I’ve been listening to talk radio in my car while running errands over the past few days, on the occasion that my iPod FM Transmitter broke and my burned cd collection melted together in some scientifically unidentifiable catastrophe. Top news stories on NPR as of lately include the harrowing tale of trapped Chilean miners, a rescue touted as a triumph of the human spirit. These news stories conspicuously lacked insight concerning the incident. Though the triumph of rescuing these miners and the strength it required to stay alive through the course of being trapped underground is nothing to ignore, the conditions that led to these miners entrapment also shouldn’t be ignored. By this I mean that the location (A Developing Country), the gender of miners, the socioeconomic status of miners, and the occurence of such an incident are more inevitable than random.
Ecofeminism, broadly defined, is a social and political movement which points to considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism. Generally speaking, ecofeminism explores the intersectionality between sexism, environmental degradation, racism, Darwinism, speciesism, and other patriarchal organizational patterns that spur social inequality. Through this lens we can answer a few of the questions I asked above.
According to ecofeminist theory there exists an oppression of developing countries, which lack political and economic resources and are populated by subordinated races, by developed countries. Developed nations are driven to exploit the labor and resources of developing countries in order to sustain capitalism and consumer culture. Though we also mine in the United States, it’s also important to look at who working in mines, primarily the secondary labor market whose workers have much less control over the conditions of their labor; exposure to toxins and carcinogens, safety, work schedules, pay, etc. So intersect the idea that a developing nation is much more likely to be extracting resources and paying or giving workers much less control over their labor conditions and you can understand how something like this might happen.
Something to note as well, which I briefly touched on above is the interconnected nature of this system with capitalism and consumerism. Below I’ve linked you to The Story of Stuff, which gives a lot of insight into how labor, environmental degradation, capitalism, and consumerism intersect.
To scrutinize with a feminist lens means to acknowledge that there are no coincidences in the way in which society is organized.
Until next time,
KillerTofu
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