Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political Action [Paperback]

Noël Sturgeon. Ecofeminist Natures; Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political Action. New York: Routledge, 1997. 260 pages.

In her book, Ecofeminist Natures, Noël Sturgeon deals with the highly problematical branch of feminism: ecofeminism. She defines ecofeminism as "... a feminist rebellion within male-dominated radical environmentalism" (25) and in the introduction she says: "The ecofeminist movement I examine, and in some ways construct throughout this book, is a fractured, contested, discontinuous entity..." (3). This latter description illustrates the problematicality of the movement and in the book, Sturgeon addresses the various problems with respect to five different aspects of ecofeminism: history, ethnography, sociology, politics and theory. The major part of the introduction is devoted to explaining essentialist theory which will come back time and again throughout the book as ecofeminism's ally, but also its biggest enemy. The most prominent and seemingly inescapable problem that plagues ecofeminism, which effects all the aspects that Sturgeon is examining, is the opposition between constructionism and essentialism. The dualism of ideas is illustrated by Sturgeon giving both the constructionist and essentialist answer to the question why women are connected to the environment. Sturgeon explains how this dualism came into the movement: "... the theoretical inconsistencies found in these various ecofeminist positions is a result of the strategic and dynamic qualities of the formation of ecofeminism as a political location within specific historical and political contexts." (58). Despite the presence of many constructionist ideas within ecofeminism, the movement's use of essentialist rhetoric leads to an enormous amount of critique from feminists outside the ecofeminist movement, which in turn leads to lack of critique within the movement creating a stalemate where neither side is willing to change their position. Feminists who concern themselves with issues involving women and nature do not want to be labelled as ecofeminists because of the 'useless' essentialist rhetoric it sometimes employs. Sturgeon illustrates the extent of criticism from "established feminism" (167) by mentioning that 'mainstream' feminists are trying to give ecofeminism as little publicity as possible. There are, for instance, hardly any articles dealing with ecofeminism in renowned feminist journals and if there is one it focuses on the 'bad' aspects of ecofeminism, like essentialism, which then seem to represent the whole ecofeminist movement. These facts make reading the book very interesting and exciting because the reader has the feeling they are being let into previously unexplored and unknown terrain for people outside the (eco)feminist movement. Although Sturgeon points to the fact that essentialist rhetoric might sometimes be useful in certain contexts (strategic essentialism), she acknowledges that the essentialist ideas that the movement adheres to can create barriers within the movement and cause a sense of exclusion for certain groups or individuals. She identifies one of the larger problems within the movement to be the race issue. Historically, ecofeminism, although it claims to be an antiracist movement, has been predominantly white. That, combined with the essentialist idea that all women are inherently the same which does not allow for racial differences to be acknowledged, has created barriers between white and coloured women within the movement and has kept more coloured women from joining. Moreover, efforts from within ecofeminism to get rid of the reputation of being racist have actually worked against the movement. At one point, ecofeminism took on the standpoint that indigenous women were even more close to nature because of their culture than western women, creating another binarism which can be perceived as being racist. Moreover, it contains the racial essentialist implication that indigenous cultures are inherently closer to nature. Throughout the book, Sturgeon gives examples of ecofeminism 'at work' by looking at various direct action movements that exist within ecofeminism: Women's Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), WomanEarth Feminist Peace Institute, Women's Pentagon Actions (WPA) and Earth First!, among others. A big part of Chapter 2 is dedicated to WomanEarth's founder and influential feminist author Ynestra King. Sturgeon stresses the parallelism of ecofeminism and anti-militarism throughout the book and uses King's four principles of ecofeminism to illustrate this: 1) the subjugation of women and the subjugation of nature are dialectically related, 2) hierarchy justifies domination and must be resisted on all levels, 3) diversity must be maintained ... and 4) dualistic thinking ... supports all kinds of domination... (67). So, every different chapter deals with one specific aspect of ecofeminism and its problems, and Sturgeon, as said before, tries to answer the questions on how to resolve the problems. Disappointingly, the answers, in the end, only seem to amount to a choice between two rather unattractive alternatives: we either just accept and live with the problems within ecofeminism, or we give up on ecofeminism altogether and start another movement for feminist environmentalists. Although this position might seem a little simplistic, it is clear that ecofeminism seems to have such a bad name that serious revisions should be made to the movement's principles so the various problematic issues can be resolved. Attempts have been made to remove the most controversial aspect, essentialist ideas, from the movement, but none have been entirely successful: "[There have been] various efforts to generate a nonessentialising ecofeminist theory by the creation of a new name for such a position. I will look at the theoretical arguments used to purify these new ecofeminism positions from essentialism and show that none of them succeed in elimination essentialism completely ." (my italics) (178). Sturgeon's conclusion is: "... that we do not need to produce a new and more perfect ecofeminism, but rather to recognize as necessary the dance of critique and consolidation that is part of theorizing and political action..." (195). In other words, the conclusion of this survey of ecofeminist theory is that we must accept the problems with theories and put them to our advantage. Because of the movement of history and changing situations in politics and theories, a 'perfect' political movement or a theory can only exist for so long anyway.

In particular, she is concerned with the current "political stalemate between the tropes of essentialism and anti-essentialism within feminism" (11), a stalemate she sees as unnecessarily and unfortunately dividing ecofeminist theory from practice and ecofeminism from feminism. While Sturgeon makes the necessary point that critics have exaggerated ecofeminist tendencies toward essentialism, she makes an even more valuable contribution by insisting that the essentialist tendencies which exist "must be explained as well as resisted" (59). She takes up this task by examining ecofeminist theory and activism within its historical and political contexts, both in the US and internationally.

Sturgeon emphasizes that when ecofeminism is viewed as a political intervention into male-dominated discourses such as deep ecology or United Nations discussions of environment and development, certain seemingly essentialist symbols and language can be seen as products of an urgent need for political alliances among women of profoundly different racial, class, and national backgrounds; these "essentialist moments" help create a shifting, strategic relationship between "women" and "nature" for political purposes (11). Sturgeon also critiques certain essentialist constructions of racial difference within ecofeminist practice (the WomanEarth Feminist Peace Institute) and theory (the discourse of "indigenous women" as the "ultimate ecofeminists"), while also acknowledging them as real efforts to confront the implications of race for ecofeminism. Finally, Sturgeon examines numerous recent academic texts in which feminists create typologies that charge ecofeminists with essentialism, or in which ecofeminists use typologies to resist such charges. She compares these texts, which often ignore the efforts of feminists of color and tend to oppose feminist theory and activism, to other, less diverse typologies and perspectives, including the work of Donna Haraway. Ultimately, she concludes that "the most vital radical political theories develop in tandem with radical movement practice" (195).

Much recent work on ecofeminism touches on the importance of attending to the movement's shifting, multiple nature and to the ways race affects women's relationships to nature and ecofeminism. Sturgeon's book is notable not only for providing a new perspective on the much-traversed terrain of essentialism, but also for making these concerns central to its content and method. And, because Sturgeon so expertly contextualizes more commonly known ecofeminist theoretical and philosophical issues within their history and politics, this book is something of a page-turner. While always necessary, theoretically astute, and scrupulously fair, Sturgeon's discussions--such as her account of the problems and successes of WomanEarth Institute or the Women's Environment and Development Organization--are also fascinating case studies of the difficult yet vital work of achieving more equitable relations among people and with the earth.