Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 08:51:56 -0700
From: Lisa Rogers <eqwq.lrogers-AT-state.ut.us>
Subject:  eco-feminism / eco-centrism


I am not a Vandana Shiva fan, I'm a Cecile Jackson fan.  Jackson's
article in New Left Review 210 last year is a scathing critique of
Shiva and others.  Jackson just completed her dissertation on Hausa
women [a people in Nigeria] in 1992, I think.  Her critique of Shiva
is well-informed by serious ethnography.  

Jackson's position holds that an allegedly "indigenous" voice
[including Shiva's as well as those that Shiva refers to] should not
necessarily be accepted uncritically and privileged above other
views.  She points to major differences between actual human
experience of motherhood and it's supposedly universal 'caring'
attributes.  The false universalization of the Western ideal of Third
World women as 'close to Mother Earth', always more hurt by any
environmental damage than men are, and more desirous of living in
ecological harmony, is a mis-representation at best.  It is also a
new form of sex-essentialism.

Shiva's prescription of rejecting technological development and
remaining in subsistence agriculture is highly problematic for the
well-being of women.  Life in a city and work in a factory isn't
pretty, but it is not necessarily less exploitative or less abusive
than life in a traditional village.  For all its evils, a cash income
can also free a woman from the rural tyrrany of traditional
patriarchy, 'arranged' marriage, long hours, family/social pressure
for more child-bearing, etc.  It may be "better" for a woman or not,
depending on locally specific conditions.  This cannot be made into a
blanket prescription of what is good for all Third World women.

I think Jackson makes a lot of sense.  I was already familiar with
some of the anthropology/ ethnography which she cites, and I
appreciate her call for the admission of actual information into
analysis, as opposed to the turn to local religion and the 'true for
me' approach to culture.  She is opposed to the uncritical rejection
of 'science' and 'technology'.  It's not 'technology' per se that is
the problem, it is specific uses of it, under specific social
relations of domination.  I.E. don't throw the baby out with the
bathwater.

I've written up a longish summary of Jackson's article, which I'd be
happy to post to this list if anyone is interested.  

Lisa