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“Who cares about social reproduction in a time of climate crisis?” Reflections from environmental justice scholar Giovanna Di Chiro

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[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1592900783478{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1592900766479{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: -10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]The enduring efforts by marginalized women across the world are sustaining community well-being in the face of the climate crisis, which is why their work of social reproduction is needed now more than ever. Professor of Environmental Studies Giovanna Di Chiro in her recent visit to the ISS spoke about the power of stories to turn our attention to the importance of social reproduction or life-making as part of “living environmentalism”. In this blog article, ISS Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development Wendy Harcourt shares some of Di Chiro’s reflections.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”28868″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Renowned scholar of environmental justice at Swarthmore College in the United States Giovanna Di Chiro visited the ISS on 12 June this year, where she presented a seminar titled “Social Reproduction in the Age of Climate Crisis”. In the seminar organized by the ISS Political Ecology research group, Di Chiro pondered the following important question: What would a just approach to ‘sustainability’ look like that supports ‘life-making’ in all its forms, even — or especially — in the wake of the ruins of capitalism?

Using a critical ecofeminist lens[1], she examined how neoliberal ‘green’ solutions[2] to the climate crisis have not taken seriously the material effects of embodiment and the capacity for communities (human and non-human) to accomplish social reproduction — that is, the capacity to sustain everyday life and to thrive into the future. I invited her to talk about this at the ISS, as her research insights are crucial for our ongoing collective efforts to address multiple, intersecting challenges and crises. In this blog article, I share some of her reflections.

The convergence of crises — and the convergence of struggles

Social reproduction risks are now intersecting with environmental crises, leading to the convergence of struggles for social reproduction and environmental justice. Giovanna Di Chiro’s work is inspired by women grassroots activists in the environmental justice movement in the United States who have been fighting for their survival and the survival of their children and families. These women activists have been seeking to stop the onslaught of toxic pollution from chemical factories, waste incinerators, and many other toxic assaults on their lives. In her research, Di Chiro has documented[3] how grassroots women leaders — who are largely poor and low-income Black, Brown, and Indigenous women — organize to build connections between environmental movements and women’s movements. These activists expose how the intersecting systems of hetero-patriarchy and racial capitalism have resulted in the poisoning of their air, water, and lands, and show how these have harmed their own reproductive health and the well-being of their communities.

Yet, despite decades of women’s environmental justice activism, the chances for everyday survival and possible futures for millions of people, and for billions of other species on the Earth, have gotten worse; we are all familiar with the horrible statistics of worsening climate disasters, the mass extinctions of plants and animals, and widespread violence and war. Adding to this the attack on reproductive rights in the US by the Republican right wing and the rise of neofascism worldwide, we see even more threats to social reproduction and survival into the future as it relates to environmental justice. Everyday survival is still a problem for many low-income Black and Brown communities in the US, and survival remains the first priority.

One example of the connection between social reproduction and environmental injustice is the recent decision by the Republican Governor of Louisiana to withhold millions in federal monies to repair the city of New Orleans’ decaying water treatment infrastructure (which is needed to prevent flooding, toxic lead leaching, and saltwater infiltration in the city’s drinking water due to rising sea levels in the Gulf of Mexico). He withheld this funding because New Orleans’s Democrat-controlled city government had refused to comply with the state of Louisiana’s total ban on abortion, which would require the city to arrest and prosecute low-income and poor women who seek abortions in the state.

Another example of the increased threat to social reproduction and its connection to environmentalism involves rising incidences of eco-fascist rhetoric that blames the “over-population” of immigrant bodies for jeopardizing the sustainability of our environment. In 2019, two years after Trump came into office and authorized anti-immigrant violence across the US, a 21-year-old white man opened fire at a busy Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, targeting the predominantly Latino and Mexican shoppers. He killed 23 people and wounded another 26. The shooter had earlier published a lengthy, online manifesto expressing his white supremacist, ‘eco-fascist’ beliefs, stating, “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion of Hispanics.” He blamed Latinos for overpopulating the country and taking away real Americans’ jobs and destroying the environment. This is a revival of an extremist environmentalist politics blaming the invasion and over-breeding of racialized bodies for the country’s downfall.

‘Living worlds’ to counter global injustices

Many of today’s intersectional movements engage in creating new stories about building what feminist political ecologist Diana Ojeda[4] calls ‘Living Worlds’: stories about how we must live and especially about how we must thrive in these precarious times. Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer[5] urges us to work to change the world by prioritizing what she argued are the core features of building anti-colonial Living Worlds: raising good children, raising a garden, and raising a ruckus. They are ‘living environmentalisms’ of marginalized communities’ struggles for everyday life.

Di Chiro’s talk showed how social reproduction is at the heart of the environmental justice (EJ) movement. Social reproduction means not only care for children, families, and communities; it also means ensuring that you can breathe healthy air and drink clean water and that the places where you live, work, and go to school are free from toxic contamination. We learnt from her talk how sustaining everyday life should be at the heart of environmentalism and at the core of definitions of “sustainability.” In times of climate crisis and climate anxiety, it is important to understand how citizens can act and continue to resist, as well as flourish, in communities of care. Di Chiro’s pedagogical approach is, in itself, part of living environmentalism. She is among those environmental activists, scientists, and artists who write about what motivates them to act on social and environmental injustices, connecting their own personal stories to larger historical narratives and broader social and environmental issues.

References

[1] Di Chiro, G. 2017. ‘Welcome to the White (M)Anthropocene? A feminist-environmentalist critique,’ in S. Macgregor (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment. London: Routledge.

[2] Wichterich, C.  2015. ‘Contesting green growth, connecting care, commons and enough,’ in Harcourt, W. and I. R. Nelson (eds), Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies. London: Zed Books.

[3] See for example Di Chiro, G. 2015 ‘A new spelling of sustainability: engaging feminist-environmental justice theory and practice,’ in Harcourt, W. and I. R. Nelson (eds), Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies. London: Zed Books.

[4] Ojeda, D. et al. 2022. ‘Feminist Ecologies,’ Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 47, pp. 149–171.

[5] Wall-Kimmerer, R. 2015. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1719410637773{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]

About the author:

 

Wendy Harcourt is Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University in The Hague.

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No feminist march for tonight: What spontaneous activism can teach us about maintaining unity in diversity

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The last-minute cancellation of the Feminist March that was set to take place in Amsterdam earlier this year due to safety concerns and organizational challenges led the organizers and participants of the march to ponder the challenges facing feminist activism. In this blog article, Elliot YangYang, who attended the event as a participant, reflects on what transpired and highlights the importance of maintaining agency amidst external pressures.

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on UnsplashPhoto

On 10 March, just two days after International Women’s Day, a march for women’s rights organized by Feminist March was set to take place in Amsterdam. Feminist March is an organisation that focuses on protests and different feminist programmes. The purpose of the march with the same name was “to work to strengthen the bonds within the feminist community and build a brighter, more equitable future for all of us.”

But the march was unexpectedly cancelled approximately three hours before the official assembly time through an announcement by the organisation, which on its official website and social media platforms cited safety concerns, exacerbated by unpredictable circumstances, the presence of law enforcement bodies, and a shortage of volunteers for crowd control. While the official event was cancelled, some participants nevertheless gathered and unofficially marched through the streets of Amsterdam.

Five days later, the organization released a statement announcing its dissolution following the resignation of some board members and the general manager, citing the inability to meet the expectations of supporters and allies. This came as a surprise to those of us who had signed up to participate in the march, yet it is unsurprising given the myriad challenges that feminist movements face. This article reflects on my experience of the spontaneous march that took place after the formal event’s cancellation and offers reflections on the challenges facing feminist marches today.

The show must go on

Even though I knew that the event had been cancelled, I still made my way to the original gathering location, Dam Square. It was comforting to see that, despite the significantly reduced turnout, around 100 people had nevertheless gathered there, spontaneously giving speeches and walking together from Dam Square to Museum Square. Most of them came on their own initiative, and their demands were varied, ranging from concerns about the current war in Gaza, to women’s rights in general, to the rights of queers and a variety of other demands. The crowd gathered spontaneously to form an improvised protest space.

When I arrived at Dam Square, a group of Palestinian protesters were already on the scene, separately protesting the war on Gaza. Then the feminist community joined the protest they had started in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, aligning with the “intersectional” ethos advocated by the third wave of feminism.(1) The topic of focus remained close to the feminist interests of responding to real crises, especially to wars disproportionately affecting women, children, and marginalized and vulnerable people. The marchers thereafter split up: feminists and protesters against the war on Gaza remained on the scene, while a group of Turkish feminist activists began waving their flags and initiated a separate walk.

Showing up instead of staying away

As an activist, I often find myself grappling with the following concern: under the umbrella structure of the march as a spectrum that accommodates all individuals, how can organizations and individual activists alike navigate different challenges without losing sight of their core objectives and the issues they seek to address?

The failure to communicate different perspectives and expectations seemed to be a core reason for the Feminist March’s cancellation and the eponymous organization’s dissolution. It is a pity that this impeded our efforts. But we can also learn from it. 

I posed the above question to Came Bilgin and Song Song — two participants of the march whom I interviewed. Before that, we had a conversation about their experiences as activists. Came Bilgin is a feminist activist from the Workers’ Party of Turkey, which insisted on continuing the march despite its cancellation. She mentioned that rallies and marches represent an active presence of activists, especially in environments such as Turkey fraught with state violence and pervasive social malice. Therefore, despite being aware of the decision to cancel the march, she still appeared at the scene along with other members of her organization to participate in the march. They did not think it would have been more dangerous to participate in a march in the Netherlands than in the feminist marches in Turkey, which shows a different perspective from the organizers of the march, who believed that it was not safe to protest.

This sentiment resonated with Song Song, a Chinese student studying in the Netherlands who had participated in the march as an individual. They also emphasized the importance and symbolic significance of simply showing up, which protesters did even when facing severe violence during protests in China. Thus, they also felt that despite possible safety concerns, it was worth showing up.

On-site photos (Workers’ Party of Turkey). Photo provided by the organiser.

Both interviewees expressed their discontent regarding the organization’s abrupt cancellation of the event and voiced their disappointment about the diminished turnout compared to previous years. Nevertheless, they commended the spontaneous march that ensued for showing the persistence of the protesters in marching for their cause.

Finding a voice and maintaining agency

Song Song’s response in particular opened up my exploration into how both organizations and individuals maintain their agency when setting agendas before and during marches. ‘This was my first time shouting feminist slogans in Chinese at a rally; it had never occurred in an organized form before. We don’t necessarily need them [the Feminist March organization itself],’ remarked Song Song. They believed that because it was an unorganized, agenda-less march, they had the opportunity to tell their story in their own language. This reflects an ongoing power dynamic where activists from different backgrounds seek to use their own language to voice their concerns and to legitimize their agendas in organized gatherings. Finding their voice in marches led by organizations from the global north can be challenging, particularly for activists from the global south, who often cannot hold large-scale protests and rallies in their own countries.

However, this is not an insurmountable problem. The decentralized place-making of spontaneous marches directly undermines this barrier. The configuration of the march as a form of “autonomy” can be “reconfigured by new and complex scale politics that reconfigure the relationship between the scale (and location) of its activities. This creates the conditions for future possibilities. In this way, a more grassroots, decentralised and extensive network can be formed.” As soon as these actors from the global south are able to reconstruct the march with will, the march spontaneously takes place.

On-site photos (Asian feminists). Photo provided by the organiser.

Improvisation and spontaneous alternatives

In her article on “margin spaces,” American author and social critic Bell Hooks suggests that our lives depend on our ability to conceive alternative possibilities, often improvised. The spontaneous march that occurred on 10 March directly responded to the challenges faced when organized marches fail. The unplanned and improvised marching creations of the activists instead created space for radical culture.

Not deterred

This march moreover took place amidst the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which exacerbated the challenges faced by those marching for other causes amidst the tensions between the political stance and actions of the Dutch government and the societal response. However, the spontaneous marchers who still showed up on the scene did not relinquish their feminist identities and spaces, demonstrating both their ability to assess and respond to risks and their wisdom in conceiving alternative solutions, thereby truly asserting their agency in shaping discourse and action. The “decentralized” mode still embodies its radical potential that emerges from scarcity and its ability to create spaces of resistance.

Endnotes

  1. Mann, S. A., & Huffman, D. J. (2005). “The decentering of second wave feminism and the rise of the third wave,” Science & society, 69 (1 — special issue), 56–91.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Elliot Yang Yang

Elliot Yang Yang is a queer feminist who studied Human Rights, Gender, and Conflict Studies at ISS, specialized in Women and Gender Studies. His research interests include transnational queer feminist movements and the intersections of gender, sexuality, and immigration.

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Imagining a feminist humanitarian system: reflections from co-organizing a panel on feminist approaches to humanitarian action

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The emergence of feminist analysis and advocacies within the humanitarian field offers opportunities to engage with and reflect on current practices. In this blog article, Gabriela Villacis Izquierdo & Kaira Zoe Cañete explore and consider the wide range of feminist approaches to humanitarian action presented during their panel at the International Humanitarian Studies Association Conference in 2023. They look into the multiple ways in which feminist approaches can lead to more equitable and desirable outcomes whilst also highlighting the potential of embracing these approaches to contribute to reforms within the sector.

 

“Are we trying to turn the humanitarian system into something that it could never become?”

This was a provocation laid down by one of the speakers in a panel that we (Gabriela and Kaira) organized at the 7thInternational Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) Conference held in Dhaka in November 2023. The panel, titled “Mapping Feminist Approaches to Humanitarian Action”, invited conceptual, empirical, methodological, and practice-based papers to discuss the significance of feminist approaches to humanitarian action.

As an initiative under the ERC-funded Humanitarian Governance Project, the panel asked: In what ways can humanitarian practices be considered ‘feminist’? How can feminist advocacies, approaches, and research methodologies help address the challenges in contemporary humanitarian practices and governance? This article reflects on the presentations from the panel, which includes our own collaborative work, and highlights emergent themes and opportunities for advancing feminist approaches in humanitarian research and practice.

Constructing instead of extracting knowledge

The panel featured diverse presentations that underscored feminist contributions to addressing the complexities of humanitarian crises, beginning with how feminist methodologies can be useful for constructing knowledge about experiences of crises (to read all abstracts, visit the IHSA website). Vani Bhardwaj for instance presented her work on Bangladesh and how environmental impacts of humanitarian response can have gendered consequences. She problematized how approaches of INGOs working in the field, with their reliance on “traditional” data collection tools, can create and perpetuate (colonial) hierarchies, such as the extraction of knowledge and the reinforcement of power relations between researcher and “subjects” or “beneficiaries”.

Situated designs for mobility justice

Similarly, Emmanuel Kodwo Mensah from social enterprise Includovate introduced a mobility mapping methodology he developed with Dr. Kristie Drucza while studying South Sudanese refugees in Uganda, where mobility justice seems to be a distant possibility, especially for women. Through this approach, they were able to focus on the lived experiences of refugee women and men, who are also dealing with the negative impacts of climate change and could unveil the intricate realities that are behind the categories of “refugee” and “migrant”. This contribution provokes us to explore ways in which humanitarian responses can adopt a more situated design towards the achievement of mobility justice. Moreover, the presenters’ reflections motivated us to further explore the notion of allyship and ‘positive masculinities’ within the feminist approaches inside and outside the humanitarian realm.

At different levels, we could identify with Vani’s and Emmanuel’s analysis, as our own presentation in the panel aimed to share our experiences of doing feminist research in humanitarian and disasters contexts. Based on two different case studies – the Philippines and Colombia – we argued that despite the challenges posed by doing research in settings of crisis, it is important and possible to meaningfully engage with research participants and embody feminist principles of research, such as collaborative knowledge construction, awareness of intersectional identities of participants and researchers, and research as a two-way and relational process. For us, feminist methodologies have the potential to centre the situated and lived experiences of people affected and involve them in processes of knowledge-building.

Alternative forms of humanitarian action

A second set of presentations delved into alternative forms of humanitarian action. Gabrielle Daoust and Synne Dyvik highlighted one of the current humanitarian crises in Europe: the Ukraine war. They focused on the notion of private humanitarian hospitality through the case of the “Homes for Ukraine” scheme in the United Kingdom. The presentation was an invitation for us to reflect on the privatization of humanitarian responses as marked by a virtual outsourcing of government responsibility to private individuals in dealing with refugees.

This type of humanitarian response and the associated shifting of the ‘humanitarian space’ into the private and domestic sphere is enabled by particular gendered and racialised conceptions of the home (especially in relation to traditional notions of care work) and of humanitarian hospitality more broadly. In this case, white women from Ukraine are welcomed in the private spaces of UK citizens due to their perceived “harmless” identities as mothers and caregivers. Such a case would be different for other racialised refugees, especially men.

A critical look at the survivor-centred approach (SCA)

Inspired by their own experiences working on gender-based violence (GBV) during crises, Ilaria Michelis, Jane Makepeace, and Chen Reis presented a critical discourse analysis of the survivor centred approach (SCA) within humanitarian responses. For the presenters, the SCA has moved away from its feminist roots and objectives to become a technocratic tool. Humanitarian actors and service providers retain control while survivors’ choices are limited by rigid models and external assessments of their safety. As feminist practitioners and researchers, Ilaria, Jane and Chen challenged these practices within the humanitarian system and advocated for locally and survivor-led initiatives. Their recently published paper can be found here.

Knowledge extraction and the creation of dependency relations

Finally, María González presented her research about the resistance of the Tal’3at movement in Palestine from a decolonial, feminist, and critical lens. During her collaborative research with members of the Tal’3at movement, they identified how women in Palestine faced three main roots of oppression: occupation, patriarchy, and “the NGOs”. In relation to the theme of the panel, María focused on the ways in which international NGOs in Palestine tended to co-opt resistance efforts of women in Palestine through knowledge extraction and creation of dependency. Importantly, María showed how the Tal’3at movement counteracted these “structures of oppression” through political and anti-colonial engagement to advance freedom of all Palestinians.

Feminist approaches: a big step toward more equitable ways of doing things

By summarizing the different contributions to the panel, we intend to demonstrate the richness and diversity of feminist thinking and initiatives in this space. Over the last few years, feminist organizations have articulated the need to transform the humanitarian system not least of all for its tendency to privilege certain (Northern-centric and patriarchal) values, approaches, and worldviews. They have sought to make humanitarian action more attentive to the gendered, racialized, and lived experiences of crises thereby making aid more accountable, responsive, and accessible to those most affected. The emergence of feminist analysis and advocacies within the humanitarian field offers opportunities to engage with and reflect on current practices.

However, the ideas emanating from this are rarely brought into direct conversation with other (mainstream and non-mainstream) strands of humanitarian research and practice. Attention to context and lived experiences of crises, gendered power relations in humanitarian settings, intersectionality, and forms of care that are vital for survival and recovery are some of the contributions that a feminist perspective can bring to discussions not only on how humanitarian response can be “effective” but also transformative.

Through this panel, we have attempted to highlight some of these opportunities for further thinking and action that would help us address some of the challenges that beset humanitarian practice at present. The themes that arose in the panel discussion are certainly far from exhaustive, but they indicate valuable insights that are enabled through an application of feminist perspectives, ethics, and methodologies.

Going back to our collective concern — are we trying to turn the humanitarian system into something that it could never become? — we are convinced that it is possible, when we see what people on the ground are doing in their everyday practices of humanitarian action. We hope to be able to move further with this initiative and explore if and how feminist approaches can make a difference in the ways we respond to crises.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to each one of the participants who share their knowledges and work during the panel.

Disclaimer

This blog article is part of the work of the Humanitarian Governance, accountability, advocacy, alternatives project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 884139.

About the authors

Gabriela_VillacisGabriela Villacis Izquierdo is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research focuses on the alternative forms of humanitarian governance in Colombia, with an emphasis on feminist approaches and the potential of collective action, advocacy, and care.

 

 

 

Kaira Zoe Alburo-Cañete is Senior Researcher at the Humanitarian Studies Centre, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research interests include examining the everyday politics and ethics of living with, responding to, and recovering from disasters and other forms of crises.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.