(Ebook) Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care by Sherilyn Macgregor ISBN 9780774812023, 0774812028

(Ebook) Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care by Sherilyn Macgregor ISBN 9780774812023, 0774812028

Women's environmental activism is often described in maternalist terms as if motherhood and caring for the environment go hand in hand. While feminists celebrate this connection, women and all those who care for people and environments are facing increasing burdens and decreasing time for civic engagement as neoliberal governments download life-sustaining work to the voluntary sector.

In Beyond Mothering Earth, Sherilyn MacGregor argues that celebrations of earth care as women's unique contribution to the search for sustainability often neglect to consider the importance of politics and citizenship in women's lives. Drawing on interviews with women who juggle private caring with civic engagement in quality-of-life concerns, she proposes an alternative: a project of feminist ecological citizenship that affirms the practice of citizenship as an intrinsically valuable activity while recognizing the foundational aspects of caring labour and natural processes that allow its specificity to flourish. Her interdisciplinary analysis not only breaks through hierarchical sustainability and the shifting meanings of citizenship in an increasingly vulnerable world.