Table Of ContentEdited by Lara Stevens, Peta Tait
and Denise Varney
FEMINIST
ECOLOGIES
Changing Environments in the Anthropocene
Feminist Ecologies
Lara Stevens • Peta Tait • Denise Varney
Editors
Feminist Ecologies
Changing Environments in the
Anthropocene
Editors
Lara Stevens Peta Tait
University of Melbourne LaTrobe University
Melbourne, VIC, Australia Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Denise Varney
University of Melbourne
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
ISBN 978-3-319-64384-7 ISBN 978-3-319-64385-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64385-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950845
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to the celebrated scholars Freya Mathews, Kate Rigby,
Deborah Bird Rose and Ariel Salleh for the opportunity to republish
their ecofeminist essays and to their original publishers: Environmental
Ethics, the Trumpeter, Arena Journal, and the Native Title Research Unit.
We are grateful to Christine Bryan at the Australian National University
Archives Program and Noel Butlin Archives Centre for her assistance
with a previously unpublished paper by the late Val Plumwood.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to Jill Orr and r e a and
collaborators for permission to include images of their performances. We
are grateful to Deb Hart and Liz Conor for their generous sharing of the
Climate Guardians’ experiences and to Maggie Miles for allowing us to
reprint her photograph of the Climate Guardians at the Eiffel Tower in
2015.
Lara is very grateful for the support of Gill Stevens, Peter Stevens,
Estelle Paterson, Lachie Paterson and Eddie Paterson. Peta sincerely
thanks Annie McGuigan for her ongoing love and support, and she gives
a big thank you to the wonderful members of the New Ecological
Discourses reading group. Denise thanks Vic Marles, CEO of the Trust
for Nature, an extraordinarily progressive organization, which holds the
annual International Women’s Day Breakfast in Melbourne that brings
feminism and environmentalism together in such a dynamic and inspir-
ing way. Many thanks also to friend and prominent Australian
v
vi Acknowledgements
environmental scientist Geoff Westcott from Deakin University for con-
versations about the science of climate change. Finally we thank the
Australia Centre at the University of Melbourne, especially Ken Gelder
and Amanda Morris, for unstinting support in the long-term develop-
ment and outcomes of this project.
The articles and papers in Part I: Foundational Ecofeminisms were
originally published as:
Salleh, Ariel. 1984. Deeper Than Deep Ecology: The Eco-Feminist
Connection. Environmental Ethics 6 (Winter): 339–345.
Mathews, Freya. 1994. Relating to Nature: Deep Ecology or Ecofeminism?
The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy 11 (4) (Fall): 159–166.
Rigby, Kate. 1998. Women and Nature Revisited: Ecofeminist
Reconfigurations of an Old Association, Arena Journal 12: 143–169.
Rose, Deborah Bird. 1995. Women and Land Claims. In Land, Rights,
Laws: Issues of Native Title, 1–8. Canberra: Native Title Research Unit,
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Plumwood, Val. 2003. Ecofeminist Analysis and the Culture of Ecological
Denial. Unpublished conference paper from the World Life-C ulture
Forum: The Transformation of the 21st Century and Life-Culture
Sallim held in Suwon, South Korea. Made available by the Butlin
Archives, Australian National University Library.
Contents
1 Introduction: ‘Street-Fighters and Philosophers’:
Traversing Ecofeminisms 1
Lara Stevens, Peta Tait, and Denise Varney
Part I: Foundational Ecofeminisms 23
2 Deeper than Deep Ecology: The Eco-Feminist
Connection 25
Ariel Salleh
3 Relating to Nature: Deep Ecology or Ecofeminism? 35
Freya Mathews
4 Women and Nature Revisited: Ecofeminist
Reconfigurations of an Old Association 57
Kate Rigby
5 Women and Land Claims 83
Deborah Bird Rose
vii
viii Contents
6 Ecofeminist Analysis and the Culture of
Ecological Denial 97
Val Plumwood
Part II: Ecofeminist Currents 113
7 From The Female Eunuch to White Beech:
Germaine Greer and Ecological Feminism 115
Lara Stevens
8 Climate Guardian Angels: Feminist Ecology
and the Activist Tradition 135
Denise Varney
9 Thinking–Feminism–Place: Situating the 1980s
Australian Women’s Peace Camps 155
Alison Bartlett
10 Performing Ghosts, Emotion and Sensory
Environments 175
Peta Tait
11 You Are on Indigenous Land: Ecofeminism,
Indigenous Peoples and Land Justice 193
Ambelin Kwaymullina
12 Feminist Ecologies in Religious Interpretation:
Australian Influences 209
Anne Elvey
Conten ts ix
13 Australian Women in Mining: Still a Harsh
Reality 231
Maryse Helbert
14 ‘In the Interest of All Mankind’: Women and
the Environmental Protection of Antarctica 247
Emma Shortis
Index 263
1
Introduction: ‘Street-Fighters
and Philosophers’: Traversing
Ecofeminisms
Lara Stevens, Peta Tait, and Denise Varney
Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene emerges at
the intersection of two progressive twentieth-century political move-
ments: one concerned with the fight for women’s rights and the other
with ecological sustainability within the environment. The book cele-
brates the ongoing philosophical and activist advocacy of feminist ecolo-
gies as it traces the ecofeminist movement’s roots and alignment with
recent social, cultural and artistic developments. It proposes the broad
term ‘feminist ecologies’ to capture the diversity of the movement over
the last 45 years and the range of possible ways in which feminist and
ecological concerns can speak to one another in the era of the Anthropocene.
The capacity of feminist ecologies to reveal the interconnectedness of
environmental and social injustices makes it an urgent and timely field
of inquiry for the current moment. This collection arises out of the need
to address the challenges of climate change, land degradation, species
L. Stevens (*) • D. Varney
The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
P. Tait
La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
© The Author(s) 2018 1
L. Stevens et al. (eds.), Feminist Ecologies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64385-4_1
