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Biography
Ariel Salleh is an Australian sociologist who writes on humanity-nature relations, social change movements, and ecofeminism. In contrast to idealist ecofeminisms coming from philosophy and cultural studies, Salleh's analysis is close to that of fellow sociologists Maria Mies in Germany and Mary Mellor in the United Kingdom. Reproductive labour and use value are central themes here. Her own "embodied materialism" addresses resistance to globalisation through the movement of movements, introducing the term "meta-industrial labour" to integrate indigenous, peasant, women's, and worker politics under the banner of ecology.
Her book Ecofeminism as Politics: nature, Marx and the postmodern outlines the scope of a materialist ecofeminism, proposing a transdisciplinary analysis of the embodied roots of capitalist patriarchal globalisation. The book is one of the earliest eco-socialist statements. Salleh traces the effects of what she sees as the "originary contradiction": economic resourcing of labour (women's bodies in the first instance) "as nature" and the eurocentric ideology of "humanity v nature" used to justify that systemic exploitation.
Salleh exemplifies the marxist argument that hands-on praxis is essential to grounded political theory. She was a convener of the Movement Against Uranium Mining in Sydney, 1976, and helped found The Greens in 1985. She worked on the 1992 Earth Summit with Women's Environment & Development Organization; on local catchment struggles in the mid 90s; and from 2001-04 acted as ecologist/critic on the Australian federal government's Gene Technology Ethics Committee.
Ariel Salleh works at en/gendering dialogue between advocates of ecofeminist and eco-socialist politics. Her writing has addressed this terrain since the early 1980s and she was an original signatory to the 2001 Eco-socialist Manifesto. Her critical studies of green thought, environmental ethics, and ecopolitics, run to some 100 articles and chapters. She lectures on ecofeminism internationally.
Selected works
- (2015) with James Goodman and Hamed Hosseini, 'From Sociological Imagination to Ecological Imagination' in Jonathan Marshall and Linda Connor (eds.), Environmental Change and the World's Futures: Ecologies, Ontologies, Mythologies. London: Routledge.
- (2015) 'Neoliberalism, Scientism, and Earth System Governance' in Raymond Bryant (ed.), International Handbook of Political Ecology, Cheltenham: Elgar.
- (2015) 'Ecofeminism and the Politics of Reproduction' in Brigitte Aulenbacher, Birgit Riegraf, Susanne Völker (eds.), Feministische Kapitalismuskritik, Einstiege in bedeutende Forschungsfelder mit einem Interview mit Ariel Salleh, Munster, Westfälisches: Dampfboot.
- (2014) 'Foreword' to Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism, London: Zed Books.
- (2012) with Mary Mellor, Katharine Farrell, and Vandana Shiva, 'How Ecofeminists Use Complexity in Ecological Economics' in Katharine Farrell, Tommaso Luzzati, and Sybille van den Hove (eds.), Beyond Reductionism. London: Routledge, 154-178.
- (2012) 'Green Economy or Green Utopia? Rio+20 and the Reproductive Labor Class', Journal of World Systems Research, 18/2, 141-145.
- (2012) 'Rio+20 and the Green Economy: Technocrats, Meta-industrials, WSF and Occupy': http://rio20.net/en/documentos
- (2011) 'Fukushima: A Call for Women's Leadership', Journal of Environmental Thought and Education, 5/4, 45-52.
- (2011) 'Climate Strategy: Making the Choice between Ecological Modernisation or "Living Well"', Journal of Australian Political Economy, 66, 124-149.
- (2011) 'The Value of a Synergistic Economy' in Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman (eds.), Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies. London. Pluto Press.
- (2010)'How the Ecological Footprint is Sex-Gendered: Implications for an eco-socialist theory and praxis' in Qingzhi Huan (ed.), Eco-Socialism as Politics. Dordrecht: Springer.
- (2010) 'A Sociological Reflection on the Complexities of Climate Change Research', International Journal of Water, 5/4, 285-297.
- (2010) 'Embodied Materialism in Action', Polygraph: special issue on Ecology and Ideology, 22, 183-199: www.duke.edu/web/polygraph/cfp.html
- (2010) 'From Metabolic Rift to Metabolic Value: Reflections on Environmental Sociology and the Alternative Globalization Movement', Organization & Environment, 23/2, 205-219.
- (2009) Eco-Sufficiency & Global Justice: women write political ecology. London: Pluto Press and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- (2009) 'The Dystopia of Technoscience: An Ecofeminist Critique of Postmodern Reason', Futures, 41/4, 201-209.
- (2008) 'Climate Change and the "Other" Footprint': The Commoner, No. 13: www.thecommoner.org.uk
- (2008) 'Eco-socialism and "Ecological Civilization" in China', Capitalism Nature Socialism, 19/3, 122-128.
- (2006) Edited Symposium: ‘Ecosocialist-Ecofeminist Dialogues, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 17 (4): 32-124.
- (2006) We in the North are the Biggest Problem for the South: A Conversation with Hilkka Pietila, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 17 (1): 44-61.
- (2006) Social Ecology and the Man Question in Piers Stephens, John Barry, and Andrew Dobson (eds.), Contemporary Environmental Politics. London: Routledge.
- (2005) Deeper than Deep Ecology in Baird Callicott and Clare Palmer (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Vols. 1-5. London: Routledge.
- (2005) Editorial: 'Towards an Embodied Materialism, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 16 (2): 9-14.
- (2005) Class, Race, and Gender Discourse in the Ecofeminism/Deep Ecology Debate in Linda Kalof and Terre Satterfield (eds.), Environmental Values. London: Earthscan.
- (2004) Global Alternatives and the Meta-Industrial Class in Robert Albritton et al. (eds.), New Socialisms: Futures Beyond Globalization. New York: Routledge.
- (2001) Ecofeminism in Victor Taylor and Charles Winquist (eds.), The Postmodern Encyclopaedia. London: Routledge.
- (2001) Interview with Maria Mies: Women, Nature, and the International Division of Labour, in Veronika Bennoldt-Thomsen et al. (eds.), There Is An Alternative. London: Zed Books.
- (2001) Sustaining Nature or Sustaining Marx? Reply to John Foster and Paul Burkett, Organization & Environment, 1: 43-450.
- (1999) Dialogue with Meira Hanson: On Production and Reproduction, Identity and Non-identity, Organization & Environment, 12: 207-218.
- (1997) Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern. London: Zed Books and New York: St Martins Press.
- (1996) Politics in/of the Wilderness, Arena, 23: 26-30.
- (1994) Nature, Woman, Labor, Capital in Martin O'Connor (ed.), Is Capitalism Sustainable? New York: Guilford.
- (1993) Earth Summit: Reflections on our Political Times, Ecofeminist Newsletter, 4: 6-8.
- (1991) Ecosocialism/Ecofeminism, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2: 129-134.
- (1991) Essentialism - and Ecofeminism, Arena, 94: 167-173.
- (1990) The Politics of Representation, Arena, 91: 163-169.