Hostname: page-component-669899f699-tpknm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-24T17:16:33.773Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Only Resist: Feminist Ecological Citizenship and the Post‐politics of Climate Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Sherilyn MacGregor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

European political theorists have argued that contemporary imaginaries of climate change are symptomatic of a post‐political condition. My aim in this essay is to consider what this analysis might mean for a feminist green politics and how those who believe in such a project might respond. Whereas much of the gender‐focused scholarship on climate change is concerned with questions of differentiated vulnerabilities and gendered divisions of responsibility and risk, I want to interrogate the strategic, epistemological, and normative implications for ecological feminism of a dominant, neoliberal climate change narrative that arguably has no political subject, casts Nature as a threat to be endured, and that replaces democratic public debate with expert administration and individual behavior change. What hope is there for counter‐hegemonic political theories and social movements in times like these? I suggest that rather than give in and get on the crowded climate change bandwagon, an alternative response is to pursue a project of feminist ecological citizenship that blends resistance to hegemonic neoliberal discourses with a specifically feminist commitment to reclaiming democratic debate about social‐environmental futures.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 29 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Climate Change , Summer 2014 , pp. 617 - 633
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

I am grateful to those who commented on versions of this essay that I presented at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada) in 2010 and Monash University Prato Centre (Prato, Italy) in 2011, and to the special issue editors and anonymous referees for their suggestions for improving the arguments I have presented here.

References

10:10 campaign. http://www.1010global.org/uk (accessed September 19, 2012).Google Scholar
Alaimo, Stacey. 2008. Ecofeminism without nature? International Feminist Journal of Politics 10 (3): 299–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrow, Becky. 2006. Flying on holiday a “sin,” says bishop. Daily Mail, July 23. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-397228/Flying-holiday-sin-says-bishop.html (accessed July 9, 2013).Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 2010. Climate for change, or how to create a green modernity? Theory, Culture & Society 27 (2): 254–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catney, Philip, and Doyle, Timothy. 2011. The welfare of now and the green (post) politics of the future. Critical Social Policy 31 (2): 174–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crist, Eileen. 2007. Beyond the climate crisis: A critique of climate change discourse. Telos 141 (Winter): 29–55.Google Scholar
Cuomo, Chris. 2002. On ecofeminist philosophy. Ethics and the Environment 7 (2): 2–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobson, Andrew. 2009. 10:10 and the politics of climate change. Open democracy. http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/10-10-and-the-politics-of-climate-change (accessed April 5, 2010).Google Scholar
Doyle, Timothy, and Chaturvedi, Sanjay. 2010. Climate territories: A global soul for the global south? Geopolitics 15 (3): 516–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freudenberg, William, and Davidson, Debra. 2007. Nuclear families and nuclear risks: The effects of gender, geography, and progeny on attitudes toward a nuclear waste facility. Rural Sociology 72 (2): 215–43.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hemmati, Minu, and Röhr, Ulrike. 2009. Engendering the climate‐change negotiations: Experiences, challenges, and steps forward. Gender and Development 17 (1): 19–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2010. A new climate for society. Theory, Culture & Society 27 (2): 233–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jinnah, Sikina. 2011. Climate change bandwagoning: The impacts of strategic linkages on regime design, maintenance, and death. Global Environmental Politics 11 (3): 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kythreotis, Paul. 2012. Progress in global climate change politics? Reasserting national state territoriality in a “post‐political” world. Progress in Human Geography 36 (4): 457–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lockhart, Andy. 2009. Optimum population trust: A rebirth of 1970s survivalism, or something new? In‐Spire: Journal of Law, Politics and Societies 4 (1): 19–39.Google Scholar
Lovelock, James. 2006. The revenge of Gaia. Why the earth is fighting back and how we can still save humanity. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
MacGregor, Sherilyn. 2006. Beyond mothering earth: Ecological citizenship and the politics of care. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
MacGregor, Sherilyn. 2009. Natural allies, perennial foes? On the trajectories of feminist and green political thought. Contemporary Political Theory 8 (3): 329–39.Google Scholar
MacGregor, Sherilyn. 2010a. A stranger silence still: The need for feminist social research on climate change. Sociological Review 57 (s2): 124–40.Google Scholar
MacGregor, Sherilyn. 2010b. Plus ça (climate) change, plus c'est la même (masculinist) chose: Gender politics and the discourses of climate change. In The politics of gender, ed. Lian Lee, Yoke. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
MacGregor, Sherilyn. 2010c. Gender and climate change: From impacts to discourses. Journal of the Indian Ocean Region 6 (2): 223–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maniates, Michael. 2001. Individualization: Plant a tree, ride a bike, save the world? Global Environmental Politics 1 (3): 31–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martinez‐Alier, Joan. 2002. The environmentalism of the poor: A study of ecological conflicts and valuation. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNamara, Karen, and Gibson, Chris. 2009. “We do not want to leave our land”: Pacific ambassadors at the United Nations resist the category of “climate refugees”. Geoforum 40 (3): 475–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moon, Wankin, and Balasubramanian, Siva. 2004. Public attitudes toward agrobiotechnology: The mediating role of risk perceptions on the impact of trust, awareness, and outrage. Review of Agricultural Economics 26 (2): 186–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morton, Timothy. 2007. Ecology without nature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the political. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nordhaus, Ted, and Shellenberger, Michael. 2008. Apocalypse fatigue: Losing the public on climate change. Yale environment 360. http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/print.msp?id=2210 (accessed September 30, 2012).Google Scholar
Pettinger, Mary, ed. 2007. The social construction of climate change: Power, knowledge, norms, discourse. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Plumwood, Val. 1995. Feminism, privacy and radical democracy. Anarchist Studies 3 (2): 97–120.Google Scholar
Rancière, Jacques. 2001. Ten theses on politics. Theory & Event 5 (3): 17–34.Google Scholar
Revkin, Andrew. 2013. New shade of green: Stark shift for onetime foe of genetic engineering in crops. New York Times, January 4. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/new–shade-of-green-stark-shift-for-onetime-foe-of-genetic-engineering-in-crops/ (accessed March 23, 2013).Google Scholar
Rootes, Christopher. 2011. New issues, new forms of action? Climate change and environmental activism in Britain. In New participatory dimensions in civil society: Professionalization and individualized collective action, ed. van Deth, Jan W. and Maloney, William. London: ECPR/Routledge.Google Scholar
Rosa, Eugene, and Dietz, Thomas. 1998. Climate change and society: Speculation, construction and scientific investigation. International Sociology 13 (4): 421–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salleh, Ariel. 2008. Climate change and the “other footprint”. The Commoner 13: 103–13.Google Scholar
Sandilands, Catriona. 2000. Raising your hand in the council of all beings: Ecofeminism and citizenship. Ethics and the Environment 4 (2): 219–33.Google Scholar
Sandilands, Catriona. 2008. Eco/feminism on the edge. International Feminist Journal of Politics 10 (3): 305–13.Google Scholar
Schlosberg, David, and Carruthers, David. 2010. Indigenous struggles, environmental justice, and community capabilities. Global Environmental Politics 10 (4): 12–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simons, Jon. 1995. Foucault and the political. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Smith, Amanda. 2011. The Transition Town Network: A review of current evolutions and renaissance. Social Movement Studies 10 (1): 99–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Heather. 2007. Disrupting the global discourses of climate change: The case of indigenous voices. In The social construction of climate change: Power, knowledge, norms, discourse, ed Pettinger, Mary, pp. 197–216. Aldershot: AshgateGoogle Scholar
Swyngedouw, Erik. 2010. Apocalypse forever? Post‐political populism and the spectre of climate change. Theory, culture & society 27 (2): 213–32.Google Scholar
Swyngedouw, Erik. 2011. Depoliticised environments: The end of nature, climate change and the post‐political condition. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 69: 253–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United Nations Press Release. 2009. Transcript of press conference by Secretary‐General Ban Ki‐moon at United Nations Headquarters, January 12. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/sgsm12044.doc.htm (accessed March 23, 2013).Google Scholar
Wapner, Paul. 2011. The challenges of planetary bandwagoning. Global Environmental Politics 11 (3): 137–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. 2002. Revolution at the gates. London: Verso.Google Scholar