Author: Vandana Shiva
Publisher: Kali/Women Unlimited
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8188965588
Description
Taking the three related concerns of development, ecology and gender, this book argues that there is an intimate link between the degradation of women and the degradation of nature in contemporary society.
Both arise from assumptions that guide mal-development, also known as economic development. This mal-development - and consequently, science, technology, politics - is exploitative by definition, and every area of human activity guided by it marginalizes and burdens women and nature.
The author argues that there is only one path to survival and liberation for nature, woman and man, and that path is the ecological one, of harmony, sustainability and diversity, as opposed to domination, exploitation and surplus.
In developing her thesis she explores the unique place of women in the environment, both as its saviors and as victims of ecological mal-development. Her analysis differs from most conventional analyses of environmentalists and feminists, which have focused on women in the Third World as special victims of environmental degradation.
Shiva discusses the challenges that women in ecology movements are creating, and explores how their struggles constitute a non-violent, non-gendered and humanity-inclusive alternative to dominant science, technology and development paradigms.
COMMENTS:
“…Extraordinary in the ease of its global and historical scopes and the clarity of its arguments.”
--- Women’s Review of Books
“…Empirically sensitive, and marked by passion and conviction.”
--- Rajni Kothari
“A uniquely modern Green mixture of mythology, social disquiet, dry statistical tables and assaults on Western ‘male’ science.”
--- Spectator