Women’s circles and the rise of the new feminine : reclaiming sisterhood, spirituality, and wellbeing

This paper draws on the results of ethnographic research on ‘women’s circles’; women-only spaces that celebrate sisterhood and the ‘feminine’, including the increasingly globally popular ‘Red Tent’. Women’s circles are non-institutionalized, often monthly gatherings, for women to come together and relax, meditate, share stories, partake in rituals, heal, nourish, and empower themselves. Based on fieldwork and in-depth interviews with founders and organizer-practitioners of women’s circles in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, the study shows how they offer a growing number of women from diverse backgrounds a space that they find lacking in secular-liberal society, out of a desire to ‘re/connect’ with each other, their bodies, their inner selves, and sometimes with the sacred. Women’s circles are indicative of women’s heightened participation in the realm of subjective wellbeing culture, including both elements of spirituality and more secular ‘personal growth’. Against the presumption that circles would be merely expressive of neo-liberal individualist consumer culture or retrograde gender essentialism, the paper argues they can be viewed as sites of sisterhood, solidarity, and dissent, cultivating a new type of femininity grounded in both affirmative and more oppositional forms of emerging feminist consciousness. In response to the so-called ‘post-secular turn in feminism’ and the growing interest for religion and, more recently, spirituality in (secular) feminist theory, the paper pleads for a re-consideration of the rise of women’s spirituality/wellbeing culture in the West as a form of post-secular agency

Joni Mitchell: music and feminism

This article considers singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell's often fraught relationship with second and third-wave feminism

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

Concept, Principles and Research Methods of African Environmental Ethics

[English] This paper aims to discuss ten traditional and contemporary methodological paradigms in African philosophy, and demonstrates how they may apply to African environmental ethics research. The methods include: Ethno-philosophy, Sage Philosophy, Conversational Philosophy, Conceptual Mandelanization, Eco-Afrocentricism, Indigenous Language Analysis, Eco-Afro-feminism, Conceptual Decolonization, Storytelling Philosophy, and Cultural Adaptationism. The significance and limitations of the methodologies are highlighted. The concept and principles of African environmental ethics are analyzed and discussed to facilitate an understanding of the conceptual frameworks that underpin the methodologies. In conclusion, the discourse demonstrates that environmental ethics research in Africa should be based on African philosophical methodologies so as to facilitate production of research that will be relevant in African contexts. [Annang] N̄wed nduongo ami ayem ibene nwọ́d mme n̄kaan nne mfa usung unam nduongo ke vilọsọvi Afrịke , nne nte amọ ekeme iwam unam nduongo mbanga ido ukpeme nkan-nkuk ke Afrịke. Mme usung unam nduongo ami nsehe ade ami: vilọsọvi mben ufọk, vilọsọvi n̄kan ideen, vilọsọvi nneme, vilọsọvi Mandela, “Eco-Afrocentricism”, nduongore usem utiit ajid, vilọsọvi ibaan Afrịke, vilọsọvi mkpọk-nyak, vilọsọvi n̄ke, nne ukpep ido idung agwo. N̄wed ami abene awọd mme ikek nne nde mem idem usung nduongo ami. N̄wed ami atang mkpọ abanga se ido ukpeme nkan-nkuk ke Afrịke anwongo nne mme itai amọ, nne nte amọ ewam mbon nduongo ediọhọ nnanga ekpekakpa ibọrọ nduongo amọ. Ke n̄suuk ikọ, ukpep ami mkpọ abene awọd ate ke ekpena ekama usung nduongo vilọsọvi Afrịke enam nduongo ebanga ido ukpeme nkan-nkuk ke Afrịke man ibọrọ nduongo asanga akekem nne se adiiwam Afrịke

Swimming in Histories of Gender Oppression: Grupo XIX de Teatro's Hysteria

Hysteria, first performed in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2001, was assembled from oral histories, medical cases, records, and remnants documenting the lives of Brazilian women from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who were incarcerated in Rio de Janeiro's Pedro II Institute. Its UK premiere in 2008, performed by the all-female cast of the Brazilian Grupo XIX de Teatro, included a setting of the show in the old Victoria Baths in Manchester. In this article Elaine Aston identifies ways in which Hysteria keeps open or re-opens the question of feminist liberation. Exploring the show's critique of Western feminism's claims to independence and liberation, her analysis moves towards a mode of interdependent feminist thinking through which liberation might be realized. Elaine Aston is Professor of Contemporary Performance at Lancaster University and editor of Theatre Research International. Her most recent publications include Feminist Views on the English Stage (2003); Feminist Futures: Theatre, Performance, Theory (edited with Geraldine Harris, 2006); Staging International Feminisms (edited with Sue-Ellen Case, 2007); and Performance Practice and Process: Contemporary, (Women) Practitioners (with Geraldine Harris, 2008)