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Ecofeminism & Poverty
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Ecofeminism & Povery
Alexis, Joyce, Blair, & Christine
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1.0 Alexis - Definitions of Ecofeminism and Poverty
2.0 Joyce - Nature, Women & Poverty
3.0 Blair - Capitalist Corporations
4.0 Christine - Solutions & Case Study
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What is Ecofeminism?
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What is Ecofeminism?
- A pluralistic, nonhierarchical, relationship-oriented philosophy
- suggests how humans could reconceive themselves and their relationships to nature in nondominating ways
- alternative to patriarchal systems of domination.
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What is Poverty?
- the experience of extreme lack of basic needs
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The Poverty Line
- Defining a poverty line is necessary to analyze poverty
- One example of an absolute poverty line is the World Bank's extreme poverty line of $1 U.S. per day
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Absolute poverty
- So-called "absolute" poverty lines embody community norms and standards
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Relative poverty
- argues that to be poor is to have to go without what is needed to be a "creditable" member of society
- Key social outcomes such as health
and literacy are closely linked
to the relative incomes of people
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Relative poverty
- The main point
is that
virtually all
measures of
poverty are
relative.
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All measures of poverty, whether they are based on income or a basket of goods and services, access to clean water, or the ownership of land and cows, are also arbitrary, at least to some degree.
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A quarter of humanity lives in a state of absolute poverty.
A quarter of the world’s population are unable to find enough food to lead an active life
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2.0 Nature, Women & Poverty
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- Nature- Women- Poverty
A family from the South
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2.0 Nature, Women & Poverty
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Nature, Women
The shrinking gap between women of the North and women of the South
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Nature, Women& Poverty& Children'sPoverty
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Nature, Women & Poverty& Children's Poverty
Children of the North- school snack programs
Children of the South- some lucky to have one meal a day
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Nature is depleted, a victim
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South, example: - Rwanda's exports were coffee and tea- destruction of the land during the genocide in the 1990s - the people were unable to produce crops and sustain themselves (SOCI 3P47, Professor John Sorenson)
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Nature is depleted, a victimPollution: - The north uses the south to produce goods for the itself
- We have factories polluting our own backyard, in Hamilton
- A factory in the South...
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Women- Costs to the system for women include alcoholic rehabilitation centres, abuse shelters
- contributions by women to the economy are not included in GNP
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The Iceberg Model
shows the patriarchy, andthe invisible and invisible parts of GNP
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The Iceberg Model shows the patriarchy, andthe invisible and invisible parts of GNP
-The problem is that the base is shrinking, not in size but in the ability to sustain the small triangle at the top
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The Iceberg Model
The patriarchal elite in the top triangle have not noticed these “resources” are shrinking because they do not acknowledge that the base is supporting them
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Womens Work & Women's Movements
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Labour – A Personal Experience:
- A farm kid
- A factory worker
- A secretary/word processor
- A Brock student with a part-time job in Toronto
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Labour - Personal Experience:
- minimum wage worker in “sweat shop” had surgery, returned to work before ready, within two weeks (needed as full a paycheque to pay bills)
- Employment Insurance sick benefit cheque took eight weeks to receive; too little, too late (needed to pay mortgage and feed family now, so returned to work)
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Womens Work - Personal Experience:
- if this was the U.S. the medical cost would have been tremendous
- if we are unable to work and unable to pay our bills ... it is possible we could become homeless
- women of the South have a more difficult existence with fewer choices and access to less resources
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Women and Nature - Womens Movements
- the 1960's
- In the U.S.: protests against giant nuclear corporations
- Northern India: tree hugging protests against loggers
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3.0 Capitalism & Corporations
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The capitalist creed:
1.There is no development w/outeconomic growth
2. A growing national incomeautomatically trickles down to
benefit all members of society
3. the integration of local and nationaleconomies in the world economy isa blessing to everybody
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4. The liberalization of international tradeenables every nation to make the bestuse of its comparative advantages inthe international division of labor.
5. The liberalization of internationalcapital flows results in a betterallocation of the means of production
6. Technological innovation willcompensate for the ecological flaws ofthe present production system.
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7. Private property rights are not only thebest system to deal with scarcity, butalso suit human nature better thanany other system.
8. The direct involvement of the nation-state in economic life always resultsin inefficiency and corruption.
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Women, Labor and Nature
- Capitalist Exchange-values
( m == > c ==> m' )
- Women as commodities
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Women, Labor and Nature
- Capitalist Exchange-values
( m == > c ==> m' )
- Women as commodities
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Women as 'natural resources'
- 'free labor' given by women
- Women are not treated likehumans in the Capitalist Patriarchy,instead they are considered'natural resources'
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Women as 'natural resources'
- Feminine marginalization globallyas presented by U.N. figures showsthat:"for women own less than 1% of allproperty and do two-thirds of theworld's work for 5% of all wagespaid."
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'Us' and 'Them'
- Attitudes in the North towards the South
- Exploitation
- Women as a common
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Assumptions in the woman/nature debate (capital's discursive armour)
1. An artifical distinction between "history" and "nature".
2. An assumption that men are activehistorical "subjects" and womenpassive "objects".
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Assumptions in the woman/nature debate (capital's discursive armour)
3. An assumption that historical action is necessarily "progressive" and activitiesgrounded in nature necessarily "regressive".
4. An association of masculinity with thehistorical order through "production"and association of feminity with theorder of nature through "reproduction"
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Assumptions in the woman/nature debate (capital's discursive armor)
5. "Valorization" of productive activityand
"devalorization" of reproductivity.
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"Capitalism manages to obscure this historical dimension by the sheer force of its
ideological machine
- such that people actually do come to believe reality is striated in this way,
and universally so"
(Salleh, 116)
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4.0 Solutions, Case Study, and Conclusions
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Solutions
- Improve basic health care
- Invest in education
- Bring power
- Boosting Agriculture
- Providing clean water and sanitation
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The Big Five Interventions
- Raise the voice of the poor
- Promote sustainable development
- Harness global science
- Strengthen the United Nations
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The Big Five interventions - continued
- Rescue the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
- Redeem the U.S. role in the world
- Personal commitment
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Health
Leprosy,Aids,and Medicine
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Case Studythe successful struggle of people in Papua New Guinea to defend their commons
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Case StudyDetails the successful struggle of people in Papua New Guinea to defend their commons.
The World Bank and IMF have imposed structural adjustment programmes to Papua New Guinea as well as other indebted countries of the south in order to repay its debt to the World Bank and other foreign banks.
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Case Study - continuedThe WB and IMF wanted access to the communal land of the clans because they wanted to start oil palm plantations, search for minerals or gain access to tropical timber.
The communities wanted to hold onto their customary communal rights and use of the land for the preservation of their livelihoods, culture and language.
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Case Study - continued
97% of the land is still traditional commons land. There are approximately 869 distinct languages linked to tribes in P.N.G.
In addition, 85% of the population lives in rural areas and have access to the benefits of the land.
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Case Study - continued
The other 5% live in towns and 10% live in urban shanty settlements however, they can return anytime to their ancestral areas of land.
(Because of this system, hunger, homelessness and unemployment are virtually unknown)
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Case Study - continued
Other countries, in the name of development, have created landless, homeless, hungry paupers desperate to sell their bodies and their work at any price.
The government in P.N.G. tried to sell the land reform to the people as land mobilization or freeing the land in the name of development and modernization.
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Case Study - continued
The government tried to disempower the local communities; however, these communities recognized that the government could not protect their interests and their livelihoods.
It is also evident that Western-style capitalist entrepreneurship cannot develop if the land remains under communal control of the people.
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Case Study – continued
Financial institutions do not commit money to enterprises on communal land. Communities band together to resist privatization and enclosure of the commons.
Historically, communities developed a system of survival to sustain life without the intervention of international institutions.
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Case Study – continued
Concerned Papua New Guineans, NGO’s, student unions and churches issued a protest movement that began in July, 1995.
Women were extremely active in this movement, as there were matrilineal clans that were encouraged not to give up their customary land rights.
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Case Study – continued
The people defended their communal land rights because they believed in a different concept of development, based on subsistence and autonomy rather than on growth and global trade.
On July 19, 1995, the prime minister of Papua New Guinea withdrew the Land Mobilisation Act.
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Case Study – continued
On July 19, 1995, the prime minister of Papua New Guinea withdrew the Land Mobilisation Act. This demonstrates that the World Bank, IMF and even local governments are helpless if communities stick to the principle:
MUST CONTROL THE LAND YOURSELF!
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Solutions
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Solutions
The social and economic aspect of the commons has become invisible.
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SolutionsThe commons formed part of moral economies within which everybody belonging to the community had customary rights and could find the means to produce his/her own survival.
The social and economic aspect of the commons has become invisible. The reduction of nature to a mere resource destroys the commons
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Solutions
Subsistence requires that people, particularly women, stop devaluing their own work, culture and power.
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This devaluation is maintained by the notion of a catch-up development where the promise that eventually all colonised people at the bottom of the social pyramid will reach the level of those on top.
This catch-up development is a myth.
There is a link between wealth and progress of one pole and poverty and regression of the other pole.
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Subsistence perspective
People who share a subsistence perspective do not expect social changes from agencies from outside and above them.
They are aware of their own power and can act as individuals and a community
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Subsistence perspectiveSubsistence production stands in contrast to commodity and surplus value production.
For subsistence production, the aim is life while for commodity production the aim is money and capital.
Three attributes of subsistence are independence, self-sufficiency and self-reliance as in cultural identity.
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Main Features of a new subsistence paradigm
1) There would be change in the sexualdivision of labour: men would do as much unpaid work as women.
2) Instead of wage work, independent self-determined socially and materiallyuseful work would be at the centre of theeconomy.
3) Subsistence production would havepriority over commodity production.
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Moral Characteristics of subsistence technology
1) Technology must be used as a tool to enhancelife, nurture and share.
2) Technology should not dominate nature but tocooperate.
3) The economy should respect the limits ofnature.
4) The economy must serve the core-life system.5) It is a decentralised, regional economy.6) The goal of a subsistence economy is to
support the subsistence society in theproduction and regeneration of life on theplanet as a whole.
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How would trade and markets be different?
1) Local and regional markets would serve local needs.
2) The primary function of local markets would be to satisfy the subsistence needs of all.3) Local markets would also preserve the
diversity of products and resist cultural homogenisation.
4) Long-distance trade would not be used formeeting subsistence needs.
5) Trade would not destroy biodiversity.6) Money would be a means of circulation but
cease to be a means of accumulation.
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Ecofeminists reject the idea that necessary labor is a burden to be passed on to nature through technology.
Equally, they reject a strategy of partnership with the union movement in an unviable economy. Maria Mies calls for a notion of labour as pleasure and challenge.
Most ecofeminists look forward to self-sufficient, decentralized relations of production, where men and women work together in joy and reciprocity with external nature, no longer alienated or diminished by a gendered division of labor and international accumulation.
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Ecofeminism is about a transvaluation of values;
in particular, it is about listening differently to the voices of women who
love and labor now.
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Sources
Mies, M., Vandana, S. Ecofeminism. (1993.)Zed Books, Fernwood Publications, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Salleh, Ariel. Nature, Woman, Labour, Capital: livingthe deepest contradiction. Chapter 6 from Is Capitalism Sustainable? (1995). Zed Books, London.
Professor John Sorensen, SOCI 3P47, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON (2005).
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