeping her busy planting ornamental plants at home. “The key is buying her flower pots and providing her flower seeds,” she said. I was even amazed to hear that she decided to attend her cousin’s wedding, who got married for the second time. She has prepared herself to answer the stigma of unmarried women or women who failed to get married. She had expected the conversation to turn out to be, “Your cousin has been married twice, you even failed to have one.” I agree with her, a big smile is the most civilized way of responding to that sentence in a society that considers marriage as an obligation, the end of achievement, promotion to higher degree and noble path to heaven.

Even so, there was a member of the collective whose activities remained unbothered. Her name is Delvi. I met her in Central Kalimantan last year. At that time she was an activist for Women’s Solidarity. Now, she is in Brastagi, North Sumatra. Even when we met online, she was at her mother’s coffee shop in a busy traditional market in Brastagi. Every now and then she would stop the conversation because he had to serve the customers. “There are lots of talks in this coffee shop, from gossip to politics,” she said. Her relationship with customers is very close. “We can even ask for free vegetables or fruits, if their goods are kept in the shop,” she added.

I, in Germany, had a very different story. I am studying Feminist Political Ecology  with the chair of Comparative Development and  Cultural Studies at University of Passau. In the past week we’re required to wear N95 masks on public spaces – any kind of cloth mask is prohibited. All shops including restaurants are closed since before Christmas, and only raw food stores are open. The school’s teaching and learning system is conducted online, although some offices are still open, they are recommended to work from home. As predicted, the winter season has made it difficult for the number COVID-19 cases to fall. Europe is now entering the second wave of COVID-19, including Passau, a city where I live with a population of about 50 thousand people, located on the German-Austrian border.

Even though there are those who failed to get married, had their menstruation stopped for 8 months, unable to return to their hometowns, and lost their close friend because of COVID-19, our collective enthusiasm with the Ruang Baca Puan Collective  does not subside to promote activism and cultivate feminist literacy.

The Ruang Baca Puan Collective  was originally a reading group of Vandana Shiva’s works, which consisted of  environmental justice activist part of  the networking of TKPT, JATAM and JATAM East Kalimantan. Last year, we discussed Vandana Shiva’s books on ecofeminism, including a critique of the essentialization of women’s roles. This discussion then inspired us to share knowledge through the Women Reading Room which was made opened to young girls in summer 2020. There were around 119 participants who registered and only 20 people were selected to take online classes from June to September 2020. Some of the alumnae later joined the Ruang Baca Puan Collective and will organise the first feminist literacy course in the rain season January – May 2021. Last week, they held a book discussion of “Feminism for the 99%, A Manifesto”. We are proud to be able to do it collaboratively and collectively. 

 

What does the Ruang Baca Puan Collective do? Visit our website on www.pejuangtanahair.org   

Feminist advocacy and activism to end violence against women

WEGO mentor Simona Lanzoni, vice-president of our beneficiary Fondazione Pangea, continues to advocate tirelessly to bring an end to violence against women, be it in Italy or worldwide.

feminist advocacy and activism
Source: REAMA

In March 2019 Pangea launched the Italy-wide network REAMA – Rete per l’Empowerment e il Auto Mutuo Aiuto (REAMA network for empowerment, self-help and mutual aid) connecting more than 20 anti-violence centres and women’s shelters from North to South Italy. Together they provide legal, psychological, practical and emergency support for women and their children suffering domestic violence, but also first contact points to address situations of economic violence women are facing by their partners.  

feminist advocacy and activism
Source: REAMA

See here for an article featuring Simona on occasion of the REAMA network launch at the International Women’s House in Rome in March 2019. WEGO PhD candidate Anna Katharina Voss still remembers the powerful atmosphere in the room with all these engaged feminists coming together, many of whom had travelled from all over Italy to Rome and she had picked up at the train station earlier.

How to cultivate non-violent and care-full relationships based on self-determination and autonomy as pathways out of sexist and racist inequalities? These are also discussions taking place in the agroecological networks WEGO Anna, hosted at Pangea, is exploring for her research on the intersections of agroecology and feminism in Italy.

feminist advocacy and activism
feminist advocacy and activism
feminist advocacy and activism
feminist advocacy and activism

 Photos: Anna Katharina Voss

Workshops at assemblies of grassroot networks Reclaim the Fields, Fuorimercato and Genuino Clandestino in Italy in 2019.

Simona and Anna joined many other WEGOers and scholars from ISS at the inspiring summer retreat on feminist methodologies hosted by WEGO partner Punti di Vista in August 2019 (see ourblogon Undisciplined Environments).And in November 2019 Simona, Wendy, Nick, Ilenia and Anna marched together in Rome at the demonstration to stop violence against women – as we reported here, WEGO in action on the streets!

Next to continuously moving between the spheres of national and international policy making, territorial networking and providing hands-on support for women in need, Simona and Pangea also engage in promoting public awareness and cultural change. Lately Pangea participated at the Festa della Legalità 2019(an anti-mafia festival of legality and non-violence and annual prize award) and organised a photo exhibition entitled ‘Invisibility is not a superpower’ at the beginning of 2020.

In a coalition with 70 women organisations and NGO’s, in October 2019 Pangea co-wrote the Italian Universal Periodic Review of Women Rights in Italy (you can read the full report here) covering such pressing issues as violence against women, access to justice, work and welfare, sexual and reproductive rights, environmental disasters and women’s health, migration and trafficking, peace and disarmament. In all these fields there is much work to be done stiil, as Simona pointed out during her presentation of the report at the 4th Forum of Mediterranean Women Journalists.

In March 2020, Simona was meant to participate at the United Nation’s 64th session of the Commission on the Status of Women CSW64/Beijing+25 scheduled to take place in New York 25 years after the landmark Fourth World Conference of Women. Unfortunately the event got suspended until further notice due to the global coronavirus crisis. But this doesn’t prevent Simona from speaking up as she keeps featuring on the news (for example here on AskanewsHuffington PostDire and Corriere della Sera) and reflecting on the urgent issues of safeguarding women from any form of violence. Italy has been one of the worst-hit countries during the ongoing Covid-19 emergency. And as feminist activists from all over the world are warning that lockdown and quarantine increase the risk of domestic violence when being confined to the house with an abusive partner, Pangea and REAMA continue to give urgently needed support via their online contact points. The virus can’t stop the spreading of feminist solidarity!

Coronavirus and the much needed overcoming of capitalism

It is important to incorporate a new vision linked to the ethics of care, which opens the possibility of hoping for a better world, a world in which the community dimension becomes central, where care is the basis for connections, not only between human beings but also at the community level and with nature.

The arrival of the Coronavirus in Uruguay has put the population on alert and transformed daily life. The call to stay at home cannot be answered in the same way by all people, considering the activities they carry out but also because not everyone has the real possibility of confronting extreme situations given that the necessary social protection measures have not yet been put in place. What is clear is that, in line with what happened in other affected countries, either voluntarily, by measures suggested by the authorities or imposed by (more or less democratic) measures, the changes in daily life have been radical.

These changes in behaviour respond to the fact that the population perceives that there is an imminent danger. The virus is in circulation and the possibility of people getting sick, or in serious cases dying, is a reality. It is a concrete fact that impacts their lives, directly, or through the excess pressure that the epidemic places on the health system shared by the population. It is not a personal problem. It is a collective problem, a problem of humanity as a whole. There are causes (not entirely clear) and there are consequences. And the consequences are visible. Containing and transforming the situation requires public policies, systems that respond equitably, and an informed and acting society.

At least since the 1970s, when the first United Nations conference on Environment and Development was organised, humanity has had the necessary information and available data that establishes with absolute clarity that the dominant model of production and consumption, like the Coronavirus, sickens and kills, in addition to destroying nature and the diverse ecosystems, putting at risk not only the lives of the present but of future generations. For 50 years, the universal response has been to maintain the same model, dressing it up with statements and terms that are becoming fashionable as a denialist strategy to continue praising economic growth as an indispensable condition for the well-being of humanity. Every year, multiple conferences are organised and programmes are put in place to make production and consumption “sustainable”, to make the economy “green”, to have industry and technology develop “resilient” practices, and the list could go on citing buzzwords used to ensure the perpetuation of a destructive, unjust, discriminatory, exclusive model that fundamentally puts at risk the continuity of Life in its many manifestations.

While the Coronavirus multiplies exponentially and we know the number of victims daily, capitalism has produced unequal societies where millions die daily from multiple causes: hunger, preventable diseases, violence, environmental pollution, destruction of ecosystems, etc. But in addition, capitalism has generated individualism as a central phenomenon, which determines total indifference to the suffering of “the others”, added to the centrality of consumption almost as a way of existence. In recent decades, countless books and articles have been written, innumerable courses have been organised at  university and popular levels, networks have been created throughout the world promoting lifestyles that not only call into question the capitalist model but, and fundamentally, they summon to recognise that there are other ways of being and inhabiting our common planet. Feminist and environmental movements, as well as those of solidarity / community economies, have systematically proposed the necessary consideration of care, reciprocity and overcoming extractivism in relation to nature as central processes to achieve truly sustainable, egalitarian and just societies.

When the pandemic has passed and all of us recognise that we live in another world (in which thousands will no longer be, not only the direct victims of the pandemic, but those who will have succumb to other diseases because of non-existent or weak public health systems which collapsed in the face of the crisis, millions who will have lost their livelihoods and did not have protection systems that could guarantee their right to life and well-being, depressed socioeconomic and environmental indicators and without the resources to reverse them) the ways of being in the world and the public policies that enable them will play a central role in the prevention of new crises. That is why it is important, now, to put on the table knowledge, visions and practices that state that the virus is not the anomaly or the monster, but rather reveals the monstrosity of the dominant model1.

CENTRALITY OF LIFE

In this other world, care must be more important than the logic of profit, putting Life at the centre and not money. Care is an intrinsic function of “the social”, which has historically been associated with the feminine and that can sometimes become a burden linked to gender mandates, devalue and become invisible in its contribution and relevance. It is important to incorporate a new vision linked to the ethics of care, which opens the possibility of hoping for a better world, a world in which the community dimension becomes central, where care is the basis for connections, not only between human beings but also at the community level and with nature. Care helps to contribute to more sustainable livelihoods, to the extent that satisfying needs, rather than being exclusively linked to markets (and economic growth). is mainly understood through reciprocity and solidarity. The State is not oblivious to these processes, but quite the contrary, plays a central role in guaranteeing its solidification for the population as a whole, distancing itself from the neoliberal logic that makes each person responsible for their life and that of their family in open opposition to the ontological reality that defines us as human beings – that is, our relational and community nature. The current Coronavirus pandemic is also an excellent example of the impossibility of individual solutions, showing that the only way out of the crisis is caring, for ourselves and for others, that each person who needs attention is intertwined with their most immediate environment, with their community and with the citizenry as a whole, and that the State has the fundamental role of providing resources and distributing them with a criterion of justice and social equality.

But caring goes far beyond us, people. The capitalist mode of production assumes that nature is only the source of resources to satisfy supposedly infinite needs, and that therefore the supply of goods and services must be unlimited in order to guarantee permanent economic growth that generates jobs, consumption, exploitation of nature, new products, new jobs, consumption. Above all, this cycle is predicated on permanent profit, which, invested in speculative markets, allows enrichment without social responsibility and without offering any type of benefits or assistance to the majority of the population. The population, with some luck, will be able to access some of those jobs, consume, that consumption continues to depend on the exploitation of nature and continues to contribute to the enrichment of the famous 1% that concentrates 44% of the world’s wealth2. This is the monstrosity of the system, which lays waste to rivers, species, plants, soils, animals; that creates strata and classes condemning broad sectors of the population to situations of exploitation due to their sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, capacity, place, age, ethnicity; that puts at risk the very continuity of Life without offering well-being or care; and that favours the emergence of diseases that one day make us realise that all the accumulated assets do not even serve to begin to respond to the challenge.

 NATURE AND INTERDEPENDENCE

From a feminist and ethics of care perspective, it is possible to affirm that the dominant vision of nature in capitalism does not recognise its intrinsic value and its interrelation with the diversity of Life, but merely positions it as a provider for human beings, and this is what has justified unsustainable uses and over-exploitation, with known consequences in terms of climate change, pollution and others. The challenge is precisely to recognise the interdependence, the necessary limits in its use, the existence of nature’s own needs that require respect for cycles, protection, care and proper handling, regeneration and restoration of certain processes. The extractivist logic that guides the exploitation of nature is the opposite of the logic of care, and just as it happens with people and societies, it not only harms the subject of those exploitative actions (in this case nature) but the interdependent system as a whole. The stories that come from different parts of the world regarding skies that turn blue again, improvements in the quality of water and air as a result of the decrease in economic activity, are indications that changes in the way of production have a fast impact in nature.

These changes, however, and as we saw at the beginning, respond to the emergency and largely to fear. Long-term changes require a new understanding of the meaning of life and well-being. From the centrality of the economy to the centrality of Life. From self-identification as consumers to citizens. From nationals of a country to inhabitants of a shared planet. From recipients of public policies to co-makers of a reality that celebrates diversity and thrives on plural and diverse knowledge. There will be those who argue that it is a romantic approach. But it is in reciprocal care, within the framework of states that guarantee egalitarian and social protection policies, with programmes that allow overcoming inequalities and discrimination, and with productive practices that recognise and respect interdependence with nature, that we are playing the chances of overcoming this crisis today and forward.

Montevideo, March 2020

This article was originally published in Brecha, Montevideo, Uruguay: https://brecha.com.uy/coronavirus-y-la-necesaria-superacion-del-capitalismo/

1. Bram Ieven and Jan Overwijk,  “Dit is de normale orde”, De Groene Amsterdammer, 18 March 2020, https://www.groene.nl/artikel/dit-is-de-normale-orde
2.  Global Inequality, https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/#global-wealth-inequality

WEGO at POLLEN 20: ecologies of care

WEGO is happy to announce that our proposals for two ‘Paper Session’ entitled ‘Ecologies of Care I – Politics and ethics of care’  and Ecologies of Care II – Care-full political ecology – with whom, with what and where do we care?’ has been accepted for inclusion in the POLLEN 20 conference. 

The Third Biennial Conference of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN 20) will take place from 24 – 26 June 2020 in Brighton, UK.

The conference theme is Contested Natures: Power, Possibility, Prefiguration

Organiser Name and Contacts:
Wendy Harcourt: harcourt@iss.nl; Enid Still: Enid.Still@uni-passau.de; Jaime Landinez Aceros: jlandinez@stanford.edu and Constance Dupuis: dupuis@iss.nl

Title: Ecologies of Care

Key words: care, gender, feminism, more-than-human, ethics

Session abstract

Recent debates on the politics and ethics of care brings together the politics of gendered bodies and labour, the messy ethics of more-than-human interdependencies, and questions of difference and belonging in alternative ways of being-in-the-world (Harcourt 2017; Puig de la Bellacasa 2017; Singh 2017). These perspectives tease out the invisibility of ‘caring ethics’ and what care means and does in different contexts and different socio-natural entanglements, exploring how practices of care can animate, complicate or make visible such entanglements. These discussions are infused with hope for an alternative, more ecologically sane society but are also critical of the depoliticisation of care as inherently ‘good’ or naturalised. The non-innocence of care and its uneven nature within more-than-human interdependencies are therefore central to these debates (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017). This panel organised by Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity – Innovative Training Network (WEGO-ITN) will try to build upon these discussions, expanding notions of care beyond human subjectivities (and yet rooting it in anthropocentric times), through exploring how care emerges in landscapes of extractivist ruins.

Core themes running through the panel will be: what caring practices are emerging from sites of socio-ecological transformation? How are notions and practices of care complicated by their non-innocence in particular sites and contexts? How are more-than-human interdependencies are animated when practices of care take place in extractivist ruins? The panel will look towards how we can repair our world as we seek to ‘interweave’ our bodies, ourselves and our socio-natures in a ‘complex, life-sustaining web’ (Tronto 2017) as we seek to locate some of the many ‘care-ful’ forms of political ecology needed to ‘reappropriate, reconstruct and reinvent our personal and political lifeworlds’ (Escobar and Harcourt 2005). The two panels will look at two main themes: Care in Extractivist Ruins and Care-ful political ecology – with whom, with what and where do we care? 

References 

  • Escobar, Arturo and Wendy Harcourt 2005 “Introduction”, Women and the Politics of Place London: Zed Books. 1-19.
  • Harcourt, Wendy. 2017. “Gender and Sustainable Livelihoods: Linking Gendered Experiences of Environment , Community and Self.” Agriculture and Human Values34(4):1007–19.
  • Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. 2017. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Singh, Neera. 2017. “Becoming a Commoner: The Commons as Sites for Affective Socio-Nature Encounters and Co- Becomings.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 17(4):751–76.
  • Tronto, Joan. 2017. “There is an alternative: homines curans and the limits of neoliberalism”. International Journal of Care and Caring 1: 27-43.

Part I‘Ecologies of Care I – Politics and ethics of care’ 

The first panel ‘Care in Extractivist Ruins’ will focus on how more-than-human interdependencies in sites of extraction are illuminated through practices of care and how such caring practices can become forms of resistance or coping. Some key questions the panel will address are:

  1. How can caring socio-natural entanglements resist, undercut, refuse logics of colonialism, militarization, and capitalism?
  2. When and how does extractivism extract, appropriate or exploit care (human, non-human) in local and global sites of climate crisis? e.g. through CSR campaigns that legitimise the extractive regime
  3. What practices of care emerge in the ruins of extractive landscapes in the global South and how do they contest assumptions around wellbeing?

Panel Participants

Each presentation will have 10 minutes this will be followed by buzz groups among the participants and a Q and A. The discussant taking into account the discussion 15 minutes before  the end of the session will ask one question to each panelist who will respond.

Collective Care in Times of Agrarian Crisis by Enid Still (UK), Universität Passau, Germany

Abstract: The agrarian crisis in India has been depicted as one of indebtedness and financial burden, driving thousands of farmers to suicide. This picture is of course inherently partial. The experiences of women farmers and the widows of farmers who have committed suicide trouble the perception of suicides as only an economic ‘problem.’ They reveal a much deeper social malaise, rooted in a politics of land, patriarchy and caste, re-produced by regimes of exploitation and dependency, where the extraction of value from the soil and the extraction of bodies from agrarian communities are deeply intertwined. The perspective of women farmers and farm widows on the crisis have been silenced and invisibilised, their ability to navigate these times thus curtailed, due to both cultural norms that stigmatise widows in multi-layered ways and narrow socio-political categories that define farmers as landowners, predominantly therefore upper-caste men. Through practices of collective care however, the struggles of rural women in India are finding a voice and demonstrating the possibilities for healing degraded lands and a traumatised agrarian community.  

Poisoned Landscapes: Stories of Soil Care Amidst War Times by Jaime Landinez-Aceros (Colombia), Stanford University, USA

Beyond Economy: Exploring Care within the Everyday Lives of Independent Oil Palm Smallholders in West Kalimantan, Indonesia by Dian Ekowati (Indonesia), Brighton University, UK

Siti Maimunah (Indonesia), Universität Passau, Germany

Facilitator and Discussant: Giovanna DiChiro, Swathmore College, USA,  gdichir2@swarthmore.edu ‎

Part II: ‘Ecologies of Care II – Care-full political ecology – with whom, with what and where do we care?’   

 The second panel on ‘Care-full political ecology – with whom, with what and where do we care?’ will explore from feminist, interdisciplinary and intergenerational perspective ‘care-full political ecology’ describing different acts of looking after, protecting and providing for the needs of human and non-human others. The papers will look at how care operates in the  co-production of genders, natures and bodies as we move towards emancipatory politics of life-worlds. 

Panel Participants

Each presentation will have 10 minutes this will be followed by buzz groups among the participants and a Q and A. The discussant taking into account the discussion 15 minutes before  the end of the session will ask one question to each panellist who will respond.

Enfleshing Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention On Protecting The Human Rights Of Older Persons by Ana Agostino (Uruguay), Montevideo, Uruguay and Constance Dupuis (Canada), International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Hague, The Netherlands

Caring for self and nature: Women and Ageing in Rural Japan by Nanako Nakamura (Japan) and Chizu Sato (Japan), University of Wageningen, The Netherlands 

Abstract:

Flower farmers and water flows: caring for and theorizing about troubled socionatures in Maharashtra, India by Irene Leonardelli (Italy), IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands

Abstract: The paper will look at the everyday practices of care, reciprocity, sharing, solidarity and equity  between farmers and natures among flower growers in Maharashtra. Inspired by feminist political ecology studies, I unpack the multiple socionatural relations, practices, experiences and embodied emotions of women farmers growing flowers using waste water coming from nearby industrial areas. By looking at flowers as a product of socionatural interaction (or women farmers-water interaction), I unfold the tensions farmers experience in the everyday in relation to taking care of themselves, of their community and of the nature they inhabit. I develop my narrative as a way  to theorize about and care for more sustainable and equitable socio-natural presents (and futures).   

Facilitator and Discussant: Yvonne Underhill-Sem, University of Auckland, New Zealand, y.underhill-sem@auckland.ac.nz

More information on the WEGO sessions will follow

Living well-together: feminism, degrowth and the ‘good life’

The WEGO proposal on ‘Living well-together: feminism, degrowth and the ‘good life’ has been accepted for the 7th International Degrowth and 16th ISEE Joint Conference: Building Alternative Livelihoods in times of ecological and political crisis taking place from 1 – 5 September 2020 at The University of Manchester, UK.
https://tinyurl.com/Degrowth2020Mcr.

Convenors: Wendy Harcourt, Panagiota Kotsila and members of EU-WEGO-ITN Network

Presenters anticipated: Irene Leonardelli; Chizu SatoConstance DupuisMartina PadmanabhanEnid Still; Gülay Caglar; Marlene Gomez; Panagiota Kotsila; Ilenia Iengo; Alice Owen; Stefania Barca; Seema KulkarniSabrina Aguiari;  Rebecca Elmhirst and Wendy Harcourt

The subtheme will look at how diverse communities respond to economic and ecological changes by organizing for well-being in efforts to move out of situations of discrimination, oppression and inequality. The focus will be on how caste, race, age, gender, sexuality and class relations can be reshaped in emerging practices of commoning, community economies and how communities can generate successful strategies across and with difference of ‘living well together’. The subtheme will bring together concepts of queer, trans and feminist political ecology, decoloniality, and post development in an open debate on how to interrogate hierarchies as we think about living well together building communities for well-being based on emancipation and sustainability.

Undisciplined Environments goes live

Undisciplined Environments – a platform for political ecology research and activism – has launched today, 1 October 2019

This novel effort is a collaboration between the ENTITLE Collective and the WEGO project, as well as other transnational networks – like the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN).

Undisciplined Environments (UE) aims to become an influential crossroads for activists, researchers, journalists and anyone interested in the mutual imbrications of power, society, culture and ecology. Our commitment is to establish UE as a compelling virtual space to share ideas, stories, concepts, methods and strategies for the elaboration of the knowledges and practices needed to build more emancipatory socionatural worlds.

WEGO members Panagiota KotsilaIlenia Iengo, Irene Leonardelli, Wendy Harcourt and Stefania Barca are on the editorial collective.