Feminist Political Ecologies

Abstract

This chapter examines how feminist political ecology (FPE) emerged as a feminist critique of sustainable development and a poststructural feminist critique and expansion of political ecology. It looks at how FPE brought together intellectual and political conversations among feminist scholars/practitioners working in geography, anthropology, women’s/gender studies, critical development studies, environmental science/studies, environmental justice, and agrarian studies. The chapter traces early work that looked at the gendered nature of environmental knowledges, access to/control over resources, spaces/places, organizations, and social movements and gendered authority in all of them. It shows how in the 1990s FPE engaged in poststructural/postcolonial/decolonial turns in theory, politics, and social movements. The chapter discusses how FPE scholars have enriched analyses of the material world and everyday life through place-based thinking/research/writing and practice.