In the globalized garment industry (GGI) most clothing is involved in complex networks that exploit both people and the environment. This system is unsustainable yet supported by Canadian consumers, who have become disconnected from their clothing’s production and disposal processes as a result of the development of increasingly complex social and technological systems since the Industrial Revolution. Canadians currently learn about the industry from public portrayals in which the dominant messages are designed by corporations promoting consumption. Nevertheless, growing numbers of consumers are realizing that this system is unsustainable and attempting to take action. This study uses methods based on institutional ethnography to explore the challenges faced by Canadians trying to engage in ethical consumption. Promoting sustainability is seen as requiring broad structural change, which can be supported by individual Canadians seeking to learn about the industry and working with its global stakeholders to build the civil commons.

This thesis analyzes the analogy between woman and nature and ecofeminist theory that emphasizes the parallelism between man&#039 / s exploitation of woman and nature. It aims to make an ecofeminist analysis of three novels: Surfacing by Margaret Atwood, The Cleft by Doris Lessing and The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson. First, this thesis introduces the history and main principles of ecofeminist theory. These novels by different women writers investigate the embodiment of these main principles in three novels despite the fact that the same aspects of the theory can sometimes be interpreted differently in these novels. In analyzing these three novels as applications and/or the criticisms of ecofeminist theory, it was found that two theories, social ecology and Cyborg Theory, are also necessary. The later novels use ideas from these related theories alongside ecofeminist ideas. In order to undertake this analysis in each novel, this thesis also studies the assignment of determined social roles to man and woman and the duality resulting from this inequality. Next, it investigates the colonization of both nature and woman&#039 / s body by man&amp / #8217 / s intervention, that leads to the alienation of woman from herself and society. Furthermore, this thesis shows the exploitation process of females and nature by males who consider both as objects.

The concept of sustainable development has largely failed to address environmental and social crises in a meaningful and transformative way, despite its growing popularity. Ecofeminism offers a way to understand and challenge assumptions embedded in the sustainable development discourse. A critical reading of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s discourse identified six themes: (1) economic empowerment of women (2) reporting does matter (3) reporting on socio-economic measurements (4) solutions for all (5) shifting focus and (6) defining the middle class. Each theme is based on one of five different characteristics of dualism. It can be concluded that sustainable development discourse perpetuates the dualism of Progress / Rejuvenation which is a duality that further maintains a broad system of dualism already in existence throughout Western society. The study contributes to a better understanding of the importance of more diverse platforms of understanding that allow for transformative solutions to pressing ecological and social crises.

Industrialization and "development" during the last 200 years have led to an increase of pesticides, an intensified use of synthetic chemicals, higher levels of environmental pollution, and more exposure to hazardous working conditions. Environmental toxins, many of which are endocrine disruptors, are stored in fat tissue, increasing reproductive health risks for both women and men. Women’s bodies are particularly vulnerable as sites for creating, growing, feeding, and nurturing the next generation. And yet, women’s lives are consistently devalued, especially in a capitalist economy, so that a woman’s rights to her own reproductive health are no longer guaranteed. In this thesis I first review ecological destruction, environmental policies, and food safety/security issues for women. I then examine neoliberal globalization as an active participant in the destruction of the environment and an attack on global health. I discuss how utilizing feminist theory effectively, and actively, will ensure women the right to their health. I employ postmodern feminist and refigured ecofeminist theory to demonstrate how a feminist perspective is necessary in the development of policies that address the problem of endocrine disruptors in terms of women’s reproductive health and the health of future generations. Finally, I suggest that the precautionary principle must include a feminist perspective to fully succeed.

In the context of a deepening environmental crisis, there are growing calls for a planning framework informed by environmental ethics. In response, I locate this research in the ecocentric discourse and argue the need to challenge both ecological destruction and patriarchy. I raise feminist concerns about the marginalization of women from the processes by which we come to understand and respond to environmental concerns, and adopt a feminist methodology, qualitative methods, and a case study strategy to explore the subjective dimension of women's environmental activism in the context of growing concerns about the forests of Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia. The purpose of this research is to identify: (a) the critical insights that these women bring to their activism; (b) the patriarchal barriers they face in the course of their activism; and (c) the implications of the research findings for an action-oriented ecofeminism and ethics-based planning for sustainability. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 women and their feedback (transcripts, workshop, draft research findings) incorporated into the final report. The research findings confirm that these women have critical insights to offer and that patriarchal barriers frustrate but do not totally constrain their activism. These women offer insight into the complex set of values and structures that protect the status quo, and the forest industry in particular, expose patriarchal structures and values that constrain their activism and protect the interests of a male-dominated industry, and suggest a normative foundation for sustainability that takes seriously the well-being of human and nonhuman nature, male and female. In analysing these findings, I argue for an action-based ecofeminism that moves beyond ideal notions of the ecological self, promotes a public ethic of care, challenges both constructs and structures, and critically supports the emergence of women's insights and contributions from the economic, political, and cultural margins. Furthermore, I argue that these women's insights and experiences have significant substantive and procedural implications for planning. I propose an ethics-based planning framework committed to the ecological and social integrity of 'place' and to the well-being of all who live there—human and nonhuman, male and female. In challenging the status quo, this ethics-based planning involves struggles with both external structures and internally held values. In doing so, it links the political to the personal and contributes to both structural and personal transformation.

Issues of the environment have received increasing attention as demonstrated by the rise of the ecological movement in response to the threat of overpopulation, intensive agricultural methods and chemical pollution, all of which are reinforced by industrialization. Ecofeminist theories assert that industrialisation and capitalism have resulted in the oppression of both women and nature. Ecofeminism therefore represents a critique of patriarchal frameworks as well as a grassroots political movement with strategies to bring about an ecological revolution. However, ecofeminism as articulated in the West has been criticised for homogenizing and essentialising women. This study conceives ecofeminism from an African perspective by examining the work of Maathai and her Green Belt Movement (GBM) in relation to the Kenyan context. The study examines the effect of hegemonic practices such as colonialism and capitalism on the environment and gender relations. The study motivates the argument that Maathai's GBM offers a critique of industrialism and capitalist patriarchy occasioned by colonialism as well as a response to sustainability. The study advances the argument that the GBM represents a rethinking of the homogenizing imperative of western ecofeminism. The central hypothesis of this article is that Wangari Maathai's GBM is an African ecofeminist activism, which through environmental issues and interventions highlights gender relations and challenges patriarchy within national and global ideological structures. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sci.)-University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2006.

Rabbit Lake explores the concerns of citizens who testified at hearings held by the Rabbit Lake Uranium Mine Environmental Assessment Panel throughout Saskatchewan in 1993. The poems that form my thesis are both lyrical and experimental, derived in part from the voices found in the Rabbit Lake transcripts. Inspired by rhizome theory and rhizomorphous structures, the voices in my thesis are nomadic: their primary impulse is to map interconnected histories and geographies; in so doing, these voices transcend boundaries and coalesce to form a polyphonic, non-linear narrative. The influence of ecocritical theory is reflected in poems that draw the reader’s attention to the non-human world affected by uranium mining, most notably in an interspersed series of experiments detailing various forms of lichen found throughout Saskatchewan. Various other textual experiments, including collage and erasure, are lines of flight within the rhizome of the thesis. The inclusion of “(inaudible)” passages found in the transcripts is intended to draw the reader’s attention toward what was misheard or left unsaid at the hearings. The presence of an “unknown” speaker is designed as a poetic and political intervention that enables elaborations. Beginning with Canada’s historical involvement in the Manhattan Project, that is, the United States’ earliest attempt to build a nuclear weapon, my thesis moves from Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, and into the lakes and waterways of Saskatchewan’s north. The voices that emerge, situated in association with lakes and rivers, include a chorus of women and a chorus of Indigenous elders, an invented uranium mining corporation, “Uraneco,” and several scientists, including a biologist and geophysicist, as well as an invented cosmochemist and limnologist. From Saskatchewan’s northern waterways, the voices wander outward, evoking sites affected by the nuclear industry beyond Saskatchewan’s borders, from crops in the province’s south historically affected by fallout from nuclear weapons’ testing in Nevada, to radioactive detritus left in the deserts of Iraq due the United States’ use of depleted Canadian uranium in munitions. The intention behind this figurative explosion of the thesis is to illustrate the extent to which a seemingly isolated uranium mine may affect the whole world.

Beginning in a small informal collective of Mapuche women weavers in Puerto Saavedra, Chile, I explore how ecological knowledge has survived through textile handcraft, passed down from mother to daughter . Through analysis of interviews and observations with the women as weavers , I reflect on the importance of centering Indigenous women's knowledge, systematically excluded from the environmental cannon. The weavers maintain and shape traditions that have survived colonization and its disruption of Indigenous access to land and ways of living. They produce and transmit environmental knowledge on which they depend for subsistence and cultural expression. Using ecofeminism as a framework, I argue that the Mapuche women weavers' knowledge is counternarrative and expert knowledge. Through these stories told by hand and through oral story-telling it becomes clear that it is not enough to simply celebrate their beautiful craft and sustainable ways of interacting with the more-than-human environment; it is essential, also, to engage in activist work towards environmental and social justice.

This dissertation addresses the notable lack of the comic mode in contemporary ecofiction and aims to integrate humor and ecological inflection through the female narrative voice. Comedy and ecology rarely intersect in literary fiction. Ecofiction tends to be unfunny because the category grows out of the nonfiction tradition of nature writing, a genre that yields solemn, reverent, meditative essays that lack humor. Also, works of ecofiction can seem didactic, lacking the complexity, richness, and ambiguity that characterize literary fiction. Furthermore, literary critics often view comedic stories as lacking in literary quality. However, comedy has an intensifying effect on narrative, imbuing tragic moments with greater darkness and eliciting conflicted emotions in the reader. Literary fiction is characterized by this kind of ambiguity, evidenced by some of the finest works of contemporary literary short fiction that integrate comedy and tragedy. Accordingly, I aim to write comic stories that are imbued with loss, darkness or loneliness. Ecofiction provides a ripe context for my work, as does the young female voice. Ecofiction stems from the modern predicament of rootlessness, alienation, transience, isolation—of our detachment from place. Stories that feature characters afflicted by this malaise are “eco” in the sense that they make us more aware of our contemporary relationship (or lack thereof) to the natural world. Most significantly, these stories are ripe for the intersection of comic and tragic. In my own stories, I strive to create comic female first person narrators whose actions reveal lives deeply afflicted by loneliness, placelessness, and disconnection, and whose inner wildness provides the primary source of comic dramatic tension. These protagonists are motivated by a desperate need to forge meaningful connections in a world that is precariously poised on a foundation of contingencies and whose stories are simultaneously hilarious and heart-wrenching.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 1999. / Examines the work of five 18th century poets: Mary Collier, Mary Leopor, Elizabeth Hands, Ann Cromartie Yearsley and Janet Little--Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 216-228). Also available via World Wide Web.