Earth Democracy:

Justice, Sustainability & Peace

by Vandana Shiva (2005)

South End Press

April 9, 2010
Jane Lehr
[email protected]
Principles of Earth Democracy
1. All species, peoples, and cultures have intrinsic worth.
2. The earth community is a democracy of all life.
3. Diversity in nature and culture must be defended.
4. All beings have a natural right to sustenance.
5. Earth Democracy is based on living economies and economic
democracy.
6. Living economies are built on local economies.
7. Earth Democracy is a living democracy.
8. Earth Democracy is based on living cultures.
9. Living cultures are life nourishing.
10. Earth Democracy globalizes peace, care, and compassion.
Vandana Shiva & me …
Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (1999)
 “Genetically Modified Crops, World Trade & Security” (1999)
 Oxfam: "Donor governments and agencies should commit resources for
investment in research into the potential opportunities of GM technology
to deliver economic, environmental and health benefits to poor farmers
in adverse agro-ecological zones.”
 Shiva: “We feel that Oxfam risks betraying the South, the poor and
food security objectives by calling for support for promotion of
G.M. crops in the South instead of calling for support for ecological
and sustainable agriculture which is much better suited to the
small farmers in adverse agroecological zones. … The focus on
promotion of G.M. crops in the Third World, and the total absence of
recommendations relating to the promotion of sustainable, ecological
agriculture will on the one hand deprive the poor of ecological,
decentralised production systems. On the other hand it carries a major
risk of creating a nutritional apartheid - with northern consumers having
G.E. free foods and the poor in the South being condemned to a future
based on G.E. crops and foods.”
 http://www.gene.ch/gentech/1999/Nov/msg00040.html
Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (1999)
 Oxfam responds to Shiva
 We think that there is only a minor difference of opinion between yourself and
Oxfam GB. In our paper we call for a moratorium on the commercial release of
GM crops because of the enormous health, environmental and socio-economic
risks to poor farmers, consumers and developing countries. However, before
completely shutting the door we believe further research is needed to
establish the full risks and potential of genetic modification of crops for
poor farmers and for consumers. We really don't feel that it is fair to suggest
that our position amounts to risking "betraying the South, the poor and food
security objectives". …
 We are at risk of entering in a debate where one is either in favour or
against biotechnology. We are of the opinion that there are serious dangers
implied by the rapid development of genetically modified crops in the hands of
large private industries, dangers to public health, the environment and socio-
economic relations. That is however not the same as rejecting the potential of
all biotechnologies as such (there are many technologies that fall under that
term), in particular not the applications that could support small holder farmers,
consumers, and that could help local and global food security.
 http://www.sirc.org/news/oxfam_open_letter.html
Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (1999)
 Oxfam responds to Shiva
 We have mentioned nitrogen-fixing, salt resistant crops and enhanced vitamin
and mineral levels of foods. We could also have mentioned improved or hybrid
high yielding varieties that can be replanted (i.e. that are genetically identical to
the mother plant and are reproduced 'by apomixes', without sexual fertilisation).
All of those are in our view potentially supportive of sustainable agriculture,
even though some may reject those as not entirely natural or 'organic'. We
are aware that these potentially positive applications are in their infancy only and
can imply similar environmental and health risks as some of the applications
favoured by private companies, and therefore we believe that public funding and
extreme caution should dominate such research and development. We do not
suggest that public money should be diverted away from research and
development of sustainable farming technology, on the contrary, we want more
publicly funded research to support that, including biotechnological research.
…
 We hope that this reply reassures you that Oxfam GB is not 'off course' and that
we will continue to support the development and use of technologies that are in
the interest of poor farmers and their environments, consumers and developing
economies.
 http://www.sirc.org/news/oxfam_open_letter.html
Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (2002)
 Rigged Rules and Double Standards (2002)
 http://www.maketradefair.com/en/index.php?file=03042002121618.htm
 Shiva: In response to this report, Vandana Shiva argued that Oxfam
views market access as a “magic potion for pulling the poorest out
of poverty.” In her letter, she instead suggests that “market access is
just another word for export orientation and export domination.”
 Oxfam Responds to Shiva
 Vandana Shiva directs her argument against Chapter 4 of Rigged Rules
and Double Standards. In this chapter, Oxfam sets out a case for
improving market access for poor countries, and for ending the subsidised
overproduction and dumping of agricultural surpluses by the European
Union and the United States. The chapter suggests that, under
appropriate conditions, access to Northern markets can contribute to
poverty-reduction efforts. Those conditions are set out in the report.
They include redistributive programmes to overcome inequalities based on
gender, access to productive assets, and education. Ecologically
sustainable resource management is another critical requirement.
 http://www.maketradefair.com/en/index.php?file=27062002154832.htm
Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (2002)
 Oxfam Responds to Shiva
 There are three problems with Vandana Shiva's comments. First, she
not only distorts Oxfam's argument, but applies a reductionist logic
that casts all export activity as bad for poor people - and all
advocacy in favour of improved market access as part of a neo-
liberal conspiracy.
 Second, the anti-international trade perspective she advocates would, in
our view, deny poor countries and poor people important opportunities
for poverty reduction.
 Third, while her comments raise important concerns about the
relationship between trade and ecological sustainability, the
assumption that trade is inherently bad for sustainability is
unjustified. This is a subject that merits more serious consideration.
Oxfam is working closely with a range of environmental and
development movements to campaign on these issues in the lead up to
the forthcoming World Food Summit and the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
 http://www.maketradefair.com/en/index.php?file=27062002154832.htm
Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (2002)
 Oxfam Responds to Shiva
 Having called for a "contextualised analysis", Vandana Shiva
decontextualises trade. …
 It is asserted that all export activity undermines local and national
economic activity, and that agricultural exports inevitably exacerbate
hunger by displacing food production. While some export activity
certainly produces such effects, such outcomes are not inevitable.
They are typically the result of specific policies that skew the benefits of
export in activity towards vested interests and powerful social groups,
while failing to address the concerns of poor people.
 Much of the evidence cited by Vandana Shiva is difficult to context since
it is pitched at a very high level of generality. … Her own figures are
inconsistent with FAO data. … the relationship between national food
security and export activity cannot be reduced to generalisations of
the type offered by Vandana Shiva.
 Such generalisation divert attention from the crucial question of
unequal power relations in local, national and global markets -and
from the types of state action that can make trade work for or against the
poor.
 Vandana Shiva & Oxfam (2002)
 Oxfam Responds to Shiva
 The black and white model of market access = export domination and neo-liberalism
is not constructive. The Brazilian Worker's Party, the UN Secretary General, Nelson
Mandela, virtually every Southern government, and many NGOs have called for improved
market access. Lumping them with the World Bank/WTO/IMF is as helpful as implying that
Vandana Shiva occupies the same protectionist ground as the Bush Administration and
European big farm interests. Clearly, she does not occupy that ground. But her comments
divert attention from the core challenge of changing production systems to ensure that
trade reform is integrated into poverty-reduction strategies.
 Vandana Shiva ignores the potential benefits that poor women and men might derive
from production for export markets - and their real struggles to improve their living
conditions. In Bangladesh, Oxfam is working with women's organisations that are
attempting to improve wages, working conditions, and female employment rights - and
these organisations are arguing for improved market access. …
 Whether or not improved market access delivers benefits for poor people will be a function
of political decisions, the role of government, and power relations in the market place. Of
course, there are many cases in which export growth is marginalizing poor people. By the
same token, import protection and state support on domestic markets is often equally anti-
poor (a point that Vandana Shiva ignores). That is why simple dichotomies between
export production and production for domestic markets are not helpful.
Discussion Plan/Topics
 Gender, Women, Patriarchy
 (Biological & Cultural) Diversity
 Localization
 Ways We Might Go Forward
1993: Right Livelihood Award
 ”...for placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development
discourse.”
 http://www.rightlivelihood.org/v-shiva.html
 From Acceptance speech:
 I am increasingly sensing that the primary threat to nature and people today
comes from centralising and monopolising power and control which inevitably
generates one-dimensional structures and what I have called "Monoculture of
the Mind". The monoculture of the mind treats all diversity as disease, and
creates coercive structures to model this biologically and culturally diverse world
of ours on the privileged categories and concepts of one class, one race and one
gender of a single species.
 These simultaneous colonisations are the inevitable result - the colonisations of
nature's diverse species, of women and of the Third World. The politics of
diversity is for me the ground for resisting all three colonisations. …
 Conservation of diversity is, above all, the commitment to let alternatives flourish
in society and nature, in economic systems and in knowledge systems.
Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times. It is a survival
imperative, and the precondition for the freedom of all, the big and the small.
“placing women and ecology at the heart
of modern development discourse”

 In Earth Democracy, what does Shiva add?

 In particular, how does her attention to women, gender, and/or
patriarchy extend or complicate our previous discussions?
 What is her argument about women, gender, patriarchy?
 Is this a major or minor part of the book for you?
 Is this a strength and/or weakness of the book for you?

 The emergence of the women, gender, patriarchy argument

 Staying Alive: Development, Ecology, and Women (1989)
 With Maria Mies, Ecofeminism (1993)
 With Ingunn Mosser (1995) (eds.), Biopolitics: A Feminist and
Ecological Reader on Biotechnology
 Etc.
Shiva’s Gender Analysis Call
to Action (1 of 3)
 Within this period of globalization, gender
analysis needs to make two major shifts.
 First, since globalization manifests itself primarily
as a removal of national barriers to trade and
investment, gender analysis needs to move
beyond an exclusively domestic model of analysis
(limited to either the household or the country)
and toward an understanding of gender relations
between actors as the global level. (p. 131)
Shiva’s Gender Analysis Call
to Action (2 of 3)
 Within this period of globalization, gender analysis needs to
make two major shifts. …
 Second, gender analysis needs to move from a focus on the end
result, which victimizes women by only concerning itself with the
impact on women. In order to effect change we need to adopt a
structural and transformative analysis that addressed the
underlying forces that form society. Global financial trade and
corporate institutions are “gendered” institutions; they impact on
men and women, the rich and poor, and different people in
different ways.
 These institutions and structures are created, dominated, and
controlled by men. Because they are shaped by a particular
gender, class, and race of humans, predominantly men from the
rich G7 countries, these institutions are expressions and vehicles
of the visions, aspirations, and assumptions of that particular
group. (pp. 131-132)
Shiva’s Gender Analysis Call
to Action (3 of 3)
 Gender analysis of globalization, therefore, cannot
limit itself to the impact on women. It needs to take
into account the patriarchal basis of the paradigms,
models, processes, policies, and projects advanced
by these global institutions. It needs to take into
account how women’s concerns, priorities, and
perceptions are excluded in defining the economy,
and excluded from the process of defining economic
problems and proposing and implementing
solutions. (p. 132)
Impacts on Women
 Globalization as a project of capitalist patriarchy (p. 130)
 Robs women of their productivity and creativity by destroying
nature/sustenance economy
 Devaluing women’s knowledge
 Sex Trafficking (p. 130)
 Cuts in social support programs (to address debt or as an IMF/WB
requirement) (p. 130)
 Religious patriarchy and capitalist patriarchy make women
disappear (p. 132)
 Contest between “women-centered worldviews, knowledge systems,
and productive systems that ensure sustenance and sharing and
patriarchal systems of knowledge and the economy based on war
and violence” (p. 133)
 “Dowry deaths” menace
 Feticide through amniocentesis & selective abortion
 Argument that (mal)development leads to overpopulation (p. 58)
Other Types of Discussion
 “Women as Guardians and Promoters of Life-Centered
Cultures”
 Seeds Example
 Leaders of Resistance Movements & Alternative
farming/market/etc models
 “Women’s full humanity becomes the healing force that can break
the vicious cycles of violence based on treating the inhumanity of
man as the measure of being human, of greed as the organizing
principle of the economy, of genocide and suicide as expressions
of religious fervor” (p. 140)
 Women are refusing to be part of the culture of hate and
violence. Women, in and through their lives, are showing that
love and compassion, sharing and giving are not just possible
human qualities  they are necessary qualities for us to be
human.” (p. 140)
A Very Golden History
Shiva on Diversity
 “Living cultures are cultures of life, based on
reverence for all life  women and men, rich
and poor, white and black, Christian and
Muslim, human and nonhuman.” (p. 142)

 Questions
 Is merely celebrating and embracing diversity the
solution? (judgmental relativism)
 How does this mesh with her other arguments?
Shiva on Localization
 Centralization and regulation vs Localization

 “The real issues of our times is how to reinvent the state in a

way that is not centralized, bureaucratic, and controlling, in a
way grounded in the community and responsible to
community. Leaving decisions on the distribution of goods and
services and on environmental impact to unregulated and
nonaccountable market forces would also be an error.” (p. 89)
Broad Types of Ecofeminism
 From Sturgeon (1997), “Ecofeminist Movements”
1. Patriarchy equates women and nature, so feminist analysis is required
to fully understand environmental problems
2. Patriarchy equates women and nature, so feminist analysis of women’s
subordination must include environmental analysis
3. There is a special relationship between women and nature based on
the social construction of gender and the history and contemporary
practice of social institutions therefore environmental problems are
more quickly resolved by women and taking women’s work more
seriously
4. Women are biologically closer to nature therefore women have greater
access to a sympathy with nature and will benefit themselves and the
environment by identifying with nature
5. Feminists interested in constructing resources for a feminist spirituality
should draw upon nature-based religions such as paganism, witchcraft,
goddess worship, and Native American spiritual traditions
Ynestra King (1989), “The Ecology of
Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology” in
Healing the Wounds (p. 23)

 Ways forward for feminists  we can:

 Reject women-nature connection
 Reiforce the women-nature connection
 “Ecofeminism suggests a third direction: a recognition that
although the nature-culture dualism is a product of culture,
we can nonetheless consciously choose not to sever the
woman-nature connection by joining male culture. Rather,
we can use it as a vantage point for creating a different
kind of culture and politics that would integrate intuitive,
spiritual, and rational forms of knowledge, embracing both
science and magic insofar as they enable us to transform
the nature-culture distinction and to envision and create a
free, ecological society.”
Slides that may or may not be
useful …
Emergence of Ecofeminism
 Françoise d’Eaubonne (1974), “The Time for Ecofeminism”
 Léonie Caldecott & Stephanie Leland (1983) (eds.), Reclaim the
Earth
 Judith Plant (1989) (ed.), Healing the Wounds
 Irene Diamond & Gloria Feman Orenstein (1990) (eds.) Reweaving
the World
 Karen Warren (1991) (ed.), Hypatia Special Issue on Ecological
Feminism
 Greta Gaard (1993) (ed.), Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature
Essentialism within Feminism
 Within feminism, essentialism refers to “the attribution of a fixed
essence to women” and “entails the belief that those characteristics
defined as women’s essence are shared in common by all women at
all times. … Essentialism thus refers to the existence of fixed
characteristics, given attributes, and ahistorical functions”
 Elizabeth Grosz, 1989, p. 153
11 Types of Environmentalism
Robert Brulle (2008), “The U.S. Environmental Movement” in
20 Lessons in Environmental Sociology

 Different Types  Differences

 Wildlife Management  What is the goal or motivation of the
discursive frame or type of
 Conservation
environmentalism?
 Preservation  What is the definition of the
 Reform Environmentalism environmental problem(s)? What is the
root cause?
 Deep Ecology
 Why or how does nature have value?
 Environmental Justice What is the value?
 Environmental Health  What is the model of nature employed?
(e.g. machine, organism, etc.)
 Ecofeminism
 What should the relationship between
 Ecospiritualism humans and nature be? Are humans part
 Animal Rights of nature? Are humans privileged over
nature?
 Anti-Globalization/Greens
 What role do human needs play in
conceptions of an ideal world or ideal
outcome of activism?
Second Wave Feminism  A Bit
More Complicated Story
 Liberal Feminism
 Radical Feminism  root of oppression is patriarchy; focus on structures
 Cultural or Difference Feminism (called Radical Feminism by some)  root
of oppression is patriarchy; solution is innate women’s values, women as
the solution (essentialist); strong focus on change at the level of the
individual as well as structures
 Marxist Feminism  root of oppression is capitalism; solve class oppression
first
 Socialist Feminism (called Radical Feminism by a few)  root of oppression
is capitalism and intersections with patriarchy; must try to solve class &
gender oppression at the same time; eventually expands to include
attention to intersections of class, gender, race, and sexuality
 Women of Color | Womanist Feminism
 Multicultural Feminism
 Global Feminism
 Poststructuralist Feminism
King, “Why Women?” in “The Eco-
Feminist Imperative” (1981) (p. 11)
 “Because our present patriarchy enshrines together the hatred of
women and the hatred of nature. In defying this patriarchy we are
loyal to future generations and to live and this planet itself. We have
a deep and particular understanding of this both through our natures
and through our life experience as women.
 We have the wisdom to oppose experiments which could
permanently alter the genetic materials of future generations. As
feminists we believe that human reproduction should be controlled
by women not by a male-dominated medical establishment. We
insist on the absolute right of a woman to an abortion. We support
the life-affirming right of women to choose when and if to bear
children.”
King, “Why Women?” in “The Eco-
Feminist Imperative” (1981) (p. 11)
 “We oppose war and we recognize its terrible force when we
see it, undeclared but all around us. For to us war is the
violence against women in all forms  rape, battery, economic
exploitation and intimidation  and it is the racist violence
against indigenous peoples here in the US and around the
world, and it is the violence against the earth.
 We recognize and respect the beauty of cultural diversity as
we abhor racism. Racism divides us from our sisters, it lines
the pockets of the exploiters and underlies the decimation of
whole peoples and their homelands. The imperialism of white,
male, western culture has been more destructive to other
peoples and cultures than any imperialist power in the history
of the world, just as it has brought us to the bring of ecological
catastrophe.”
King, “Why Women?” in “The Eco-
Feminist Imperative” (1981) (pp. 11-12)
 “We believe that a culture against nature is a culture against women. We
know we must get out from under the feet of men as they go about their
projects of violence. In pursuing these projects men deny and dominate
women and nature. It is time to reconstitute our culture in the name of that
nature, and of peace and freedom, and it is women who can show the way.
We have to be the voice of the invisible, of nature who cannot speak for
herself in the political arenas of our society, of the children yet to be born
and of the women who are forcibly silenced in our mental institutions and
our prisons. We have been the keepers of the home, the children and the
community. We learn early to be observe, attend, and nurture. And whether
or not we become biological mothers, we use these nurturant powers daily
as we go about our ordinary work. … The political and the personal are
joined: the activities of women as feminists and anti-militarists, and the
activities of women struggling in our neighborhoods and communities for
survival and dignity are the same struggle.”