Feminism and the Mastery of Nature

Two of the most important political movements of the late twentieth century are those of environmentalism and feminism. In this book, Val Plumwood argues that feminist theory has an important opportunity to make a major contribution to the debates in political ecology and environmental philosophy.

Feminism and the Mastery of Nature explains the relation between ecofeminism, or ecological feminism, and other feminist theories including radical green theories such as deep ecology. Val Plumwood provides a philosophically informed account of the relation of women and nature, and shows how relating male domination to the domination of nature is important and yet remains a dilemma for women.

Some outdoors enthusiasts pursue “peak bagging”—trying to get to the summit of as many mountains in a given area as possible. The language of “bagging” comes from hunting—you put small animals that you kill “in the bag.” All this talk of bagging presupposes an adversarial relationship with nature, with humans in the dominant position. The ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood argues that the human domination of nature and gender-based oppression are linked. Both rely on thinking that’s structured by mutually reinforcing dualisms—human/nature, masculine/feminine, reason/emotion, self/other, and so on—where one half of each pairing is seen as superior to the other. She thinks this kind of dualistic thinking even finds its way into a lot of environmental philosophy. In its place, she advocates an ethic of care in which we recognize that our own interests are essentially connected to the interests of others. We don’t flourish by dominating others but by caring for one another—and for the world around us. This is the topic of the fourth week of my online course, “The World Around Us: Philosophy and the Environment.”