Spinifex Press » Wild Politics

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Main : climate change, ecology, human rights, non-fiction

ISBN: 9781876756246
0.550 kgs
215 x 137 mm
400 pp

Wild Politics: Feminism, Globalisation and Bio/diversity
Susan Hawthorne

Dominant culture knowledge diminishes the knowledge and understanding of the powerless, and because knowledges of the powerless are regarded with contempt, the powerful are cut off from greater understanding. The powerful suffer from the syndrome of Dominant Culture Stupidities.

Looking for a new way forward, or a different explanation of what is currently happening? Susan Hawthorne challenges the universal endorsement of global western culture with her concept of biodiversity, arguing that biodiversity is a useful metaphor for understanding social, political, and economic relations in the globalised world of the twenty-first century. She provides a visionary outlook and proposes ways forward that emphasise social justice, multiversity and an ecologically-grounded feminist philosophy.

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Awards
2002 Australian Book Review, best books

Reviews
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'Wild Politics provides an inspiring antidote … by giving a feminist critique of our present world, an explanation of the structures that enable exploitation and an amazing range of actions by women, peasants, farmers, workers, everywhere who defy the globalization paradigm and connect to our common humanity and natural commons … This is the book I wish I had written myself.' Theresa Wolfwood, Our Paper, Canada

'Hawthorne offers a comprehensive critique of globalization and the international (patriarchal capitalist) political economy. I was fascinated by Hawthorne’s title and her explanation of the title. And while reading, I felt that Hawthorne’s definition of “wild politics” provides a useful framework for birth activists seeking to define birth as it should be, and for restructuring the current maternity system as it should be: un-medicalised, un-industrialised, pure, natural, powerful, womun’s, wild!'

Sazz Eaton, Sazz's Blog

'[Wild Politics] is not a blueprint for change but rather a step in the direction of imagining a world 'that might operate differently'... It has to date been lauded as a scathing critique of Western liberalism and economic globalisation, but it also offers much more: a way forward for feminist theory and activism in the 21st Century.' Meagan Tyler, Melbourne Journal of Politics

See all reviews...

Table of Contents

Tables, Photos, Figures and Cartoons	13
INTRODUCTION A Feminist Critique of Western Global Culture	17
Cultural Logic	23
Decolonising Scholarship	26
Biodiversity and Seeds	28
The Seed of Culture	31
Weaving the Strands	33
Defining the Wild	35
CHAPTER ONE The Principle of Diversity	43
Beginnings	44
Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis	46
Feminism	47
Change	51
Creating Feminist Knowledge	52
Who is the Knower?	58
Standpoint Theory	64
Analysis	65
Synthesis	68
Dissociation	70
Associative Thinking	73
CHAPTER TWO Power and Knowledge: Global Monotony or Local Diversity?	77
Power	77
The Power of Violence	82
The Power of Reward	87
The Power of Backlash	90
The Power of Obstacles	92
The Power of Systems	93
The Power of Attraction	96
The Power of Attitudes	99
Knowledge	101
Assimilation and Appropriation	103
A Clash of Knowledge Systems	107
Not seeing	111
The Perceptual Gap	112
How Knowledge is Valued	114
Cultural Homogeneity	116
In Defence of Diversity	119
CHAPTER THREE One Global Economy or Diverse Decolonised Economies?	123
The Logic of Neoclassical Economics	123
How Women Are (ac)Counted	135
Economic Homogeneity and Globalisation	140
Decolonising Economics	149
Feminist Economics	152
Ecological Economics	161
Toward a Wild Economics	167
CHAPTER FOUR Land as Relationship and Land as Possession	174
Land as resource or relationship?	174
Wilderness	174
Land	182
Dealing with Waste	187
"Freeing" the Land, Enclosing the Commons	188
Feminist conceptions of land	191
Indigenous conceptions of land	194
Land as possession	198
Tourism: land and wilderness as commodity	202
Urban land	206
Urban land as wild space	209
Steps to developing a wild politics of land	212
CHAPTER FIVE Farming, Fishing and Forestry: from subsistence to terminator technology	216
Farming in Kenya and Nigeria	217
Forestry in Lithuania, the USA, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka	227
Fishing in the Pacific	239
Digitised and globalised farming: what the future holds	243
The Kyoto Protocol, plantation forests and Terminator Trees	257
Fishing wild fish to feed domesticated fish	262
The commodification of "everything"	267
Women as keepers of ecosystems	268
CHAPTER SIX Production, consumption and work: global and local	270
Production and disparity	270
Consumption and disparity	274
Work and disparity	276
Global production	280
Global consumption	289
Global work	299
Local production	305
Local consumption	307
Local work	309
Military as gross producer and consumer	316
Conclusion	317
CHAPTER SEVEN Monocultures and multilateral trade rules	321
Patents	321
Multilateral trade agreements and the shape of international law	330
Multilateral trade negotations and the convention on biological diversity	332
The World Trade Organisation (WTO)	338
Trade related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs)	341
Food security	349
The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)	353
Traditional Resource Rights (TRRs) and Community Intellectual Rights (CIRs)	358
Human Genome Project (HGP) and Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP)	360
Conclusion	368
CHAPTER EIGHT Wild Politics	370
Wild politics: a vision for the next 40,000 years	376
Abbreviations	391
Bibliography	394

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