Nature, Feminism, and Flourishing: Human Nature and the Feminist Ethics of Flourishing

This dissertation examines the viability of a feminist ethic of flourishing. The possibility of a eudaimonist, or flourishing-based, ethic adapted for the needs of feminist ethics and politics has recently been raised by a number of feminist moral philosophers. However, in these discussions, the degree to which an ethic of flourishing requires a substantive conception of human nature has not been adequately addressed. Flourishing-based ethical theories appear to require a substantive account of the kind of thing whose flourishing is to be promoted, while contemporary academic feminism is characterized by a strong suspicion toward claims about human nature. Chapter one situates this problem in the current literature and reframes feminist anti-essentialist objections to nature claims. Chapter two analyzes three historically influential exemplars of the ethics of flourishing: Aristotle, Hume, and Marx. Employing the analytic categories developed in chapter two, chapters three through five assess the work of Rosalind Hursthouse, Martha Nussbaum, and Lisa Tessman for their adequacy to serve as the basis of a feminist ethic of flourishing. I argue that each has something of value to offer and yet each is problematic when it comes to how they appeal (or fail to appeal) to human nature. The central argument of this dissertation is that, properly understood, a theory of human nature can be a critical resource for a feminist ethic of flourishing. As such, feminist moral philosophers who would condemn oppression, gender-based subordination, and other injustices by appealing to an ideal of flourishing that is being denied or cut off, would benefit from greater attention to the assumptions about human nature that such theories of flourishing entail. On the view defended here, a normative conception of human nature is a necessary methodological element of a flourishing-based ethical theory that illuminates the reasons one has in support of a particular vision of flourishing. While I leave open the question of how such a conception of human nature could be objectively justified, this dissertation argues that a theory of human nature can serve as a normative resource for feminist moral criticism within a flourishing-based ethical framework

Nature, Feminism, and Flourishing: Human Nature and the Feminist Ethics of Flourishing

This dissertation examines the viability of a feminist ethic of flourishing. The possibility of a eudaimonist, or flourishing-based, ethic adapted for the needs of feminist ethics and politics has recently been raised by a number of feminist moral philosophers. However, in these discussions, the degree to which an ethic of flourishing requires a substantive conception of human nature has not been adequately addressed. Flourishing-based ethical theories appear to require a substantive account of the kind of thing whose flourishing is to be promoted, while contemporary academic feminism is characterized by a strong suspicion toward claims about human nature. Chapter one situates this problem in the current literature and reframes feminist anti-essentialist objections to nature claims. Chapter two analyzes three historically influential exemplars of the ethics of flourishing: Aristotle, Hume, and Marx. Employing the analytic categories developed in chapter two, chapters three through five assess the work of Rosalind Hursthouse, Martha Nussbaum, and Lisa Tessman for their adequacy to serve as the basis of a feminist ethic of flourishing. I argue that each has something of value to offer and yet each is problematic when it comes to how they appeal (or fail to appeal) to human nature. The central argument of this dissertation is that, properly understood, a theory of human nature can be a critical resource for a feminist ethic of flourishing. As such, feminist moral philosophers who would condemn oppression, gender-based subordination, and other injustices by appealing to an ideal of flourishing that is being denied or cut off, would benefit from greater attention to the assumptions about human nature that such theories of flourishing entail. On the view defended here, a normative conception of human nature is a necessary methodological element of a flourishing-based ethical theory that illuminates the reasons one has in support of a particular vision of flourishing. While I leave open the question of how such a conception of human nature could be objectively justified, this dissertation argues that a theory of human nature can serve as a normative resource for feminist moral criticism within a flourishing-based ethical framework

Mater and matter: a prelimary cartography of material feminisms

Recientemente, ha habido un nuevo interés en la materia y la materialidad en la investigación feminista. El artículo sitúa a los feminismos materiales contemporáneos en relación con tradiciones más antiguas en las cuales se han establecido aproximaciones entre el feminismo y el materialismo. Aborda cuatro rasgos distintivos que considero como importantes mejoras teóricas y perspectivas políticas prometedoras de los feminismos materiales: (1) un mayor compromiso con la ciencia; (2) la apreciación de la agencia material; (3) el surgimiento de una perspectiva posthumanista; Y (4) una reevaluación y revisión de la ética. El artículo proporciona una cartografía provisional o cartografía preliminar de esta reorientación teórica y empírica, a la vez que apunta a algunos problemas teóricos y posibles inconvenientes en los actuales debates feministas y académicos.Recently, there has been a new interest in matter and materiality in feminist scholarship. The article situates contemporary material feminisms in relation to older traditions of feminist engagements with materialism. It discusses four distinctive features that I take to be important theoretical improvements and promising political prospects of material feminisms: (1) a stronger engagement with science; (2) the appreciation of material agency; (3) the emergence of a posthumanist perspective; and (4) a reevaluation and revision of ethics. The article provides a provisional mapping or preliminary cartography of this theoretical and empirical re-orientation, while pointing to some theoretical problems and possible drawbacks in current feminist debates and scholarship

Feminist Ecological Economics

Feminist ecological economics links gender and ecological perspectives both theoretically and practically, providing justification and impetus for considering gender, intersectionality, and ecology together in relation to economic activity. Such analysis reveals the material links between biophysical reproduction and social reproduction, and their importance for economies, despite their generally being undercounted and/or externalized. Feminist ecological economics analysis also generates important and timely insights about how economies might be structured differently to prioritize equity, ecological and political sustainability, and interspecies or ecosystemic well-being (Salleh 1997, 2009; Gibson-Graham and Miller 2015).Feminist ecological economics is closely related to ecofeminist economics, which is somewhat more critical since it is built on extensive ecofeminist analysis of the links between feminism and ecology. Both fields problematize and critique economies and economics from intersectional feminist standpoints. These fields are also intertwined with feminist political ecology, postcolonial feminisms, the subsistence approach theory, materialist ecofeminism, Indigenous feminisms, gender and development, feminist commons theory, and feminist degrowth theory (see Mellor 2002; Nixon 2015; Dengler; Akram-Lodhi and Rao; Tsikata and Torvikey; and Agarwal, this volume).This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Gender and democratic politics: a comparative analysis of consolidation in Argentina and Chile

This article highlights a number of themes useful in the gendered analysis of democratic consolidation in Latin America by means of a comparative analysis of Argentina and Chile. It starts from the assumption that much of the work on democratisation in Latin America – both orthodox and the literature concentrating on women and transitions – produced up until now, has been too voluntaristic in its approach. It argues that what is needed, particularly in the study of democratic consolidation, is an analysis not only of the impact of women and women's organisations on institutions and structures but also of how these institutions and structures can shape and change gender relations and different women's activities. Any gendered analysis of democratic consolidation must begin by examining the terms of transition which, while they can be subject to some renegotiation later, affect the nature of the subsequent system and the space available to different actors. It is argued that a number of characteristics of the post-transition system are significant: first the impact of more arbitrary populist or presidential systems, second the importance of women's organising both inside and outside the state and party systems and third the existence of an institutionalised party system

Feminist Ecological Economics and Sustainability

New developments in feminist ecological economics and ecofeminist economics are contributing to the search for theories and policy approaches to move economies toward sustainability. This paper summa- rizes work by ecofeminists and feminist ecological economists which is relevant to the sustainability challenge and its implications for the discipline of economics. Both democracy and lower material throughputs are generally seen as basic principles of economic sustainability. Feminist theorists and feminist ecological econ- omists offer many important insights into the conundrum of how to make a democratic and equity-enhancing transition to an economy based on less material throughput. These flow from feminist research on unpaid work and caring labor, provisioning, development, valuation, social reproduction, non-monetized exchange relationships, local economies, redistribution, citizenship, equity-enhancing political institutions, and labor time, as well as creative modeling approaches and activism-based theorizing.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Women's human rights in Russia: outmoded battlegrounds, or new sites of contentious politics?

This article draws on three pieces of qualitative research conducted with women in provincial Russia over the last 10 years. The first section analyses women's discussions of their everyday rights claims and their engagement in “consentful” forms of contention. The second section uses the Pussy Riot case as an example of women's human rights activism coded as “contentious”. Finally, the article highlights the blurred boundaries between contentious and consentful contention that can occur when women engage in online spaces. The article suggests a spectrum of contentious politics for women's rights claims that vary depending on the political opportunity structures available

Thinking Fragments: Adisciplinary Reflections on Feminisms and Environmental Justic

Feminisms and environmental justice are some of the names of struggles to understand nature-culture linkages and conceptualize just worlds for non-humans and their human kin. In this paper, I revisit my journey of doing environmental justice research, i.e. of my feminist scientific practice in Asia and Latin America. In this retrospective telling I highlight how gender, political economy, and race were and remain fundamental in producing the subjects and objects of my research and analysis. I discuss how an implicit feminism helped me grapply with the complex nature-culture linkages I observed in the field. Postcolonial and marxist insights supplement and complement feminisms in the questions I pose as we attempt to imagine new nature-cultures

Gendering global governance

In this article I map out the major debates on global governance and the feminist critiques of the mainstream interventions in these debates. I argue that the shift from government to governance is a response to the needs of a gendered global capitalist economy and is shaped by struggles, both discursive and material, against the unfolding consequences of globalization. I suggest feminist interrogations of the concept, processes, practices and mechanisms of governance and the insights that develop from them should be centrally incorporated into critical revisionist and radical discourses of and against the concept of global governance. However, I also examine the challenges that the concept of global governance poses for feminist political practice, which are both of scholarship and of activism as feminists struggle to address the possibilities and politics of alternatives to the current regimes of governance. I conclude by suggesting that feminist political practice needs to focus on the politics of redistribution in the context of global governance