The cry that advanced machines will come to dominate human beings resounds from the time of the Luddites up to the current consternation by the chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy. My theme is a twist on this fear: self-deselection, the possibility that humans will voluntarily combine their own bodies with technological additions to the point where it could reasonably be said that our species has been replaced by another kind of entity, a hybrid of human and radical enhancement, (...) whether that enhancement stems from genetic alteration or the affixing of robotic parts. The paper discusses why this danger exists, focusing mainly on perilous psychological and cultural tendencies (though the amazing rate of technological change and its likely course are discussed). It then proceeds with arguments as to why such deselection is a kind of suicide and why this suicide would be a bad thing in the context of early twenty-first- century society. In the last section, ecofeminist theory is employed to generate a therapeutic ethic of social and political relationship that contrasts with a patriarchal model of dominative control through aggressive science. (shrink)

Concern over the natural environment has been a persistent problem for industrialized society. One possible reason for the enduring anxiety over the condition of the ecosystem may be that the masculinist perspective dominant in business education, research, and practice does not allow us to envision sustainable solutions. This manuscript traces the rise of masculinist hegemony in organizational science and counters with a postmodern feminist alternative that may provide more workable, long-term solutions to environmental degradation. Examples of changes in business language (...) and heuristics that may be derived from such a postmodern feminist perspective are discussed. (shrink)

(1998). ‘Ecofeminism’ in geography. Philosophy & Geography: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 243-249.

This article views capitalism not only as a mode of production, but also as a mediation of the reproduction of life, following the concept of ‘social metabolism’ that Marx employs to analyze the interaction between the individuals composing a society and their natural environment. Insofar as the ‘value-form’ is the distinctive social relation of capitalism, it appears necessary to ask whether the metabolic process of reproduction can be fully subsumed under this form. Marx takes for granted the idea that the (...) reproduction of labor-power consists only in the consumption of commodities resulting from abstract labor, thus omitting the appropriation of unpaid domestic work, mostly performed by women. Feminist criticism clarifies how capitalism always depends on some reproductive work being appropriated for the accumulation of surplus-value without being integrated in the value-form. Following Jason W. Moore, I attempt to indicate that the same logic is at work for the reproduction... (shrink)

This article explores the problems and possibilities of different feminist theoretical models of identity for challenging women's symbolic and strategic positioning in the discourses and conflicts that produce national, ethnic and racialized community identities. The discussion focuses on two of the most popular alternative models to emerge within white western feminism, the nomad and the cyborg, while also considering some other suggested paradigm shifts emerging from diasporic and postcolonial feminisms. It asks how successfully these feminist alternative models of the self (...) and community identities deal with two key issues relating to women's positioning in prevailing identity discourses – on the one hand, women's relationship to questions of ‘place’, location and dislocation, and on the other, questions of female embodiment and the ways in which the specifically female body becomes both a symbolic and material target of conflict and contestation in processes of constituting community identities. (shrink)

Research on women's preponderance among animal rights advocates explains it exclusively as a product of women's socialization, emphasizing a relational orientation of care and nurturing that extends to animals. The authors propose a more structural explanation: Women's experiences with structural oppression make them more disposed to egalitarian ideology, which creates concern for animal rights. Using data from a 1993 national sample, the authors find that an egalitarian gender ideology is a key difference in women's and men's routes to animal rights (...) advocacy: It differentiates those more likely to endorse animal rights among women but not among men. Neither this ideology nor other variables in the analysis, however, account for women's greater overall support of animal rights in the combined sample. Reasons for this latter finding are explored. (shrink)