Care and sustainability of life: dialogues between agroecology and feminist political ecology
Diana Lilia Trevilla Espinal[1] and Maritza Islas Vargas[2]
Today, the devastation wrought by the pandemic clearly reveals the unequal and destructive nature of the dominant economic system, as well as the consequences of ecosystem destruction and the dismantling of public care infrastructure (hospitals, shelters, schools) (Islas, 2020a). In this context, proposing a non-anthropocentric care policy becomes necessary and vital. In this regard, the lessons and reflections emanating from agroecology and feminist political ecology can prove useful.
Although there is no single definition of care, we know that it is an essential part of our lives; that everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, requires and provides care; that care includes the activities and time that people dedicate daily to the well-being of others; that it involves activities such as housework (e.g., cleaning, cooking, tidying, shopping, planning daily activities), as well as the direct care of people who need to be cared for, fed, and bathed (e.g., the sick, children). We also know that, in most cases, the time and activities of care fall on women and feminized bodies; that care is differentiated and unequal due to sexism, racism, and classism; and that the conditions under which care is provided are increasingly precarious (Pérez-Orozco, 2014; Trevilla, 2018). All these situations have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and have become increasingly evident.
When we also consider care from a socio-environmental perspective, we can see that it is not only about attending to priority groups and that precarity is not only affecting caregivers, but life itself is being deteriorated.
Care sustains life, and thus, the socio-environmental perspective of care implies understanding it in a broad sense: as a process of preserving existence and as a process of (re)generating social bonds and human and non-human connections. In this sense, the contributions of thought and practice that have been forged, above all, in feminist economics, ecofeminism, and popular environmentalism, allow us to understand that caring for nature is caring for ourselves; that is, there is an undeniable relationship of interdependence and ecodependence (Svampa, 2015; Mies and Shiva, 1998; Martínez-Alier, 2004), and that the fracturing or denial of this relationship, as it has been carried out by the current economic system, is what is leading us to the bioclimatic disaster we face today (Bosch et al., 2005; Carrasco, 2009; Herrero, 2012).
One thing we can observe in socio-environmental justice movements, led primarily by Indigenous, peasant, Afro-descendant, and other popular sectors, is the constant denunciation of historical impoverishment and plunder. At the same time, they demonstrate how the diverse logics and ties that bind them to their territories, as well as the complex web of human and non-human life, are threatened by the increasingly widespread and intense aggressions stemming from the accelerated dynamics of the current mode of production (Moreno, 2017). The conflicts and consequences of the destruction of these bonds of coexistence, which some of us once viewed as somewhat distant, are now knocking on our doors and entering our homes in the form of new viruses and diseases.
Currently, it is undeniable that the pandemic we face is associated with the transgression against other species and their habitats by extractive activities such as mining, agribusiness, fracking, and accelerated urbanization—all activities intimately linked to the development of capitalism (Islas, 2020b). The proliferation of zoonotic diseases can only be explained by the way we relate to and treat other species. Likewise, it is increasingly clear that the crises we are currently experiencing (financial, economic, climate, and social reproduction) are linked to a heteropatriarchal, capitalist, and colonialist power structure that, by ensuring the continuity of an economic, political, and cultural model based on the accelerated and intensive extraction and exploitation of human labor and territories, threatens life in its broadest sense (ecosystems, agrobiodiversity, cultures, and diverse ways of inhabiting territories). This power structure, by undermining the basic conditions of care (e.g., the availability of clean water, healthy food, unpolluted air), by generating viruses and respiratory, gastrointestinal, and psychological diseases (depression, anxiety), and by causing uncertainty and vulnerability in the people we care for and require care, affects our lives daily, systematically, and permanently.
Thinking about care from a socio-environmental perspective, or from the complex web of life, implies recognizing and remembering that we inhabit the Earth, that we belong to a territory, that we constantly interact and coexist with other living beings, with other natural systems and cycles that allow us to survive. In short, what happens to other beings and to our territories affects us and undermines our ability not only to care, but also to live.
This complex web of life on a planetary scale calls us to act with the awareness that we cannot isolate ourselves or be indifferent to the destruction taking place in different geographical areas. Central economies and cities continue to transfer their waste and toxic industries to other territories, affecting and annihilating ecosystems and the communities they impact. Precisely, the environmental perspective conceived through the lens of feminist political ecology points to the fact that the effects of environmental disaster affect us all. However, the consequences are always experienced unequally due to the intersection of gender, race, and class; that is, they affect the most politically and economically vulnerable more severely, for example, women from impoverished populations and racialized communities. Therefore, some key points for beginning to link care with other economic, political, and cultural processes are:
- That caregiving is not an exclusive responsibility of women.
- That care is not only for/with people, but indispensable to sustain the complex web of life.
- That care does not only occur in the domestic space-home, but in different areas of life.
- Caring for life requires analyzing relationships with other living beings and with the territory.
- Ensuring the material conditions for care implies a questioning of the city-countryside, center-periphery dynamics.
- That there are other ways of life, other epistemologies that care right now and have been for a long time, which are fundamental to value from other places of reflection and action beyond the forms of organization of care that we regularly perceive and discuss from urban-white-mestizo perspectives.
Therefore, care from a socio-environmental perspective implies recognizing that nature is a subject with the right to care, that is, that life itself, with all its complexity, needs to be cared for, and that there is a co-responsibility with the species with which we cohabit, as well as with everything that coexists on Earth.
Agroecology as a practical alternative for caring for life
In contexts where structural violence is such that the preservation of life is threatened in multiple ways and on different scales, from the individual to the collective, the various mobilizations against frackingThe struggles against mining, against dams, in defense of native corn, and against megaprojects are prime examples of the fight for life, where the demands themselves offer an alternative (Transnational Corporations Laboratory, 2017). Peasant movements, for instance, that oppose genetically modified corn and demand its prohibition, also advocate for the care of the land through the defense of native seed planting and all associated knowledge.
In the case of feminist agroecology, it questions, from a structural and intersectional perspective, the effects of the current agri-food system, which not only denies and makes invisible the work and knowledge of women – especially those who are subaltern – but also privileges the accumulation of capital and the commodification of food, with serious effects on ecosystems and on people's health (Siliprandi and Zuluaga, 2014; Zuluaga et al. 2018).
Feminist agroecology values and centers all those processes of defending life, land, and territory that occur in domestic and community spaces, primarily led by women and linked to care (Trevilla and Peña, 2019). In various agroecological organizational experiences, particularly through the construction of gardens as a pedagogical and awareness-raising strategy and as an alternative for self-sufficiency, it is possible to identify spaces for encounter and processes of care.
We say that agroecological gardens are practical alternatives because they allow us to discuss and experience the care of life. Working in the garden involves engaging with the whole body: seeing, smelling, feeling, perceiving the time of each process, of each seed; revaluing the role of each cohabitant (insects, pollinators, birds, small mammals) and the work of each person with whom we connect. Furthermore, when the garden is cultivated collectively, the time spent tending it is shared, generating and strengthening interpersonal relationships. In this way, gardens become spaces for being and sharing time and knowledge (of nutrition, health, ancestral medicine); spaces for relaxation and companionship.
On the other hand, gardens constitute an alternative for caring for the land, with the potential to be spaces for caring for the territory because they involve:
- Creating and nurturing relationships with other people, based on consumer networks and learning communities.
- Regenerate the soil, protect diversity, contribute to the care of other living beings and ecosystems.
- Develop skills to maintain these spaces for planting, management, use of medicinal plants, nutritious recipes, and support in learning with other people.
- To involve children, youth, women, and men of all ages in care in a broad sense.
The challenge lies in politicizing and problematizing care in these spaces, with a view to linking care with agroecology and vice versa.
The contributions and experiences of many people in different places provide clues for articulating proposals that consider the care of life in this broad sense, aware that to think about alternatives it is also necessary to think about those actors and dynamics that threaten life and its care, that is, not only to analyze what the alternatives propose or do, but also the business, governmental, legal, and political obstacles that prevent these alternatives from spreading.
Towards a comprehensive public policy for care
Current public policies, especially regarding the care of people, land, and territory, continue to operate according to a logic of commodification. First, there are no comprehensive care policies, but rather a system of assistance programs for children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Most of these programs are insufficient and increasingly consist of cash transfers, while the strengthening of public institutions for health, education, and food security is neglected. The infrastructure of care (hospitals, daycare centers, schools, nursing homes, shelters) is being dismantled, as are labor, cultural, and social rights. In short, the trend remains the privatization and commodification of life and care. And just as there is a push to privatize care, there is also a push to privatize the preservation of biodiversity.
In the area of land stewardship and food production, support is concentrated in large agribusinesses, while small-scale farmers continue to cultivate under adverse conditions. Furthermore, in Mexico and several other Latin American countries, regarding the protection of territory and biodiversity, government interest is seen as focused on alliances with large foreign corporations for extractive megaprojects: mining, electricity, oil, and large-scale tourism, which infringe upon the collective rights of Indigenous, peasant, and Afro-descendant communities. Simultaneously, “conservation” projects, financed by these same private and foreign corporations under the logic of carbon credits or other market mechanisms, are proliferating.
Therefore, to incorporate the socio-environmental perspective of care into public policy, we must first acknowledge the complex dynamics of the ecosystems in which we are embedded and on which we depend. This implies that the degradation of natural conditions has destructive repercussions for the economy and society itself. Thus, public policy design must incorporate the interdependent relationship between social and economic systems and ecosystems and their natural cycles.
Secondly, it is necessary to question the conventional ways of understanding and explaining the society-nature relationship, that is, these dichotomous, hierarchical, mechanistic, instrumental ways that we learn in school spaces and that become performative, that is, that they not only name the world, but at the same time construct it.
Thirdly, something that ecofeminism and popular environmentalism have emphasized a lot is the need for a politics of otherness and diversity, that is, not a politics that subjugates but one that recognizes differences in values and ways of life.
Fourth, it is necessary to stop prioritizing the economic and technocratic rationality that governs current politics, so that non-monetary values can be incorporated into decisions—that is, ethical, ecological, and symbolic considerations. If we truly want to chart different political courses, we must begin by changing practices. To this end, in addition to focusing on public policies that reinvest in social spending and on policies aimed at redistributing wealth or restricting its accumulation in the hands of a few, politics must stop reinforcing an economy based solely on the principle of the endless accumulation of profits and the exploitation of nature and human beings.
While the demand for comprehensive public care policies does not imply abandoning non-governmental, collective, and autonomous care strategies, we do consider it necessary to create truly deprivatizing public policies that respond to demands centered on life, while continuing to debate that care is not something that only concerns or matters to women. Care is transversal to life and is related to labor and peasant rights, territorial autonomy, the defense of forests, agroecological farming, and many other struggles for life.
[1] Member of the Care Network in Mexico, the Alliance of Women in Agroecology, and the Network of Creators, Researchers, and Activists. She also participates in feminist collectives, urban gardening groups, and responsible consumption initiatives. Doctoral candidate at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur-Mexico. Research topics: care, agroecology, and feminisms.
[2] Member of the Working Group “Global Environmental Change, Local Social Metabolism” of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO); professor at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Doctoral candidate in the Postgraduate Program in Sustainability Sciences at UNAM. Research topics: political ecology of extractivism, socio-environmental conflicts, and climate change.
Highlighted
Bosch, Anna, Cristina Carrasco, and Elena Grau. 2005. Green, I Love You Violet: Encounters and Disagreements Between Feminism and Environmentalism. History Tells the Story. From Economic Growth to Sustainable Human Development. Spain: El Viejo Topo.
Carrasco, Cristina. 2009. Women, sustainability and social debt. Journal of Education. Special Issue: 169-191.
Herrero, Yayo. 2012. Ecofeminist perspectives for building an economy compatible with a good life. Sustainability of life. Contributions from the solidarity, feminist and ecological economy, Reas-EUSKADI, pp. 55-64.
Islas, Maritza. 2020a. Lessons from the emergency: between the coronavirus and climate change. Nexos. https://medioambiente.nexos.com.mx/?p=273
Islas, Maritza. 2020b. The world after the coronavirus and the reorganization of fossil capitalism. Revista común. https://www.revistacomun.com/blog/el-mundo-despus-del-coronavirus-y-la-reorganizacin-del-capitalismo-fsil
Laboratory of Transnational Corporations. 2017. Resistance against transnational corporations. http://let.iiec.unam.mx/node/1125
Martínez-Alier, Joan. 2004. The environmentalism of the poor. Environmental conflicts and languages of valuation. Barcelona: Icaria.
Mies, Maria and Vandana Shiva. 1998. The praxis of ecofeminism. Biotechnology, consumption and reproduction. Barcelona: Icaria.
Moreno Reyes, Amiel Aketzali. 2017. “Never again a Mexico without us.” The participation of women in the political project of the National Indigenous Congress. Political Ecology 54: 95-99.
Pérez-Orozco, Amaia. 2014. Feminist Subversion of the Economy. Contributions to a Debate on the Capital-Life Conflict. Madrid: Traficantes de sueños.
Siliprandi, Emma and Gloria Zuluaga (Coords). 2014. Gender, agroecology and food sovereignty. Ecofeminist perspectives. Barcelona: Icaria.
Svampa, Maristella. 2015. Southern feminisms and ecofeminism. Nueva Sociedad 256: 127-131.
Trevilla, Diana. 2018. Ecofeminisms and agroecology in dialogue for the defense of life. La Agroecóloga Magazine. http://agroecologa.org/ecofeminismos-y-agroecologia-en-dialogo-para-la-defensa-de-la-vida/
Trevilla, Diana and Ivett Peña. 2019. (Eco)feminist notes from Abya Yala for food sovereignty. Latin American Geocritical Bulletin. Dossier: Geographies of gender and feminisms-in-and-from-Latin-America, (2): 77-84.
Zuluaga, Gloria, Georgina Catacora and Emma Siliprandi (coords). 2018. Agroecology in Feminine. Reflections from our experiences. Bolivia: SOCLA.
Websites
Alliance of Women in Agroecology AMA-AWA https://amaawaagroeco.wixsite.com/ama-awa/us
RECIAS Network of creators, researchers and activists https://recias.wordpress.com/author/recias/
Care network in Mexico http://www.redcuidadosmx.org/
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