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Thesis

French

ID: <

10670/1.kuhsoe

>

Where these data come from
Feminists of the fields : the ecofeminist cause in the back-to-the-land movement. France, USA, New-Zealand, 1970-2019

Abstract

This research examines how feminism and ecology intertwine – in theory and in practice – and how activists redirect their engagement into lifestyle politics, based on the experiences of people belonging to sexual minorities who create alternative settings (organic farms, permaculture sites, lesbian lands…) where they live, work,and disseminate degrowth ideas and practices. It interrogates different theoretical articulations and practices built by the subjects between their feminist, environmentalist, and LGBTQI+ community commitments, as well as the ways in which this polyengagement is reconfigured around a politicization of their ways of life. This work is built upon empirical research that combines ethnographic fieldwork (in France, New-Zealand and the USA) and about 40 interviews. The first part of the dissertation recontextualizes the neo-rural installations studied as part of a larger dynamic: the back-to-the-land movement, the emergence and evolution of ecofeminism, and new religious movements. Based on field case studies, the second part identifies three different ecofeminist subcultures and analyzes their characteristics as well as challenges. In particular, the integration in different feminist traditions and the divergent views on separatism. Following the detailed analyses of these varying ecofeminist subcultures, the last part of the dissertation deals with cross-cutting issues. It shows how the activists move away from former norms and beliefs, how they reinvent their feminist and ecological practices into prefigurative action and lifestyle politics, and, in some cases, how they develop and embrace an earth-based spirituality worshipping nature and the Divine Feminine. This dissertation sheds lights on the notion that, at the present time, ecofeminist characteristics and initiatives can be found in the back-to-the-land movement, but they do not constitute a cohesive and homogenous movement. They are however connected in a quest for feminist emancipation and the search for a way to be in the world that is more respectful of the environment. This convergence gives particular importance to acts of care, to the search for individual and collective empowerment, and to the reconnecting of activists with the Earth, their bodies, and their communities.

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