Agricultural sustainability is critical global agenda, integrating environmental stewardship and social equity, with scale production and gender dynamics significantly influencing the social-ecological-spatial relations on farms. Nevertheless, the relationships between scale production and gender dynamics of farms are missing in existing literature. Through the lens of Feminist Political Ecology and care ethics, and with an emphasis on scale, this thesis focuses on forces across scales that can influence the socio-ecological transformations of different farms and women farmers’ embodied experiences within and beyond farms. Through life-course interviews with women farmers and document analysis of agricultural policies at local, regional, and national levels, this thesis investigates small-scale and large- scale farm cases in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region of China. This thesis indicates that social relations are deeply intertwined with environmental processes, where the scale of farms is produced and manipulated by governance power, metabolism between places, and individuals’ trajectories. While facing challenges of labor exploitation, women farmers embrace care ethics to contribute to human-nature and interpersonal connections, shaping the sustainable development of farms. Women farmers’ care practices reflect how they navigate the constructed patriarchal hierarchy in agricultural activities, involving the tensions between empowerment and subordination. The research suggests that integrating care ethics with the politics of scale can provide a comprehensive understanding of gender dynamics in agricultural socio-ecological transitions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-230064 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Duo, Landi |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Kulturgeografiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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