Abstract
This chapter is part of a larger work in which I explore several interrelated tensions that appear in ecofeminism when viewed through the lens of democratic theory.1 As a whole, the work seeks to hold ecofeminist theory accountable to the radical democratic project articulated by (among others) Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe,2 in order to reveal both the strengths and the weaknesses of the budding praxis of ecofeminism and in order to show the importance of ecofeminism in ongoing conversations about the future of democracy. In this chapter, I explore the specific tension between universality and particularity with the agenda of showing ecofeminism’s significance — and limitations — as a democratic politics in the context of globalization.
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Notes
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985).
For examples of these two divergent views (they are far more complex than my brief summary suggests) see Alain Touraine, ‘An Introduction to the Study of Social Movements’, Social Research, 52, 4 (Winter 1985): 749–87
and Alberto Melucci, ‘Social Movements and the Democratization of Everyday Life’, in John Keane (ed.), Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London, Verso, 1988).
Slavoj Zizek, ‘Beyond Discourse-Analysis’, in Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990): 250.
See Frederick Buttel and Peter Taylor, ‘Environmental Sociology and Global Environmental Change: A Critical Assessment’, in Michael Redclift and Ted Benton (eds), Social Theory and the Global Environment (London: Routledge, 1994).
Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism (Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publications, 1993).
For a variety of critical perspectives on Rio, see Wolfgang Sachs (ed.), Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict (Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publications, 1993).
Carl Boggs, ‘The New World Order and Social Movements’, Society and Nature, 2, 2 (1994): 99.
Richard Falk, ‘The Making of Global Citizenship’, in Jeremy Brecher, John Brown Childs, and Jill Cutler (eds), Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1993): 50.
Lee Quinby, Anti-Apocalypse: Exercises in Genealogical Criticism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994): 46.
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© 1997 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Sandilands, C. (1997). Globalization and Its Discontents: Ecofeminism and the Dilemma of ‘Universal’ Politics. In: Schrecker, T. (eds) Surviving Globalism. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25648-8_12
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