ABSTRACT

This book envisages a different form of our economies where care work and care-full relationships are central to social and cultural life. It sets out a feminist vision of a caring economy and asks what needs to change economically and ecologically in our conceptual approaches and our daily lives as we learn to care for each other and non-human others.

Bringing together authors from 11 countries (also representing institutions from 8 countries), this edited collection sets out the challenges for gender aware economies based on an ethics of care for people and the environment in an original and engaging way. The book aims to break down the assumed inseparability of economic growth and social prosperity, and natural resource exploitation, while not romanticising social-material relations to nature. The authors explore diverse understandings of care through a range of analytical approaches, contexts and case studies and pays particular attention to the complicated nexus between re/productivity, nature, womanhood and care. It includes strong contributions on community economies, everyday practices of care, the politics of place and care of non-human others, as well as an engagement on concepts such as wealth, sustainability, food sovereignty, body politics, naturecultures and technoscience.

Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care is aimed at all those interested in what feminist theory and practice brings to today’s major political economic and environmental debates around sustainability, alternatives to economic development and gender power relations.

chapter 1|15 pages

Introduction

Conversations on care in Feminist Political Economy and Ecology
ByWendy Harcourt, Christine Bauhardt

chapter 2|20 pages

Nature, care and gender

Feminist dilemmas
ByChristine Bauhardt

chapter 4|15 pages

Environmental feminisms

A story of different encounters
ByKarijn van den Berg

chapter 5|29 pages

Climate change, natural disasters and the spillover effects on unpaid care

The case of Super-typhoon Haiyan
ByMaria S. Floro, Georgia Poyatzis

chapter 6|17 pages

Care-full Community Economies

ByKelly Dombroski, Stephen Healy, Katharine McKinnon

chapter 7|15 pages

Care as wellth

Internalising care by democratising money
ByMary Mellor

chapter 8|31 pages

Diverse ethics for diverse economies

Considering the ethics of embodiment, difference and inter-corporeality at Kufunda
ByPamela Richardson-Ngwenya, Andrea J. Nightingale

chapter 9|27 pages

Striving towards what we do not know yet

Living Feminist Political Ecology in Toronto’s food network 1
ByCarla Wember

chapter 10|22 pages

‘The garden has improved my life’

Agency and food sovereignty of women in urban agriculture in Nairobi 1
ByJoyce-Ann Syhre, Meike Brückner

chapter 11|19 pages

Transnational reconfigurations of re/production and the female body

Bioeconomics, motherhoods and the case of surrogacy in India
ByChrista Wichterich

chapter 12|17 pages

Menstrual politics in Argentina and diverse assemblages of care

ByJacqueline Gaybor

chapter 13|15 pages

Bodies, aspirations and the politics of place

Learning from the women brickmakers of La Ladrillera
ByAzucena Gollaz Morán