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This book is part of a series by Routledge called 'Opening Out' that is intended to apply the insights of critical feminist theory to current social and political contexts. Here, Plumwood offers a critique of human-environment relations in Western society and presents an alternative to these relations. Seven substantive chapters and an introduction and conclusion trace her argument from a critique of rationalist philosophy and current environmental philosophies to an alternative form of environmental ethics based on feminist ethics of mutuality and care. Through careful critique and synthesis, Plumwood offers a constructive, coherent, and critical ecological feminist philosophy that is, in her terms, 'thoroughly compatible with and ... strongly based in feminist theory' (p. 1).
Plumwood argues that while feminist theory so far has addressed oppressions of gender, race, and class, the oppression of nature is a missing and critical element of feminist thought. Thus, she draws on theories of human domination to include nature in an extended feminist theory that employs a race, class, and gender analysis. Plumwood describes the philosophy of domination in Western culture, in which the human-nature relation is conceptualized as a dualism, allowing for a logical structure of otherness and negation, in which humans have justified their role as dominator in the master story.
The concept of dualism is central to the thesis. Unlike a simple dichotomy, a dualism is a construction that sharply demarcates 'one' from 'other' and sets a higher value to the one. A dualism, according to Plumwood, results from a certain kind of denied dependency on a subordinated other. For example, 'culture' and 'nature' have been separated in Western thought, with (white) men being associated with the more valued identity of culture, and women and nonwhite men being more commonly associated with the less valued identity of nature. Using classical logic, Plumwood describes the structure of dualism. She argues that the establishment of a dualism negates the interrelation between the two elements. Those who are demarcated as other are colonized, appropriated, and incorporated into the selfhood and culture of the master. From the perspective of environmental ethics, the human / nature dual ism has created a culture of the master which has first sanctioned the domination of nature and then rendered this domination...