Development

Citation:

Mollett, Sharlene. 2018. “The Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve: A Postcolonial Feminist Political Ecological Reading of Violence and Territorial Struggles in Honduras.” In Land Rights, Biodiversity Conservation and Justice. Routledge.

Author: Sharlene Mollett

Abstract:

This chapter aims to rethink the relationship between “parks and people” by making visible mundane and spectacular forms of violence inside the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve. In spite of landmark territorial legislation awarded to Miskito Territorial Councils beginning in 2013, the Miskito peoples continue to face impending colono land invasions inside ancestral customary territories. Drawing from ongoing research in Honduras, this chapter blends ethnographic data collection with news media, archival documents, development reports and secondary literatures to examine the violent challenges to Miskito territorial autonomy. Such violence extends beyond the Reserve and is emplaced on the bodies of land and territorial defenders mobilized against a growing extractivist Honduran state. With a focus on a coloniality of power and postcolonial intersectional thinking, this chapter maintains that biodiversity conservation and extractive development are linked, imbued with past logics of race and gender employed in the dehumanization of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in the present. Thus, in Honduras, I argue, contemporary Indigenous struggles over land and territory are simultaneously historical contests that work to disrupt state and elite practices of Indigenous peoples’ dehumanization, in the name of modernity and development.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Conflict, Resource Conflict, Development, Environment, Extractive Industries, Gender, Indigenous, Intersectionality, Land Tenure, Race, Violence Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Honduras

Year: 2018

Citation:

Billo, Emily. 2020. “Patriarchy and Progressive Politics: Gendered Resistance to Mining through Everyday Social Relations of State Formation in Intag, Ecuador.” Human Geography 13 (1): 16–26. 

Author: Emily Billo

Abstract:

Over the last decade, the Ecuadorian government, following regional trends, called for social and environmental progress through state-controlled resource extraction. Scholars have demonstrated that this neo-extractive model warranted further investigation regarding its progressive aims. Specifically, this paper examines gendered critiques of state-led extractivism linked to expanding governmental and social programs. Even as women asserted their political recognition and rights in state politics, they still confronted patriarchal relations in their everyday lives. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic research over 6 years in campesino communities of Junín and Chalguayacu Alto, I argue that women in Intag challenged patriarchal state relations of extractive capitalism. This paper offers a novel contribution to literature on neo-extractivism and gendered forms of resistance. Women held the state accountable for its promises of social welfare and infrastructural development through which it generated public support for controversial mineral projects. These symbols of state paternalism revealed expanded patriarchal structures that underpinned their daily lives, with significance for a gendered politics of resistance.

Topics: Development, Environment, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Patriarchy Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Ecuador

Year: 2020

Citation:

Schild, Verónica. 2019. “Feminisms, the Environment and Capitalism: On the Necessary Ecological Dimension of a Critical Latin American Feminism.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 20 (6): 23–43.

Author: Verónica Schild

Abstract:

Latin American women are on the move today, taking their demands to the streets throughout the region in unprecedented numbers. What these demands reveal is a growing frustration and anger among women with the distance between official democratic promises and protections and the limited gains in basic rights, even the reversal of minimal achievements in places like Central America and Brazil. Feminists are weaving together different struggles into an intersectional movement explicitly linking gender demands to the end of a neoliberal capitalist model of development and its devastating social, economic and ecological effects on Latin America’s overwhelming majority. A critical Latin American feminism aimed at apprehending the present predicament of women in the region, I suggest, needs to extend its commitment to producing knowledge from below and to the left, by reaching further, and engaging critically with Marx and his feminist critics. Given the widespread impact of the present capitalist modernity, tethered to neo-extractivism, not only on the lives of peasant and indigenous Latin Americans but also of increasingly broader sectors of rural and urban society and in particular, on the lives of women, it is imperative that we understand the structural nature of the relation between women, capitalism and nature.

Topics: Development, Environment, Extractive Industries, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Intersectionality, Rights

Year: 2019

Citation:

Authors: A. W.-T. Lo, D. Houston

Abstract:

Directing growth towards denser communities with mixed-use, accessible, and walkable neighborhood design has become an important strategy for promoting sustainability, but few studies have examined whether compact development strategies could help reduce within-household gender disparities in spatial behavior by increasing accessibility. We analyze spatial behavior of heterosexual married couples in Southern California based on the 2012 California Household Travel Survey and find that households living in areas with greater regional accessibility and neighborhood walkability have smaller, more centered, and more compact activity spaces overall compared to households in less compact areas, and that married pairs living in more accessible areas have greater equality in the size and centeredness of their activity spaces. We account for residential selection bias in our multivariate analysis and find that a ten unit increase in near-residence Walk Score was associated with a 12–18% decrease in activity space size, a 6–8% decrease in residential distancing, and a 12–13% increase in spatial concentration for both men and women. Men and women, however, had significantly different activity space behaviors regardless of their neighborhood type. Compared to women, men on average had larger activity spaces and conducted their activities farther from home. Overall, results support our hypothesis that compact development provides married couples greater flexibility in how they divide household out-of-home activities by making destinations more convenient and lowering the overall spatial fixity of these activities. Future research and planning efforts should carefully consider which aspects of compact, accessible development are most effective for a given local context.

Topics: Development, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Households, Infrastructure, Transportation Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2018

Citation:

Haina, Lu. 2019. “Adding a Gender Perspective to China's Belt and Road Initiative as an International Human Rights Obligation.” Frontiers of Law in China 14 (4): 455-77.

Author: Lu Haina

Abstract:

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has a significant impact on the gender equality of receiving countries. It is noted that many BRI countries are facing challenges to realizing gender equality. Nevertheless, China has not developed a gender-mainstreaming or rights-based approach to implement the BRI. Hence, this paper argues that it is China’s international human rights obligation to develop such an approach and the country should adopt a gender policy in its BRI to ensure that its overseas investments and aid programs respect and promote gender equality. First, this paper maps China’s overseas investments and aid globally and particularly in BRI countries, and examines, in general, how the BRI may have an impact on gender equality both globally and in BRI countries. Second, the paper reviews international standards on gender equality in transnational trade and foreign investment and aid projects in the context of international human rights’ norms. It clarifies China’s obligations to promote gender equality within the BRI framework under international law. Third, based on the aforementioned findings, this paper conducts a gap analysis on the gender policy followed by China’s overseas investment and aid programs set within the context of international standards. Finally, the paper recommends some possible policy steps to ensure gender equality is mainstreamed in BRI projects of China.

Keywords: gender equality, Belt and Road Initiative, BRI, China's overseas investment, foreign aid, human rights

Topics: Development, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Infrastructure, International Law, International Human Rights, Multi-National Corporations, Privatization, Rights, Human Rights Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: China

Year: 2019

Citation:

Khoja-Moolji, Shenila. 2018. Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia. Oakland: University of California Press.

Author: Shenila Khoja-Moolji

Annotation:

Topics: Class, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Development, Education, Gender, Girls, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India, Pakistan

Year: 2018

Relevant Links: Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia

Citation:

Author: Gideon Kofi Agbley

Abstract:

Keywords: land grabs, equity, efficiency, participation, sustainability

Topics: Development, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Land Grabbing, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Ghana

Year: 2019

Citation:

Warren, Karen J. 2005. “Ecofeminism and Social Justice.” In Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, edited by Michael E. Zimmerman, 139-252. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Author: Karen J. Warren

Annotation:

Summary:
This text explores the full spectrum of concerns in contemporary eco-philosophy: environmental ethics, ecofeminism and social justice, environmental continental philosophy, and political ecology (Summary from WorldCat).

Topics: Development, Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism

Year: 2005

Citation:

Shiva, Vandana. 1988. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books.

Author: Vandana Shiva

Annotation:

Summary:
Examining the position of women in relation to nature - the forests, the food chain and water supplies - the author links the violation of nature with the violation and marginalization of women in the Third World. One result is that the impact of science, technology and politics, along with the workings of the economy itself, are inherently exploitative. Every area of human activity marginalizes and burdens both women and nature. There is only one path, Vandana Shiva suggests, to survival and liberation for nature, women and men, and that is the ecological path of harmony, sustainability and diversity. She explores the unique place of women in the environment of India in particular, both as its saviours and as victims of maldevelopment. Her analysis is an innovative statement of the challenge that women in ecology movements are creating and she shows how their efforts constitute a non-violent and humanly inclusive alternative to the dominant paradigm of contemporary scientific and development thought. (Summary from Google Books)

Topics: Development, Environment, Gender, Women, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 1988

Citation:

Dātār, Chāyā. 2011. Ecofeminism Revisited: Introduction to the Discourse. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.

Author: Chāyā Dātār

Annotation:

Summary:

"Most strands of feminism uphold, in varying degrees, the modernist dichotomy between nature and culture. Simone de Beauvoir, in her book Second Sex, points out that this distinction equates women with nature (characterized by their biological composition) and men with culture (characterized by their ‘risk-taking’ behaviour). Liberal and Marxist feminists argue that the traditional notion of a connection between women and nature is a relic of patriarchy—an instrument of oppression—which should be allowed to wither away. For them, ecofeminism smacks of essentialism (biological determinism). Despite such criticism, one needs to acknowledge the fact that exploring ecofeminist arguments rising from a material base (social, historical, dialectical) creates support in favour of alternative development models as opposed to market-oriented capitalist ones. Poor women often find a potential for liberation within such models. It also provides a better understanding of movements like the Narmada Bachao Andolan, opposition to SEZ etc. which strongly emphasise on women in the third world, their concern for food security and as such their vested interest in the preservation of ecological bases for the survival of their communities. Concepts like ‘decentralised communities’, ‘subsistence production’ etc. need to be understood against a theoretical background which justifies the need to start thinking about alternative development models. The book aims at an introduction to the discourse of ecofeminism as a perspective from which to understand the world around us, where women’s concerns of reproduction and subsistence are placed at the centre stage of the human activities" (Summary from Rawat Publications). 

Topics: Development, Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2011