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Ariel Salleh

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Ariel Salleh
Salleh in 2019
NationalityAustralian
OccupationSociologist

Ariel Salleh is an Australian sociologist who writes on humanity-nature relations, political ecology, social change movements, and ecofeminism.

Key concepts

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Embodied materialism

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In contrast to idealist ecofeminisms coming from philosophy and cultural studies, Salleh's materialist analysis is closer to that of fellow sociologists Maria Mies in Germany and Mary Mellor in the United Kingdom.[1] Reproductive labor and economic use value are central themes here. Salleh's book Ecofeminism as Politics outlines the scope of an embodied materialist feminism, offering a transdisciplinary analysis of the deeply sex-gendered roots of capitalist patriarchal culture. It offers one of the earliest eco-socialist statements, though often not recognised as such because of its feminist framework.[2]

Originary contradiction

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In theorising the contemporary ecological crisis, Salleh argues that all 'humans-are-nature-in-embodied form'.[3] However, from pre-capitalist patriarchal times and onwards through the European scientific revolution into modernity, the roles of men and women have been constructed differently with respect to the metabolism of human societies within nature. In this imaginary, men have been said to represent Humanity and civilisation, as women and later indigenous peoples are 'othered' as 'closer to nature'. Salleh traces the multiple everyday impacts of this 'originary contradiction'. They include the instrumental resourcing of labour - extractions from women's bodies in the first instance, colonised ethnicities next - 'as nature', while the Eurocentric 'Humanity over nature' ideology is used to justify that systemic hierarchy of exploitation.[4]

Meta-industrial class

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The integration of decolonial, women's, and worker struggles for ecology with justice pivots on Salleh's analysis of 'meta-industrial labour'.[5] Following Marx's inspiration, she reasons dialectically to extend his understanding of industrial labour to the hands-on lay knowledges of women, domestic providers, small farmers, and hunter-gatherers. Joining ecology back together with economics, she highlights the way in which meta-industrial labour meets social and embodied needs while simultaneously sustaining natural processes. This way of provisioning directly counters the entropic degradation or metabolic rift caused by capitalist extractivism and industrialisation.[6]

Movement of movements

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While mainstream neoliberal policy continues to marginalise and commodify meta-industrial labour, Salleh urges political activists to embrace the embodied knowledge skills of meta-industrials and learn from their grounded empirical epistemology and vernacular science.[7] She maintains that the worldwide unity of meta-industrial labour - the forces of re-production - through political actions like the World Social Forums and Global Tapestry of Alternatives, is essential to build a pluriversal and life-affirming Earth Democracy.[8]

Bibliography

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  • (1990) The Politics of Representation, Arena, 91: 163-169.
  • (1997) Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern. London: Zed Books and New York: St Martins Press.[9]
  • (1999) Dialogue with Meira Hanson: On Production and Reproduction, Identity and Non-identity, Organization & Environment, 12: 207-218.
  • (2001) Sustaining Nature or Sustaining Marx? Reply to John Foster and Paul Burkett, Organization & Environment, 1: 43-450.
  • (2001) Interview with Maria Mies: Women, Nature, and the International Division of Labour, in Veronika Bennoldt-Thomsen et al. (eds.), There Is An Alternative. London: Zed Books.
  • (2001) Ecofeminism in Victor Taylor and Charles Winquist (eds.), The Postmodern Encyclopaedia. London: Routledge.
  • (2004) Global Alternatives and the Meta-Industrial Class in Robert Albritton et al. (eds.), New Socialisms: Futures Beyond Globalization. New York: Routledge.
  • (2005) Deeper than Deep Ecology in Baird Callicott and Clare Palmer (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Vols. 1-5. London: Routledge.
  • (2006) Social Ecology and the Man Question in Piers Stephens, John Barry, and Andrew Dobson (eds.), Contemporary Environmental Politics. London: Routledge.
  • (2009) 'The Dystopia of Technoscience: An Ecofeminist Critique of Postmodern Reason', Futures, 41/4, 201-209.
  • (2009) Eco-Sufficiency & Global Justice: women write political ecology. London: Pluto Press and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.[10]
  • (2010) 'From Metabolic Rift to Metabolic Value: Reflections on Environmental Sociology and the Alternative Globalization Movement', Organization & Environment, 23/2, 205-219.
  • (2012) with Mary Mellor, Katharine Farrell, and Vandana Shiva, 'How Ecofeminists Use Complexity in Ecological Economics' in Katharine Farrell, Tommaso Luzzati, and Sybille van den Hove (eds.), Beyond Reductionism. London: Routledge, 154-178. (2011) 'Climate Strategy: Making the Choice between Ecological Modernisation or "Living Well"', Journal of Australian Political Ec
  • (2017) 'Ecofeminism' in Clive Spash (ed.), Ecological Economics: Nature and Society. London: Routledge.
  • (2019) 'Ecofeminism as (Marxist) Sociology' in Khayaat Fakier, Diana Mulinari, and Nora Rathzel (eds.) Marxist Feminist Theories and Struggles Today: Essential Writings on Intersectionality, Labour, and Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books.
  • (2019) Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria and Alberto Acosta (eds.) Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. New York: Columbia University Press and New Delhi: Tulika/ AuthorsUpFront.
  • (2020) 'A Materialist Ecofeminist Reading of the Green Economy' in Hamed Hosseini, James Goodman, Sara Motta, and Barry Gills (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies. London: Routledge.
  • (2020) '"Holding" a Just and Ecological Peace' in Joe Camilleri and Deborah Guess (eds.) Towards a Just and Ecologically Sustainable Peace. Singapore: Palgrave.
  • (2020) 'An Embodied Materialist Sociology' in Michael Bell, Michael Carolan, Julie Keller, and Katharine Legun (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

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  1. ^ Ariel Salleh (2017) 'Ecofeminism' in Clive Spash (ed.), Handbook of Ecological Economics. London and New York: Routledge, p. 49. See Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. London Zed Books, 1987 and Mary Mellor, Feminism and Ecology. London: Virago, 1997.
  2. ^ Ariel Salleh, Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx, and the postmodern. London: Zed Books and New York: Palgrave, 1997/2017.
  3. ^ Ariel Salleh, (2005). 'Moving to an Embodied Materialism', Capitalism Nature Socialism, 16(2), 9-14.
  4. ^ Salleh, Ecofeminism (1997/2017).
  5. ^ Canavan, G., Klarr, L., & Vu, R. (2010) 'Embodied Materialism in Action: an Interview with Ariel Salleh', Polygraph, 22, 183. Also Ariel Salleh (2004) 'Global Alternatives and the Meta-Industrial Class' in Albritton, R., Bell, S., Westra, R., (eds.), New Socialisms. London and New York: Routledge.
  6. ^ Ariel Salleh (2010) 'From Metabolic Rift to Metabolic Value: Reflections on Environmental Sociology and the Alternative Globalization Movement, Organization & Environment, 23(2): 205-219. DOI: 10.1177/1086026610372134. p. 211-212. See also Salleh in Spash (2017) p. 50.
  7. ^ Ariel Salleh (2010) 'From Metabolic Rift to Metabolic Value: Reflections on Environmental Sociology and the Alternative Globalization Movement, Organization & Environment, 23(2): 205-219. DOI: 10.1177/1086026610372134. p. 211-212. See also Salleh in Spash (2017) p. 50.
  8. ^ Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2006. Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria and Alberto Acosta (eds.) Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. New York: Columbia University Press and New Delhi: Tulika/ AuthorsUpFront, 2019.
  9. ^ Reviews of Ecofeminism as Politics
    • Musznski, Alicja (1999). "Review of Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern". Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques. 25 (4): 569–570. doi:10.2307/3552434. ISSN 0317-0861. JSTOR 3552434.
    • Srinivas, K. Ravi (1999). Salleh, Ariel (ed.). "The Challenge of Ecofeminism". Economic and Political Weekly. 34 (15): 894–895. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 4407845.
    • Murphy, Patrick D. (1999). "Review of Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx, and the Postmodern". Organization & Environment. 12 (3): 339–340. ISSN 1086-0266. JSTOR 26161482.
  10. ^ Reviews of Eco-Sufficiency & Global Justice

Sources

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