Smith, Erica

English

Journals @ The Mount

11, No. 3 (Fall 1985) illuminates these issues in an extensive fashion.) The final chapter considers the project of transfor-mation, and the possibilities for convergence of feminist scholarship and peace research. Throughout the book, in fact, she identifies what is useful in each paradigm and approach she critiques, for a feminist peace research with the transformative potential needed to understand and effectively promote change. The book, like her other work, is full of arresting and il luminating metaphors, insights, and groundwork for future developments in feminist peace research and education. Reardon has been a central figure in setting up a series of US and international Peace Education Institutes, generally in the form of summer schools. At one such event sponsored jointly by University of Alberta and Columbia University in Edmon-ton in 1986, we heard more about how these ideas might be applied to peace education programmes. For example, she developed a new approach to peace education curriculum, based on the observation of the eleven year old daughter of a feminist peace researcher colleague that what we need to learn is how to care about people, how to get along with others, and how to learn a l l the stuff we need to do that. Reardon's essential "6 R"s for peace education are the fundamentals that wi l l develop our capacities for reflection, responsibility, risk, recovery, reconciliation, and reconstruction. Reardon sug-gests a new metaphor is needed by researchers, educators, and activists, for the struggle to bring about a peaceful world. Pointing out that the current rhetoric ("fighting for peace") conveys militaristic and violent images, she suggests we use instead the metaphor of "labouring," a struggle that involves no less hard work, risk, pain, and courage, but a struggle that brings about new life and new beginnings: the metaphor of labour and childbirth. We are in a struggle to give birth to ourselves, as we confront, refuse, and attempt to transform the death culture into which we have been born and by which we have been shaped. Both of these books are key resources for the new feminist peace research. Both are beginning rather than definitive works; each raises important questions which are not neces-sarily answered, and hints at further questions (such as: ma-ternalist ideology and pitfalls of using women-as-mothers-and-nurturers, men-have-testosterone-poisoning, and other potentially biological determinist approaches) to be taken up by those working in related areas. The two complement each other. Each give an entry to the literature. Reardon's lan-guage is a bit more technical in flavour, Brock-Utne's more everyday. Both are suitable for formal and nonformal learn-ing settings, and wi l l be not only well used but well enjoyed by readers with a variety of perspectives and objectives. Barbara Roberts Halifax Reclaim the Earth. Women Speak Out for Life on Earth. Leonie Caldecott and Stephanie Leland, editors London: Women's Press, 1983. Pp. 245. Reclaim the Earth draws together the several threads of the ecofeminist worldview—a view that embraces such diverse issues as the politics of food, health and childbirth; peace, nuclearism, militarism and technology. Between them, edi-tors Leonie Caldecott and Stephanie Leland have first-hand knowledge of most of the experiences described here. The former is an activist in ecofeminist issues, the latter a member of Women for Life on Earth (the folks who brought you the Women's Peace Camp at Greenham Common) and a Green movement activist. Their wide interests are reflected in the wide scope of this book. Most of the 28 contributors are British or American, bal-anced by input from women from New Zealand, Canada, Argentina, India, Sicily and Japan, whose significant cultur-al and class differences are viewed within the wider context of global female experience. The writers offer a nice blend of analysis and what-to-do-about-it suggestions. They point out how our daily lives as welfare mothers, peace activists, cancer patients are entangled in such seemingly unrelated matters as the holistic health movement and the food industry. In clear, jargon-free language, they expose the patriarchal net of con-trol on the earth's resources and on our Selves. The word "earth" in the title refers not only to the planet but to women's bodies. There is a wide variety of concerns expressed in a variety of forms: essays, interviews, personal accounts and poetry. The concerns spil l over regional boundaries and overlap each other: the impact of nuclearism (Rosalie Bertell), the politics of women's health (Nancy Worcester), dispossession of Thi rd World women by land reform (Barbara Rogers), planning cities around the needs of women with small children (Penel-ope Leach), campaigning against the chemical industry (the Sicilian women). Two concerns, however, are common to all: the issues are far too important to be left to "experts." and women must be central to any moral and political decisions that have to be made. One of the recurring themes is ecofeminism, which Ynestra King describes as connectedness and wholeness in theory and practice, and affirmation of the integrity of every l iv ing being. Meinrad Craighead's wonderful cover art explains it nonver-bally. A lyrical interweaving of women, children, rabbits, foxes, birds, fruits, grains and vegetables spiralling gently around planet Earth, protected at the four corners by four women of different hues. Some of these essays wi l l promote some lively feminist debate. For example, Norma Benney's on animal rights claims that, contrary to popular belief, male oppression of females is not the paradigm of all other oppressions; it is our eating of animals. Animal rights is not a hotly debated topic in most feminist circles (as Benney sadly notes). The notion that we are all one flesh and that the chop on my plate was once a sentient being is, of course, not new, and most of us have pondered the ethics of carnivorousness at one time or another. Benney passionately sweeps away such timorous morality and insists that liberation must be a holistic concept. We cannot claim freedom for ourselves while ignoring the oppression of animals who do not have the power to organize themselves. She draws striking parallels between animals and women. Women also were once held to have no souls. The female pig is the most exploited of al l animals (a significant point, though Benney does not explore its symbolic import). Her sole justification for l iving is to breed. Cute and cuddly animals, such as the panda, are tokenized, their protection fanfared in the media, which allows the protectors to appear as animal lovers. Pornography abounds with chicks, pets, bunnies, cows, and bitches. The truth of the brutality of animals' lives is obscured in the sanitized, idyllic farm of children's books. Benney's claim that women can change the patriarchal dietary pattern because we control the family diet ignores the fact that women still cook what men want to eat, as well as the difficulty and expense of alternate shopping in a predominantly carnivorous society. Where can a harried and exhausted mother, unable to tolerate another hour on her feet, find take-out veggie-burgers on her way home from the office? The holistic health movement is inimical to the poor, concludes Winette Brown, using her experience as cancer victim as a lens for a political appraisal of Blacks'. The cancer death rate is 30 percent higher than for whites. Holistic health practitioners promote self-healing, but the poor cannot afford to shop in health food stores, take yoga, or buy new pots and pans. Self-healing for the few who can afford it, and guilt for most of us who cannot, can hardly be considered holistic. Why, Brown asks, should the individual be held responsible for personal health when the environment is full of carcinogens? Liz Butterworth exposes the way food is used to keep Th i rd World countries in line (much as oi l was used in the 50s). The U.S. suspends food-aid agreements because certain countries do not have the "right attitude" toward American foreign policy. While food is seen as a basic human necessity it is by no means a basic human right. The Women's Working Group on Seveso connects the explosion at a chemical plant which released poisonous dioxin gas with a whole range of patriarchal/military/indus-trial spin-offs—specifically control of women's reproduction. The Seveso women who had been exposed to the gas were permitted therapeutic abortions, only to be harangued by an outraged Bishop of Mi l an : "If the women who are bad Chris-tians do not want to look after deformed children, we wi l l find good Christian families who w i l l . " The real criminals—the multinational corporations with their fundamental con-tempt for life—are not even mentioned. Leonie Caldecott's focus is the ruinous misuse of the Mar-shall Islands by the U.S., who, as U.N.-appointed trustee, was supposed to promote self-government amd independence among the inhabitants. Her pen dripping acid, Caldecott writes, "Uncle Sam allowed himself a liberal interpretation of these obligations." Sixty devastating nuclear tests later, thou-sands of Marshallese were evicted from their homes and now live in cramped and unsanitary conditions deemed "safe" by the "experts." The area has the highest rate of cancer and leukemia in the world. The women of the island of Belau, however, are fighting back. Because theirs is basically a matrilineal society, they exercise considerable power and were able to demand (and win) a nuclear-free constitution. In a recent talk at a peace conference in Winnipeg, Rosalie Bertell also stressed the plight of the Marshallese women who are giving birth to horribly deformed babies. Her words seemed like a prophecy, in light of the Chernobyl disaster that followed a few weeks later. This book is also a prophecy; a sweep of clean air that gives us all hope for the future. I leave you with one of its most empowering images: women and children in India hugging trees, and 70 lumberjacks stopped dead in their tracks. Erica Smith HERizons, Winnipeg 

Reclaim the Earth. Women Speak Out for Life on Earth. Léonie Caldecott and Stephanie Leland (eds.).

https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/download/4396/3636

Reclaim the Earth. Women Speak Out for Life on Earth. Léonie Caldecott and Stephanie Leland (eds.).

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