Notes Towards Day 18 (Thurs, Nov. 8) : Feminist Ecology and Economics

weather prediction: 41 degrees, 15 mph wind, 50% chance of rain
Cahier is situating us ... where?
next site to be selected by Rochelle

I. coursekeeping
* paper due Friday @ 5; mail to me and a new writing partner (stand up, pick  her out, and let me know who's w/ whom!)
* by Sunday @ 5, continue posting your descriptions of your on-campus site--and maybe think about what gender/race/class/economics might have to do w/ your site (how "natural," how constructed is it? what's involved in maintaining it?)
* for class on Tuesday, read the Introduction, Chapter 4
and Conclusion of Carolyn Merchant's 2005 book, Deep Ecology
Merchant is an American ecofeminist philopher and (as you will see!) historian of science;
she is a professor @ the University of California, Berkeley,
in the Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy and Management

do the same thing for her text that you did for Waring's, today:
come w/ a statement of what you think is important or problematic about this text:
what seem to you to be its central claims? read/listen to extract her main ideas;
then: what questions do you have for the author? (come w/ 1 or 2 or those also)
finally: think also about how what she says connects w/ what else we have read

invitation to the Environmental Mixer: Tues, 11/13, 4:30-6 in the Campus Center!

also! two opportunities next Wed, November 14, 1:10-2:30, starting @ English House w/ English 313;
or 4:15 p.m. to 5:45 p.m., starting at the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery @ HC:  Blind Field Shuttle, a non-visual walking tour led by Mellon Tri-College Artist-in-residence Carmen Papalia. Space for this immersive, experiential art event will be limited to thirty participants. Let me know if you want to join the first group; if you want to join the second, reserve a spot by emailing hcexhibits@gmail.com.

III. for today, I asked you to bring back Winona LaDuke, whose traditional
ecological knowledge has some kinship to the radical economics of Marilyn Waring...

count off by 5's, to get into groups of 3, to tell one another what
Waring's main ideas are: 1) what central ideas did you read/listen to?
2) what questions do you have for her?
3) what you think is important or problematic about her work?
4) how does her argument connect w/ what else we have read (esp. Winona LaDuke)?

IV. return to the large group for some framing:
* what is ecology? (our current understanding/working definition)
* what is economics? (who is/has studied this?)
* what is the conventional relation between them?
* what is a more "radical" understanding, from their shared root,
"Oikos"/home/household (ology =study of; nomics= management of)
* what does Waring see as the necessary relation?
* as an environmentalist, what does she see as the problems w/ current "accounting" practices?
* what do women, and women's work (in her view, and ours) have to do both economics and ecology?

V. how does all this intersect w/ what Winona LaDuke does, drawing on the reciprocal relationships and responsibilities of trad'l ecological knowledge to advocate for a "Seventh Generation Amendment": "the right of citizens to use renewable resources shall not impair their availability for future generations....")

----
VI. Listening Notes from Who's Counting?
"uni-dimensional economical fabrication cannot contain our lives"
my legitimacy from having "a place to stand"
recording the time-use of women (vs. men) reveals the
magnitude of the invisibility of women's work
subsistence production is, macroeconomically, of little or no importance

the United Nations Systems of National Accounts = rules of economic measurement are highly selective,
and serve as [an inadequate] basis of many important decisions about whose needs will be met
they attend only to those activities which have a cash-generating capacity
(i.e. what passes through the market system);
the only value recognized is money, regardless of how it is made
there is no value to peace, preservation of natural resources for future generations,
unpaid work, including reproducing human life, or feeding and nurturing one's own families

this system cannot respond to values it refuses to recognize
it leaves out the work of 1/2 the population of the planet,
and of the planet itself; it is encouraging environmental disaster
this economic system can eventually kill us all
the 5 members of the Security Council are the 5 primary arms exporters
killing people (or preparing to kill them) is very important in the economic system
to ensure a market, it is in the interest of the leading arms
exporters to be sure that there is always a war going on
these deaths are not registered as a deficit in the system

traditional practices make perfect sense; why change them? why behave any other way?
manufacture of fluorocarbons (which are so destructive) count as growth in the international economic system
"there's never any debit side, in terms of this kind of development"
(scarring of the landscape, ruin of the habitat, etc.)
you can't put a value on the purity of water
economics is a tool/justification of those who want to exploit
as a so-called science, it doesn't allow for the introduction of values
that don't find their way into an economic formula
economics' jargon dismisses value-laden language
the value of this mountain reveals the absolute hollowness of the economic forms we have to work with
need for time-use measurements, to show where the needs are
once we recognize that the emperor has no clothes,
our strategies can be broad and wide as our imaginations can make them--
and we should have a lot of fun along the way

Epilogue: "they look nice among the goats"
"(music to close): Ain't Life Sweet"--"take your money, keep it; don't tell me who to become;
take your age-old wisdom w/ you, degrees and all that education won't help me…in the country…."

VII. Reading Notes from Counting for Nothing
Steinem's Preface
on the practical pleasure of finding a secure and happy economist!
institutionalized invisibilities of women's work and lack of value imputed to environment
need to make reproduction visible

Introduction: illusion that everything can be reduced to a price
initial idea: empower ecosystem by giving it a monetary value-->
disable system by taking economics on @ its own game
pretense of scientific prediction, control, and objective, reproducible experiments
mistaken belief that maximizing individual self interest results in optimal allocation of resources
much non-market economic activity absent from the models

but what is the "cost" of visibility in patently pathological value system?
do we want all life commodified in economic model?
(if all production were included, unemployment would be impossible by definition!)
no demarcation in subsistence household between production inside or outside consumption
alternative to the GDP/GNP (Gross Domestic Product/Gross National Product):
Human Development Index (based on life expectancy, literacy, etc.)
a key missing indicator in the GDP and GNP is time use
which is employed in Nova Scotia's Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI):
these distinguish activities that produce an actual decline in well-being

conventional labour market surveys are too narrowly conceived, with a loss of texture and specificity
each country needs to draw up a comprehensive balance sheet of natural resources
International Society for Ecological Economics is interested in integrating the
management of nature's household (ecology) with human kinds' household (economics)
they see the framework of national income accounting as mechanistic, atomistic, lacking
representation of materials, energy sources, physical structure, time-dependent processes
lunatic proposal to market pollution as "carbon trading"
(sell your surplus capacity to a heavy polluter!)
constant commodification legitimizes theft on a global scale
asking wrong questions: should ask what economy is for,
how much is enough, what provides joy, happiness, peace, satisfaction?

proposed triangulation of methodologies:
1) assemble physical environmental characteristics,
give visibility to intergenerational consequence of externalities,
and do not impute monetary valuations for anything
2) describe time-use data
3) assemble GNP/GDP statistic but recognize costs, depreciation, deterioration, depletion

Chapter 11: If Counting was the Limit of Intelligence
Stage One: Imputing a Value for Women's Work
reconceptualize household as a productive, not consuming unit
conservative reform = form of co-option
all forms of value reflected in economic activity of men in marketplace
global ecosystem still exploited, w/ throughput viewed as flow from infinite source to infinite sink;
environment is not a free good, need to distinguish between renewable and nonrenewable resources
need to expose values, divide income/expenditure into
"creative" and "destructive" production, consumption, services

Stage Two: Economic Welfare
Measure of Economic Welfare subtracted items not contributing to economic welfare,
added those that do (but are not counted);
include environment, distinguishing what can be recycled
from that which is permanently degraded by use (change in quality of the resource)

Stage Three: Coming Full Circle
pressing non-economic values into framework of economic calculus
is based on absurb premise that everything has a price--
but values are always those of a participant observer

Epilogue: Call to Action
what we can do is only limited by our imagination:
proclaim visibility, worth of women, and of water/world