Ecofeminism

Historical/Causal Interconnections

In light of the historical ubiquity of patriarchal domination over women and nature, some ecofeminists have expressed the idea that androcentrism is the root cause of environmental destruction. Among these writers, however, there is a difference of opinion as to when such destructive attitudes took root and became predominant. One such thinker representative of this school of thought is Riane Eisler. In her book The Chalice and the Blade, for example, she traces the origins of this domination and destruction back to the invasion of Indo-European societies by nomadic tribes from Eurasia between the 6th and 3rd millennia B.C.E. Others such as Carolyn Merchant in The Death of Nature, however, locate the historical turning point in the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. Disagreeing with both Eisler and Merchant, on the other hand, is philosopher Val Plumwood, who argues that the roots of this domination of nature can be traced back to classical Greek philosophy and the rationalist tradition, which elevates humans over nonhuman animals and nature due to the superior reasoning abilities of humans.

Conceptual and Empirical Interconnections

According to Karen J. Warren, conceptual interconnections are at the heart of ecofeminist philosophy. In her discussion concerning conceptual interconnections, [Page 445]she refers to Val Plumwood again since Plum-wood locates the conceptual basis of structures of domination in value dualisms that are hierarchically organized (for example, reason ranks over emotion, as does culture over nature, human over nature, and man over woman). Other intellectuals such as eco-feminist sociologist Ariel Salleh, though, tend to focus on sex-gender differences, arguing that female bodily experiences such as childbearing and childrearing as social constructs place women in a very different relationship with nonhuman nature than it does men. From these sex-gender differences arise variances in female and male “ways of knowing” and interacting with the natural world.

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