Ageing into Lesbian-Feminism – An Excerpt from a Life

It was 1969, I was just 12 years old, and Stonewall had not yet happened. My best friend Linda and I hung out at the local schoolyard wearing army jackets with male names emblazoned on the pocket. She was not just my friend, though I had no name for what we were.

When I smacked a boy upside the head who tried to grab my breasts, the home economics teacher said if I couldn’t stop acting like that no boy would ever marry me. I had no vision of what life could be without marrying a boy and gay marriage was still an oxymoron; I decided that marriage was a trap that I would never willingly step into. I mostly still think that.

I discovered feminism with an insatiable hunger. I read every book, bought every woman’s music album and joined consciousness raising groups, and coming out groups.

Today my female students often insist they are not feminists. My feminism is quaint to them, not the radical edge of human transformation, but nostalgia from a bygone generation. In their eyes I am a woman who still thinks that gender matters. Of course they believe in equal rights and equal pay for equal work. Of course they think that “girls” should go to college and become doctors. Their definition of feminism is: a woman who hates men. I try to explain that it was actually men who hated women, and we rebelled, us feminists. I tell them that all they have in their lives today is the fruits of a movement that women planted with our own hands, the soil was our very bodies. Gender, I insist, still matters.

The lesbian-feminist community that reared me does not exist anymore. The small coffee houses, the sense of commonality are relics of another day. Partially the movement that was, has been absorbed into the larger LGBTQQI-alphabet soup movement for queer civil rights. Partially it became transformed into academic women’s studies programs. Partially it has been co-opted, sold out to the dazzle of consumer capitalism and the lure of romantic security, represented by gay business and gay marriage. A friend smiles and says, “We really thought we could change the world,” and I remind her: we did. We changed the world.

I work for transgender rights and argue queer theory, and insist that it is feminism which was the mother of these freedoms. I give credit to women’s liberation for not only changing my world, but for changing the whole world, for starting a dialogue about rethinking gender that continues on today. Like all important tasks, dismembering patriarchy is the work of my many lifetimes.

I am nearly a crone now — more than half a century on this blessed planet, and I’m still doing my work. I still devour feminist books, but I do not allow feminism to devour me. I am critical of some of what has been done in the name of feminism, but I will not let other women define feminism for me, or dictate which acts of mine are feminist and which are colonized. I keep insisting that feminism is not a dirty word, but is a movement that has made possible all that has come since.

I embrace the queer youth of today, and I know they can do what they are doing precisely because we did the work of feminism. I plan to get old, grow my facial hair, get another tattoo, and wear bright red lipstick. Feminism has given me the freedom to be fully myself.

By Arlene Istar Lev LCSW, CASAC

Arlene Istar Lev is a social worker, family therapist, activist, and mother. She is the Founder of Choices Counseling and Consulting (www.choicesconsulting.com), and The Institute for Gender, Relationships, Identity and Sexuality (TIGRIS – www.tigrisinstitute.com). She can be reached at 518-438-2222 or Arlene@choicesconsulting.com.

We encourage you to read more on LGBT and family/child ethics with our special collection here on the blog and to comment below.

Feminist and Religious Ethics: A Conversation

The focus of Journal of Religious Ethics 43:2 is a conversation at and about the interface of feminist ethics and religious ethics, in order to show what these multifaceted fields of intellectual endeavor and practical import have to say to each other, to teach and to learn. The seven essays approach that dialogue from a variety of angles and traditions, reflecting the fecundity of both fields and the wide-ranging concerns of colleagues in religious ethics who share commitments and methods with feminist ethics.

Throughout these articles, themes and methods characteristic of feminist thought prevail, perhaps especially feminism’s insistence on the crucial value of a particularist perspective for moral deliberation. From Hille Haker’s powerful story of Valentina, a Moldovan mother who fell prey to sex traffickers, to the voices of young black lesbians, in the essay by Thelathia N. Young and Shannon J. Miller, mourning the disruption of formative relationships with their mothers and their church communities, the focus on particulars afforded by narrative methods stands out. One consistent result of this attention is the readiness to interrogate arguments that seem to “work” in the theoretical realm but threaten harm when put into practice.

These essays make clear that feminist ethics and religious ethics not only have much of value to say to each other, but also have ways of holding each other accountable for blind spots and errors that arise from too narrow a focus on one or another method or conviction, errors that can have undesirable, even immoral results in practice. In addition to the fruitfulness of the dialogue, however, feminism also offers something new: previously unacknowledged fields to explore, novel perspectives on areas of ethical thought that may have seemed to have been conclusively settled, and fresh examinations of long-shelved topics and thinkers.

The call to be “finely aware and richly responsible”—issued by feminist philosopher Martha Nussbaum (1985), using words of Henry James that also echo in the work of religious ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr (1963)—knows no disciplinary boundary. It’s time to talk.

The Philosophical Treatments of Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss

The first-ever collection on philosophical treatments of miscarriage and pregnancy loss is also the first entirely Open Access issue of Journal of Social Philosophy. The creation of the Special Issue: Miscarriage, Reproductive Loss, and Fetal Death is motivated by the fact that miscarriage is widely experienced — yet the phenomenon of miscarriage remains shockingly under-theorized. Philosophers have written about abortion and about pregnancy, but until now we could count philosophical works on miscarriage on the fingers of one hand.
Guest-editor Kathryn Norlock first noticed this gap when trying to write about her own experience with miscarriage as it relates to feminist ethics. When she raised the possibility of a philosophical project on the topic to co-editors Ann Cahill and Byron Stoyles, they immediately perceived related concerns, about the significance of death, about the social construction of pregnancy, and about the intersubjectivity of personal identity. All three agreed that they should do something to avoid furthering the social and academic silence surrounding a phenomenon that so many have experienced.
The results of their early reflections were accepted as a panel presentation at the Canadian Society of Women in Philosophy conference in 2012, and the responsive audience members of the panel spilled over with new insights, further applications, and above all, eager requests that the project become a publication. It was clear there was more to say, and there were more perspectives to involve.
The happy results include articles on moral philosophy, the ontology of persons, the role of social media in communicating miscarriage experiences, and the relationship of miscarriage to philosophical questions about abortion and fetal death. All articles will be Open Access, and thanks for that in large part is owed to Trent University in Ontario and the generous support of Trent’s Kenneth Mark Drain Chair in Ethics Trust. Readers are invited to comment and share the articles. Let’s all pay more and better attention to miscarriage!

Read the articles on Wiley Online Library here.  As this is an issue entirely published through Open Access publishing, the articles will remain free permanently.

Guest editors: Ann J. Cahill, Kathryn J. Norlock, Byron Stoyles
 
Table of Contents
Amy Mullin, “Early Pregnancy Losses: Multiple Meanings and Moral Considerations”
Ann J. Cahill, “Miscarriage and Intercorporeality”
Lindsey Porter, “Miscarriage and Person-Denying”
Sarah Clark Miller, “The Moral Meanings of Miscarriage”
Alison Reiheld, “The Event That Was Nothing:  Miscarriage as a Liminal Event”
Christine Overall, “Rethinking Abortion, Ectogenesis and Fetal Death”
Hilde Lindemann, “Miscarriage and the Stories We Live By”
Byron Stoyles, “The Value of Pregnancy and the Meaning of Pregnancy Loss”
Rebecca Kukla & Sarah Hardy, “Making Miscarriage Online”

Hypatia Symposium – Gender & Geoengineering by HOLLY JEAN BUCK, ANDREA R. GAMMON, CHRISTOPHER J. PRESTON

Gender and Geoengineering

HOLLY JEAN BUCK
Ph.D. candidate, Development Sociology, Cornell University

ANDREA R. GAMMON
Ph.D. candidate, Environmental Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen

CHRISTOPHER J. PRESTON
Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Montana

The following is an excerpt, click here to read the full article

Browse the entire special issue here

Introduction

In the years following Nobel Prize-winner Paul Crutzen’s 2006 landmark editorial essay on atmospheric albedo enhancement (Crutzen2006), the idea of engineering a technical solution to climate change has seen a surge of interest. The suggestion that the “perfect moral storm” (Gardiner 2011a) of climate change might be solved by turning an intractable social, economic, and political problem into a solvable technical and scientific one has created a giddy sense of relief in some quarters and a dark sense of foreboding in others. Although there is a rapidly growing literature on the ethics of geoengineering (Gardiner 2011a; Svoboda et al. 2011; Preston 2012a), very little has been written about its gender and justice dimensions. Given that the ethical considerations pertinent to geoengineering include challenges about participation, potential harm to the marginalized, hubristic attitudes about control, and the emblematic question of “whowould get to set the global thermostat?” it is clear this is an area ripe for gender analysis.

Geoengineering has been helpfully defined as “the intentional manipulation of the earth’s climate to counteract anthropogenic climate change or its warming effects” (Corner and Pidgeon 2010, 26). An early report by the UK’s Royal Society on the main technical and governance issues of geoengineering established what has become a canonical distinction between methods focusing on solar radiation management (SRM) and methods involving carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Whereas CDR would slowly remove atmospheric carbon to restore a safe level of greenhouse gases, SRM would cool the planet more rapidly by reflecting back a portion of the sun’s energy before it has the chance to warm the earth, the oceans, and the atmosphere. Examples of proposed SRM techniques include shooting aerosols into the stratosphere using ballistics, fighter jets, or specially erected hoses and pipes; spraying seawater into the air from ships with tall towers; launching mirrors into space to act as a shield; and wrapping deserts in shiny polyethylene-aluminum sheeting. Examples of the CDR “family” of technologies include afforestation, ocean fertilization, capturing carbon directly from ambient air, and burying biochar to sequester carbon within the earth (Launder and Thompson 2010; SRMGI 2011).

This two-part division of the technologies might already seem gendered for its Freudian imagery: tall spraying devices, nozzles, ejections, dressing up the earth versus fertilizing the oceans, burying things, and sequestering away material. The commonly portrayed risk profiles of the two approaches are also suggestive of a matching gendered slant. SRM gets the attention as a technologically advanced, bold, and risky method. Deployment of an atmospheric shield to deflect solar radiation suggests an Apollonian type of confrontation demanding quick action, steely nerve, and technological prowess. The Royal Society characterized CDR, by contrast, as “a longer term approach to addressing climate change” with “fewer uncertainties and risks” (Royal Society 2009, 54). CDR is usually perceived as slower, gentler, and more natural. Pollution control, if that is what CDR really amounts to, may lack some pizzazz, but it is something almost everyone can get behind, especially if it involves planting trees and engaging citizens.¹

Our intention in this paper is not to address this question of whether the SRM/CDR distinction is gendered, though it may be an interesting question in its own right. We plan to look at engineering the climate more broadly in order to examine where gender appears—and where it ought to appear—in the politics, ethics, and science of geoengineering. We intend to suggest areas where the geoengineering discussion should be opened up to issues of gender. Moreover, the need is urgent given that preliminary discussions of geoengineering are rapidly moving toward field-testing and plans for the governance of future deployments.

The Gender Dimensions of Geoengineering

There are a number of compelling reasons to raise gender awareness across several geoengineering axes. From a sheer numbers perspective, half of those who will be affected by geoengineering are women, though women are currently represented at only a fraction of this proportion within the geoengineering community. From an impacts perspective, some women are particularly susceptible to the negative effects of climate change (Dankelman 2002; Cuomo 2011) and in these cases might have more to gain from the benefits geoengineering promises. At the same time, the exact impact of many geoengineering strategies on precipitation and other climate parameters is uncertain and may remain so. Some women may have more at stake in this uncertainty, for example, if they lack access to typical adaptive coping mechanisms, such as migration to cities, access to capital, or educational opportunities to pursue different types of work. From a history of science standpoint, the narrative of masculine attempts to control earth systems introduces many fascinating questions. This means that from a political, funding, and purely pragmatic perspective, geoengineering is particularly vulnerable to an ecofeminist critique, and a failure to acknowledge gender-associated concerns could easily derail the geoengineering agenda. No matter where you sit—as a citizen, policy-maker, natural or social scientist, historian, ethicist, engineer, or lobbyist—to understand what geoengineering means for society in anything more than a superficial sense, the gender-and-geoengineering dynamic must be an integral part of the conversation.

In the discussion below, we consider four contexts in which geoengineering appears to have important gender dimensions: (1) the demographics of those pushing the current agenda, (2) the overall vision of control it involves, (3) the design of particular technologies, and (4) whom geoengineering will most impact and benefit. Our treatment of these areas is intentionally introductory; we aim only to open up discussions deserving greater attention. Following that, we explore three ways the geoengineering discussion could potentially become more gender-aware.

Who Is Pushing Geoengineering?

In an article written in 2011 for the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Australian environmental commentator Clive Hamilton lambasted what he called “the geoclique” currently responsible for much of the geoengineering discourse. Using a term coined by Eli Kintisch (2010), Hamilton argued that global debate on geoengineering is dominated by a remarkably short and recurring list of individuals. According to Hamilton, this group is made up of “a very small group of North American scientists”—harboring mostly “Promethean” views of a “science-as-saviour” culture—who have made themselves the “go to guys” on climate engineering (Hamilton 2011). Hamilton suggested this clique lacks an appreciation, more common in Europe, for the “complexity and capriciousness” of the earth.

Although Hamilton’s characterization may be critiqued—some European governments are actively funding geoengineering research—it is beyond question that the geoengineering discussion is not being driven by a representative sample of those with a stake in it.

An early study of media reports on geoengineering counted the assertions made about geoengineering in print and online news articles through mid-2010, and found that women made just 3% of those assertions (15 out of 500). Women were simply not being quoted on this topic (Buck 2013).² In geoengineering science, women author research less often than men. A look at the top 100 journal articles sorted by relevance in EBSCO Academic Search Premier—a multidisciplinary database—revealed that 17% of authors were women.³ A similar level of representation was found at the IPCC expert meeting on geoengineering held in Lima, Peru in June 2011, where 8 of the 51 attendees were women (15%) (IPCC 2012, 97). Furthermore, when women do appear in the discourse, it is frequently—though not exclusively—within domains peripheral to the “hard science” of geoengineering: social science, policy, and ethics.

Women’s under-representation in engineering more generally has been highly criticized, often out of concerns about women accessing opportunities to succeed in these fields or about lost innovation opportunities. Part of our disquiet about women’s under-representation here, however, lies not so much in the idea that women/society are missing out on geoengineering careers/discoveries, but in the framing and decision-making powers that participation in geoengineering research implies. Women’s under-representation in the early discussions of geoengineering is consistent with a more general pattern of “power inequalities in decision-making” about natural resources (Arora-Jonsson 2011, 749). In a draft report written for the Green Political Foundation, Christa Wichterich notes a persistent glass ceiling and lack of “recognition of feminine expertise” in climate matters:

Only after 14 rounds of negotiations, did the UNFCCC secretariat finally call on the parties to carry out gender-sensitive measures in 2008. When UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon assembled an advisory group on Climate Change Financing in 2010, however, he appointed 19 men. Following vehement protests, the high-level body was expanded to include then French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde. (Wichterich 2012, 4)

These low figures provoke all sorts of questions (Denton 2002). Emerging technologies are subject to rapid and contentious framing in the print and electronic media. Exactly how (and by whom) the technology gets framed has broad implications for which of the numerous ethical and political dimensions of geoengineering are seen as most salient (Nisbet 2009; Scott 2012). Women currently have a minority voice in explaining what geoengineering is and in influencing how it is presented in the media.

Of course, the gender breakdown of the participants in these types of discussions does not tell the whole story. Equally important as who is doing the talking and the framing is what are they talking about. Matters here appear to be improving, but progress is slow and still mixed (Dankelman 2002). Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does now consider women and gender issues when considering impacts, adaptation, and vulnerabilities (for example, IPCC 2007), but only in 2011 were efforts to include references to gender throughout the Green Climate Fund finally successful (Wichterich 2012, 14). A submission by the Asia-Pacific Women’s Group to the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June of 2012 did add a gender component to the nascent geoengineering discourse, stating that:

Women are greatly concerned by corporate driven technological solutions to climate change that are harmful to the planet and people. Such technologies must be subject to rigorous, transparent and participatory assessments including the implications on women’s and children’s health and well being. (APWMGS 2012, 18)

Yet a meeting held simultaneously in Lima, Peru that discussed geoengineering at the IPCC for the first time did not include the words “women” or “gender” anywhere in its ninety-nine-page meeting report. The report mentioned the word “justice” only once. Although it’s certainly imaginable that these sorts of omissions might be justified by the nature and intent of any one particular meeting, the omissions raise questions about whether decision-making power is already skewed (Dankelman 2002; Arora-Jonsson 2011) and the geoengineering agenda currently reflects only the visions of those who dominate it.

Geoengineering and the Domination of Nature

Path-breaking work in ecofeminism in the 1980s and 1990s found the roots of the environmental crisis in a masculinist approach to nature that favored objectification and domination of the nonhuman world (Merchant 1980; Plumwood 1994). Reductivist and mechanistic trends coupled with a Baconian view of scientific knowledge as “power over nature” led to the idea of science best serving human needs only through complete and total control of the nonhuman, transforming nature “from a teacher to a slave” (Merchant 1980, 169). The image of nature as machine, devoid of animus, ready to be molded to serve a technology-driven civilization was the outcome of a sequence of ideas from European men such as Bacon, Harvey, Descartes, Newton, and Boyle. The machine image asserted a “new confidence in control as well as the narrow and instrumental view of nature associated with a technological outlook” (Plumwood 1994, 109). Faith in the predictability of mechanistic nature reached its apogee in the claim made by Pierre Laplace that, if given the position and the velocity of every particle in the universe, an intellect vast enough could predict all future states. For such an intellect, Laplace asserted, “nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes” (Laplace 1951, 4). The quest for certainty hinged on an understanding of nature as passive, determinate, and entirely predictable.

The old mechanist’s dream of predictability still lives on in much research, from the “hard” sciences to economics, quantitative social science, and geopolitical scenario-building. Carolyn Merchant writes: “the assumption of order is… fundamental to the concept of power, and both are integral to the modern scientific worldview” (Merchant 1980, 230). A growing appreciation of nonlinear dynamics and chaotic systems means that the confidence of early mechanists has today been replaced by a more sanguine approach to the possibility of perfect prediction in certain domains. Climate science offers a powerful example of a case where, despite huge advances in observation and modeling, the ability to precisely predict and control is limited. Although scientists can predict general trends with great confidence (IPCC 2007), the ability to model the exact nature of local impacts remains constrained. The complexity of the climate system provides a distinct caution against the flight to objectivity (Bordo 1987) and the quest for certainty.

These features of climate science spill over into a dilemma about geoengineering. On the one hand, the climate is obviously a physical system subject to the influence of incoming short-wave solar radiation, the composition of the atmosphere, and numerous chemical and hydrological parameters. Mechanistic principles clearly apply. Such a system might invite the “imposition of human purposes and treatment as an instrument for the achievement of human satisfactions” (Plumwood 1994, 110). The flavor of old hopes lingers within the geoengineer’s dream. On the other hand, the nonlinearity in the system makes the exact nature of geoengineering’s outcomes uncertain, especially on local and regional scales (Pongratz et al. 2012). This uncertainty is something almost all contemporary geoengineers are careful to acknowledge, if to differing degrees. Alan Robock thinks that the “inherent risks and uncertainties” are enough to prevent SRM from “ever be[ing] implemented on a global basis” (Robock 2012, 202). Juan Moreno-Cruz and his colleagues suggest that regional inequalities “may not be as severe as is often suggested” (Moreno-Cruz et al. 2011, 649).

In the first article written by an ethicist on geoengineering, Dale Jamieson lamented the hubris in “attempts to manipulate nature in order to make it conform to our desires rather than forming our desires in response to nature” (Jamieson 1996, 331). Jamieson suggests caution with the mechanistic and manipulative metaphors that have informed technological endeavor since the scientific revolution. To the extent that those metaphors can still be found within geoengineering, Carolyn Merchant’s and Val Plumwood’s ecofeminist critiques will apply as much to the age of geoengineering as they have to earlier technological endeavors.

Hypatia Symposium – Indigenous Women, Climate Change Impacts, & Collective Action by KYLE POWYS WHYTE

Indigenous Women, Climate Change Impacts, & Collective Action

KYLE POWYS WHYTE
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University

 

The following is an excerpt, click here to read the full article

Browse the entire special issue here

1. Introduction

Indigenous peoples encompass the 370 million persons globally whose communities exercised systems of self-government derived from their own cosmologies before an ended or ongoing period of colonization. Indigenous peoples now live within areas where states, like Australia or Canada, are recognized internationally as the preeminent sovereigns (Anaya 2004). Like other communities, indigenous peoples must adapt to climate-induced ecological variations like sea-level rise, glacier retreat, and shifts in the habitat ranges of different species. Climate change adaptation refers to adjustments that populations make in response to such variations, which include actions and policies from weather-protection programs to permanent relocation. Indigenous peoples are also engaged in efforts to mitigate climate change, like transitioning to renewable sources of energy and contesting incursions of fossil-fuel-burning industries into their territories. Climate change mitigation refers to actions and policies that attempt to curtail certain variations from occurring in some way in the first place. Some indigenous peoples see adaptation and mitigation as crucial endeavors because climate variations can disrupt the systems of responsibilities their community members self-consciously rely on for living lives closely connected to the earth and its many living, nonliving, and spiritual beings, like animal species and sacred places, and interconnected collectives, like forests and water systems (Osofsky 2006; Salick and Byg 2007; Cordalis and Suagee 2008; Krakoff 2008; Macchi et al. 2008; Tauli-Corpuz and Lynge 2008; UNPFII 2008; Wildcat 2009; Kronik and Verner 2010; Tsosie 2010; Voggesser 2010; Krakoff 2011; Shearer 2011; Tebtebba 2011; Willox et al. 2011; Grossman and Parker 2012; Roehr 2012; Abate and Kronk 2013; Maldonado, Pandya, and Colombi 2013; Wotkyns 2013). Such systems include those that persist from time immemorial, like webs of reciprocal relationships between a particular community and the aquatic and terrestrial plant and animal species in their homeland. They also include systems of responsibilities emerging more recently from creative, indigenous-led efforts to establish political relationships of peaceful coexistence among neighbors like nation-states, settler towns, nongovernmental and religious organizations, subnational governments like provinces, and international bodies like the United Nations (UN). Examples include treaties, formal agreements, schedules of indigenous rights, and other political instruments that increase respect, mutual understanding, and accountability among indigenous parties and parties of other heritages and nations.

In ongoing conversations on climate change, some indigenous women articulate how seriously they take the specific responsibilities they perceive themselves to have within the systems of responsibilities that matter to their communities. Such responsibilities can range from acting as custodians and teachers of local ecological knowledge to acting as conveners of political movements aiming at respectful coexistence with neighbors. For these indigenous women, the responsibilities that they assume in their communities can expose them to harms stemming from climate change and other environmental alterations. Yet at the same time, their commitment to these responsibilities motivates them to serve as enablers of adaptation and mitigation efforts (LaDuke 1999; Denton 2002; Yanez 2009; Glazebrook 2011; Tebtebba 2011). Not all indigenous women share this view, of course; however, I show why, at least for some indigenous women, this is an important way of framing their actual and potential experiences of climate change impacts (sections II and III).

I then outline an implication of this framing for theories of political responsibility between indigenous women and parties like governments and organizations in adaptation and mitigation contexts (section IV). Political responsibilities are the attitudes and patterns of behavior that various parties are expected to express through the structure and implementation strategies of political institutions like laws, courts, policies, mandates, agencies, departments, treaties, declarations, schedules of rights, codes of ethics, agreements, memoranda of understanding, and so on. The nature and expression of these responsibilities depend on the assumptions that parties make about their roles in relation to one another. I offer a starting point for the following positions: Some indigenous women have their own unique capacities for collective action that advance adaptation and mitigation. Non-indigenous parties’ political responsibilities include deferring to indigenous women’s own knowledges of and motivations for such capacities for collective action. Deference can be expressed through political institutions that bolster the conditions needed to support indigenous women’s collective action (section IV). In many cases, this political responsibility is incumbent on indigenous national governments (for example, US federally recognized tribes) and political organizations (for example, Union of Ontario Indians). The positions in this paper seek to complement the work of environmental philosophers Chris Cuomo, Robert Figueroa, and Patricia Glazebrook, who have recently argued that responsibility must be thought of in terms of the unique agencies of indigenous and other populations—instead of focusing only on vulnerabilities (Cuomo 2011; Figueroa2011; Glazebrook 2011).¹ More work beyond this paper should seek to further clarify the political reforms needed to support indigenous women’s collective agencies for adapting to and mitigating climate change (section V).

2. Climate Change Impacts, Collective Continuance, and Indigenous Peoples

Section I cited the growing academic, policy, and grey literature (informally published written material) documenting actual and potential climate change impacts on indigenous peoples. A key dimension of this literature concerns how climate change impacts affect the various culturally derived responsibilities assumed by some indigenous persons as participants in particular communities. In this section, I describe the basics of why these cultural effects matter. This view arises from my perspective and particular experiences as a Potawatomi Indian living in the US, from my conversations and collaborations regarding climate change with numerous indigenous persons within and outside of North America, and from engagement with relevant academic literature from several disciplines. Although this view may not reflect the diversity of views among all indigenous peoples about climate change, I feel it nonetheless highlights important elements of the discourses cited in section I and in which I am involved as a participant.

Impacts include variations of the patterns of community relations of diverse entities. These patterns are the structures of organization, which include political, societal, cultural, religious, and familial institutions that tie together humans and multiple living, non-living, and spiritual beings, and natural interdependent collectives (forested areas, species habitats, water cycles, and so on). Climate-induced variations—or climate change impacts—are the impacts arising based on the capacity of patterns of community relations to absorb local ecological alterations stemming from climate change (Liu et al. 2007; Cuomo 2011). Climate change impacts are disruptive when structures of organization can absorb the ecological changes only by changing key components of the structures themselves. For example, sea-level rise may force a community to relocate and adopt a new economy. Shifting growing seasons may require a community to change its diet. Climate-enabled invasive species may require a community to adopt new and more attentive environmental stewardship. Such disruptions are often experienced as harmful to certain values (as in the case of a changing diet), but can also serve as a motivation for improvements (as in the case of more attentive environmental stewardship).

Many indigenous persons interpret climate change impacts as jeopardizing the values associated with the collective continuance of the communities in which they participate. Collective continuance is a community’s aptitude for being adaptive in ways sufficient for the livelihoods of its members to flourish into the future. The flourishing of livelihoods refers to both indigenous conceptions of (1) how to contest colonial hardships, like religious discrimination and disrespect for treaty rights, and (2) how to pursue comprehensive aims at robust living, like building cohesive societies, vibrant cultures, strong subsistence and commercial economies, and peaceful relations with a range of neighbors, from settler towns to nation-states to the United Nations (UN). Given (1) and (2), indigenous collective continuance can be seen as a community’s fitness for making adjustments to current or predicted change in ways that contest colonial hardships and embolden comprehensive aims at robust living (Whyte 2013).

Climate change impacts can be understood as affecting the quality of the relationships that constitute collective continuance. According to this view, collective continuance is composed of and oriented around the many relationships within single communities and amid neighboring communities that persons assume based on their culturally framed perceptions of what matters. The capacity to contest colonial hardships, for example, may require relationships of solidarity among community members that cultivate political action, furnish healing from colonial traumas (like boarding schools), and ignite spiritual awakening (Ortiz and Chino 1980; Alfred 1999; LaDuke 1999; Tinker 2004; Green 2007). It may also require establishing relationships of trust and common political purpose across indigenous peoples who face similar hardships (Mayer 2007; Grossman 2008). The capacity to build cohesive societies, vibrant cultures, and subsistence economies may require close-knit family and social relationships, such as strong intergenerational ties and shared experiences between elders and youth and sustainable regimes of land-tenure (Merculieff 2007; Trosper 2009; Wildcat 2009; Tebtebba2011). Emotion-laden relationships among species and with features of the land (like rivers or mountains) and natural interdependent collectives may also be required (Willox et al. 2011). Commercial economies require relationships that generate feasible, culturally appropriate opportunities and relationships that regulate economic production (Trosper 2007; Ranco et al. 2011). Peaceful relations with neighbors require relationships that respect the differences of each community in terms of culture, relative power to exploit one another, specific needs, and capacities to exercise agency (Alfred 1999; Holmes, Lickers, and Barkley 2002; Napoleon 2005; Turner 2006; Davis2010; Ross et al. 2010; Middleton 2011).

The significances of these relationships are realized through the responsibilities incumbent on the parties to the relationships. That is, to be in a relationship is to have responsibilities toward the others in the relationship. Many indigenous authors have described the idea of responsibility. I interpret them as seeing responsibilities as the reciprocal (though not necessarily equal) attitudes and patterns of behavior that are expected by and of various parties by virtue of the assumptions made about how the parties relate to one another within a community context (Weaver 1996; Alfred 1999; LaDuke 1999; Kimmerer 2000; Pierotti and Wildcat 2000; Borrows 2002; Mayer 2007; McGregor 2009; Wildcat 2009). For example, elders may assume responsibilities to mentor youth by passing on wisdom or leading certain ceremonies; younger generations are, in turn, responsible for learning actively from the elders about the nonhuman, spiritual, and ritualistic dimensions of the community and its conception of the earth, its living, nonliving, and spiritual beings, and natural interdependent collectives. A community may have a responsibility to care for salmon habitat; salmon, in turn, may provide food and support for other species. Community members may be responsible for kindling spirituality by not evaluating their fellow community members according to colonial stereotypes about indigenous women or by visibly standing up against policies that victimize some people because they are indigenous women (Smith 2005). Such may be understood as a mutual responsibility of honor and respect among community members. International bodies like the UN may have responsibilities to respect emerging norms that acknowledge the special needs and knowledges of indigenous peoples (Anaya 2004; Mauro and Hardison 2000). These and other similar responsibilities are among the constitutive features of collective continuance because—on this view—they enable the contesting of colonial hardships and the pursuit of robust living. Some indigenous people’s concern with collective continuance has to do with maintaining the capacity to be adaptive with respect to relational responsibilities, or all those relationships and their corresponding responsibilities that facilitate the future flourishing of indigenous lives that are closely connected to the earth and its many living and nonliving beings and natural interdependent collectives. I refer to relational responsibilities as responsibilities in the rest of the paper.

Responsibilities constitute collective continuance as part of larger systems of interconnected responsibilities. Systems of responsibilitiesare the actual schemes of roles and relationships that serve as the background against which particular responsibilities stand out as meaningful and binding. For example, a responsibility to maintain species habitat is part of a more comprehensive web of interspecies responsibilities that are tied to a community’s cosmology. Cosmology refers to the fundamental way in which community members, in common, experience everything around them as endowed or not with agency, spirituality, and connectedness. Systems of responsibilities have intrinsic value and instrumental value for communities. For example, in Wabanaki culture the responsibilities surrounding berry plants have intrinsic value because they are integral to customs and rituals and establish part of the cultural status of Wabanaki women (Lynn et al. 2013). Thus, an entire system of responsibilities is embedded in and permeates everything about the berry plants. The system has intrinsic value because it is essential for framing certain dimensions of Wabanaki existence. The berry plants have instrumental value because they are superfoods, according to nutritionists, having health benefits like cardiovascular protection. Even systems of responsibilities amid communities have both kinds of value. For example, the government-to-government relation between the US and federally recognized tribes has intrinsic value because it can honor, at least in part, indigenous senses of nationhood. It also has instrumental value because respecting tribal sovereignty is considered to be the best way to formulate, implement, and assess policies (Lynn et al. 2013; Whyte 2013).

The concept of collective continuance identifies a range of values that some indigenous persons hold in relation to the patterns of community life in which they participate. The relationships and responsibilities constitutive of collective continuance can be disrupted by climate change impacts. A reason for this is that climate change impacts can alter the ecological contexts in which systems of responsibilities are meaningful. Changes in landscapes may engender fewer opportunities for elders to assume the responsibility to teach youth in practical situations. Climate change may affect the range, quality, and quantity of species like berries, making it more difficult or even impossible for tribal members to assume the responsibilities they perceive themselves to have toward those species (Lynn et al. 2013). Anishinaabe scholar Deborah McGregor, for example, discusses how variable weather patterns, invasive species, and widely fluctuating temperatures are engendering spring conditions that make it hard to have sensitive knowledge about when to begin or stop tapping maple trees for syrup. Making syrup is a traditional cultural and familial activity that spans generations and provides a source of nourishment for family and community members. Multiple, interconnected responsibilities are bound up in this activity, among young and old, siblings, between humans and trees, and natural interconnected collectives (GLIFWC 2006; Cave et al. 2011). Disruptions of webs of responsibilities involved in relations with elders, berries, and maple trees jeopardize some of what is valued intrinsically and extrinsically by certain indigenous peoples. The severity of disruption is of course influenced and amplified by the obstructive political orders rooted in colonialism, industrialization, imperialism, and globalization to which many indigenous peoples are subject. I treat these obstructive circumstances in more detail elsewhere, though I do not discuss them in any substantial detail here (Whyte 2013).

Hypatia Symposium: Comments open until July 20th

The discussion isn’t showing any signs of slowing down at the Hypatia Symposium, so we’re extending the comment period for another week, until July 20th. Perhaps even longer if there are still fruitful discussions to be had.

Below, we’ve cherry picked one or two comments ‘overheard’ in the discussion threads of the symposium pieces to give you a quick flavour of discussion taking place. Your voice is welcome.

Recently ‘overheard’ at the symposium…

• “…But surely animals are not the only objects we fear and cannot neatly define…” http://bit.ly/MqG0g4 
•  “…I wonder at Steiner’s comment about feminist theory not being “useful” and hope to see an elaboration in future” http://bit.ly/NmiDGf 
•  “…what would it mean to rethink ethics such that we imagine that we have obligations to those who are not like us?” http://bit.ly/NuRjUL 
•  “…caring about animal suffering means caring less about the suffering of human women…” http://bit.ly/OCCfWg 
•  “…Derrida’s writings on animals have opened up Continental philosophy to animal welfare issues…” http://bit.ly/P4uEn5

 

Hypatia Symposium: Speaking of Animal Bodies by GRETA GAARD

In Hypatia 27.3, a special issue on “Animal Others”, leading feminist animal studies scholars, Lori Gruen (author of Ethics and Animals: An Introduction) and Kari Weil (author of Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now) present exciting new work on the intersections of sex, race, gender, and species. As co-editors of the special issue, Gruen and Weil invited six scholars to reflect on some of the lively debates occurring within this burgeoning new field of scholarship. Join the discussion.

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Title:  Speaking of Animal Bodies

 By: GRETA GAARD

Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-River Falls

Read the full special issue here

Download a PDF of this Symposium

Has the growth of animal studies been good for animals?

The capacity to ask this question—indeed, to make it central to one’s intellectual, scholarly, and pedagogical work—is the hallmark of feminism. Not merely an academic endeavor or a “way of seeing,” feminism emerged through women who recognized their own lived experiences of marginalization, oppression, and inequality (whether via race, gender, class, sexuality, age, ability—and usually some nexus thereof) not as personal deficits or biological necessities to be accepted and endured, but rather as socially produced political problems to be challenged. As political and material circumstances allowed (and often when they didn’t), feminist women stepped forward to work with other women and feminist men to challenge social hierarchies and create social change. From the start, feminism has been a