About the Book

Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, internationally respected feminist activists and writers, come together in this book on a controversial environmental agenda. Using interview material, they bring together women’s perspectives from North and South on environmental deterioration and develop a new way of approaching this body of knowledge, which is at once practical and philosophical.

Do women involved in environmental movements see a link between patriarchy and ecological degradation? What are the links between global militarism and the destruction of nature? In exploring such questions, the authors criticize prevailing theories and develop an intellectually rigorous ecofeminist perspective rooted in the needs of everyday life. They argue for the acceptance of limits, the rejection of the commoditization of needs, and a commitment to a new ethics.

---

Contents

1. Introduction: Why We Wrote this Book Together / Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva

PART 1: CRITIQUE AND PERSPECTIVE

2. Reductionism and Regeneration: A Crisis in Science / Vandana Shiva

3. Feminist Research: Science, Violence and Responsibility / Maria Mies

PART 2: SUBSISTENCE V. DEVELOPMENT

4. The Myth of Catching-up Development / Maria Mies

5. The Impoverishment of the Environment: Women and Children Last / Vandana Shiva

6. Who Made Nature Our Enemy? / Maria Mies

PART 3: THE SEARCH FOR ROOTS

7. Homeless in the ‘Global Village’ / Vandana Shiva

8. Masculinization of the Motherland / Vandana Shiva

9. Women have no Fatherland / Maria Mies

10. White Man’s Dilemma: His Search for What He Has Destroyed / Maria Mies

PART 4: ECOFEMINISM V. NEW AREAS OF INVESTMENT THROUGH BIOTECHNOLOGY

11. Women’s Indigenous Knowledge and Biodiversity Conservation / Vandana Shiva

12. New Reproductive Technologies: Sexist and Racist Implications / Maria Mies

13. From the Individual to the Dividual: The Supermarket of ‘Reproductive Alternatives’ / Maria Mies

PART 5: FREEDOM FOR TRADE OR FREEDOM FOR SURVIVAL

14. Self-Determination: The End of a Utopia? / Maria Mies

15. GATT, Agriculture and Third World Women / Vandana Shiva

16. The Chipko Women’s Concept of Freedom / Vandana Shiva

PART 6: SUBSISTENCE: FREEDOM V. LIBERALIZATION

17. Liberating the Consumer / Maria Mies

18. Decolonizing the North / Vandana Shiva

19. People or Population: Towards a New Ecology of Reproduction / Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva

PART 7: CONCLUSION

20. The Need for a New Vision: The Subsistence Perspective / Maria Mies

---

About the Author / Editor

Maria Mies is a sociologist and author of several books including “Indian Women and Patriarchy, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, The Lace Makers of Narsapur” and, with Claudia von Werlhof and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, “Women: ” The Last Colony as well as articles in numerous journals. After returning from many years in India, she became head of the Women’s Studies Programme at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, and subsequently Professor of Sociology at the Fachhochschüle in Cologne. She is now active in women’s and environmental movements in Germany.

Vandana Shiva – physicist, philosopher and feminist activist – is Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, Dehradun, India. She has been active in citizens’ action against environmental destruction, including the Chipko Movement, and is highly critical of current agricultural and reproductive technologies. She is the author of hugely successful “Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development” and subsequent books, “The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics” and “Monocultures of the Mind, ” and co-editor of “Biodiversity: Social and Ecological Perspectives.” She gives occasional lectures on feminism and ecology at numerous institutions worldwide.

---