Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth

by Carol J. Adams (Editor), Lori Gruen (Editor)

This new edition of Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth begins with an historical, grounding overview that situates ecofeminist theory and activism within the larger field of ecocriticism and provides a timeline for important publications and events. Throughout the book, authors engage with intersections of gender, sexuality, gender expression, race, disability, and species to address the various ways that sexism, heteronormativity, racism, colonialism, and ableism are informed by and support animal oppression.

This collection is broken down into three separate sections:

-Affect includes contributions from leading theorists and activists on how our emotions and embodiment can and must inform our relationships with the more-than-human world
-Context explores the complexities of appreciating difference and the possibilities of living less violently
-Climate, new to the second edition, provides an overview of our climate crisis as well as the climate for critical discussion and debate about ecofeminist ideas and actions

Drawing on animal studies, environmental studies, feminist/gender studies, and practical ethics, the ecofeminist contributors to this volume stress the need to move beyond binaries and attend to context over universal judgments; spotlight the importance of care as well as justice, emotion as well as reason; and work to undo the logic of domination and its material implications.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Activism, Environment, Philosophy, Nature, Essays

472 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2014

About the author

Carol J. Adams is a feminist-vegetarian theorist and author of books on eco-feminism and the links between species oppression and gender oppression.

Reviews

[l · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few okay chapters (the chapter on racism and Michael Vick was good; the one on disability was OK; the one on moral conflicts was an interesting personal essay) and the introduction was good. The rest was trash theory tbh. I don't say this lightly.

[Soha Ashraf · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea behind the book was unique but the content to support the argument was lacking.

[Kiki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me lo terminé poco después de entregar el TFG. Es una lectura estupenda para iniciarse en las violencias compartidas entre la naturaleza, los animales y los cuerpos de las mujeres. Básicamente ha sido mi marco teórico de eco feminismo en el TFG. Antes de leerlo pensé que el eco feminismo era una fumada de cuatro hippies que hacen sopa con su propia placenta pero naquever, they might be onto something

[Corvus · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult to give this book anything less than 5 stars because it contains the work of people I admire and consider mentors and friends. That said, I can't decide between 3 or 4 stars.

It's an academic text. If you aren't into reading academic essays, move along.

My favorite pieces in it were Taylor's "Vulnerability and Dependency and the Ethics of Care," Kim's "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Michael Vick," and jones' "Eros and the Mechanisms of Eco-Defense." Those three essays make the book worth reading in my opinion. They brought fresh ideas to classic concepts and are the reason this book is bumped up to 4 stars instead of 3. Some of the discussions of moral ambiguity were also good. Sunaura Taylor's piece really hit home for me and I would say is my number 1.

Gaard's "Toward New EcoMasculinities" had promise, but it was disorganized and made my knee jerk multiple times (the use of "women born women" in reference to Halberstam's "Female Masculinity" which is inclusive of trans people and aside from the transphobia connected to wbw, I hate the term because no one is born a full grown adult woman; also, I can't get behind Annie Sprinkle being quoted in any ecofeminist or animal lib essay given that she openly and unapologetically (to my knowledge unless things have changed over the past few years) has admitted to sexual abuse (my words, not hers) of her girlfriend's dog. Some folks disagree with me, but I'm as kinky as they come and even I know that the power dynamic between a human and a dog is not something that allows for consent.)

I skipped the second half of two essays in the book because they were so jargony, there seemed not to be much more to them than big words. Many of the other essays did not particularly move me mostly due to the information not being new (which isn't bad, depending on where someone is at when they tackle this book.) I did appreciate the introduction giving the reader some history of ideas and conflicts within diverse eco-feminist movements. I would, however, like to have read more about ecofeminism spanning outside of human and other animal relations since I have read a lot about that already.

So, I recommend reading chunks of this book to everyone. Cover to cover, maybe not so much, but it's a great effort and I am happy to have read it.

[Amanda Kingston]

Ecofeminism! This is a large part of my thesis that I'm working on, and I felt like this collection of essays provided a great overview of the philosophy. What I appreciate about it is that ecofeminism isn't exactly the same for everyone, and this text reflects that while also holding to principles of dignity of life for all beings.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of essays was a bit of a grab bag in terms of quality of writing/analysis/argumentation, angle of approach, and topics of focus. Perhaps the intent was to provide a diverse array of samples of ecofeminist writing in the hopes that a few would appeal to the reader's fancy.

In theory I thought that many of the ideas advocated by ecofeminists for approaching our various ecological problems were very sensible and appropriate. Given that humans are not intellectually rational creatures and that we make decisions based on emotional affect first and justify those decisions intellectually after the fact, arguing on an emotional basis makes good sense. I thought that Deborah Slicer's essay on Joy did an excellent job of this. Likewise situating one's arguments about, for example, veganism contextually to account for the differing circumstances that may alter the moral applicability of veganism is also sensible. While I didn't find Sunaura Taylor's argumentation convincing, I certainly found the different background/approach thought provoking and agree that thinking about our valuation of dependency in livestock requires greater thinking. And I would readily agree that we should be developing an ethic of care in our cultures, that we need to reshape our relationship with nature from one of exploiters to one of guardians/stewards. These are all good ideas that should make the ecofeminist lens a superior mode of argumentation or analysis when it comes to environmental issues.

In practice though, it seems to me that much of the writing here either 1) throws the baby out with the bathwater (the frequent denigration of the animal rights approach as insufficiently contextual/emotional I think is as unfairly mis-representative as several authors accuse feminists/animal rights advocates of being towards feminism), 2) is incredibly abstruse, highly self referential writing with no attempt to make it approachable by a non-expert (Ralph Acampora's essay, while entertaining, was very guilty of this), 3) spends a great deal of time claiming the superiority of ecofeminst analysis without ever providing any substantive analysis themselves, or 4) offers valid critique without ever posing a constructive alternative. A great example of this last point is the final essay purporting to argue in favor of new ecomasculinities without ever really offering a vision for that. Greta Gaard spends a great deal of ink criticizing toxic masculinity and its destructiveness, lauds the development of ecofeminism, and then describes numerous attributes of her proposed ecomasculinity; however what she describes is just environmental consciousness that all people should hold. There's nothing uniquely masculine about what she describes, nor does she successfully differentiate her proposal from an ecofeminism, as far as I can tell, despite her argumentation that humans are gendered and embodied beings.

I was hoping to get a lot more out of these essays, so perhaps I'm just disappointed by my high expectations. Ecofeminism certainly seems to have some useful aspects and historically has shined a light on the relationship between patriarchal power structures oppression of women/minorities and the exploitation of the environment/oppression of non-human animals. And maybe as a mode of academic inquiry / analysis it will continue to be useful and offer new insights. For me, it doesn't seem to hold any single attribute that isn't found in other fields of thought, not does it seem to fulfill its promise of bringing many disparate attributes together to make a superior mode of analysis.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was right on the edge of being interesting and useful for my research, but it didn't quite make it. Many of the chapters focused too much on philosophical theory (Plato and Nietzsche were quoted or referenced on numerous occasions) and not enough on practical arguments. I did enjoy the chapter on disability, but it seemed to be a stand-alone piece of good work.

[Caya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Super interessant. Ieder hoofdstuk is een nieuw essay van een of meerdere andere schrijvers/schrijfsters. Intersectionality op ieder mogelijk vlak. Heel veel inzichten voor mezelf en zet je echt aan het denken. Love it. Gelezen voor een essay voor school, maar super blij dat ik dat gedaan heb.