Ariel Salleh

Ariel Salleh is an Australian sociologist who writes on humanity-nature relations, social change movements, and ecofeminism.

Career

Ariel Salleh is a sociologist in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney (Australia). Formerly Associate Professor in Social Ecology at the University of Western Sydney, she has lectured in New York, Manila, Toronto and, most recently, was a Visiting Professor at Lund University (Sweden).[1]

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. [2]

Materialist 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 [3]. Reproductive labor and use value are central themes here. The gendered division of labour is seen as the major cause of the crisis of social reproduction and the ecological crises as its main outcome. 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. [4] [5] Salleh exemplifies the Marxist argument that hands-on praxis is essential to grounded political theory.


Her book Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern outlines the scope of a materialist feminism, proposing a transdisciplinary analysis of the embodied roots of capitalist patriarchal globalisation. The book is one of the earliest eco-socialist statements. [6] 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. [7] The failure to observe natures ‘metabolic value’ and the inherent thought of production and exchange value are ignored by the radical left. The book contains a sharp critique of the patriarchal bias in both orthodox Marxist thought and in green politics. [8]


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.

Key concepts

Embodied materialism

Following Marx’s analysis, Salleh uses a dialectical methodology to extend the classic Marxist meaning of materialism to “embodied materialism” through highlighting the hands-on lay knowledge of women, domestic providers, small farmers, and hunter-gatherers. [9] [10] It defines the experience itself as a deep implication on women’s lives. According to her theoretical developments and her experience as an activist, understanding the materiality of gender fractures allows for a confluence between different movements and a renewed integration of transformative perspectives.[11] Her call for integrating eco-socialist and eco-feminist frameworks lays on the need to understand that historically, women´s experiences and responses to different crises are different than those of men.[12] Woman have been differentially implicated in the humanity/nature metabolism even since pre-capitalist patriarchal societies. In her approach, "humans are nature in an embodied form". [13] Embodied materialism is a theoretical tool for political practice, that analyses this materiality from a dialectical understanding of the daily life of women, peasants, and indigenous peoples in their particular relation to nature, in other words, the relations and knowledge of the meta-industrial class.

Meta-industrial labour

Meta-industrial labour is one of the key concepts in Ariel Salleh's work. The term refers to work outside of capitalist structures, done by care-givers, peasants, and indigenes, together forming the meta-industrial class. This meta-industrial class performs work that creates a metabolic value (opposite of metabolic rift, as defined by Karl Marx), by maintaining natural cycles. This opposes the current extractive industrial model, which creates ecological, embodied and social debt. Being marginalised by capitalist societies and politics, this class seems is often victimised or seen as something from the past. In reality, they manage to do what ‘sustainability’ is all about; meeting human needs while sustaining their natural environment. Salleh invites the current hegemony to be open to the embodied knowledge of this meta-industrial class, instead of capturing it by development aid, commodifying it or marginalising it. [14] [15] [16]

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.

References
  1. "Wiki Peace Women". Retrieved 2 May 2019.
  2. "Ariel Salleh Homepage". Retrieved 26 April 2020.
  3. Ariel Salleh (2017): Ecofeminism (48-57) In: Spash, Clive L. (2017). Handbook for Ecological Economics. Routlede Taylor & Francis Group. London and New York. p.49
  4. Ariel Salleh (2010): From metabolic rift to metabolic value: reflections on environmental sociology and the alternative globalization movement. Organization & Environment. 23(2): 205-219. DOI: 10.1177/1086026610372134. p. 211-212
  5. Ariel Salleh (2017): Ecofeminism (48-57) In: Spash, Clive L. (2017). Handbook for Ecological Economics. Routlede Taylor & Francis Group. London and New York. p. 50
  6. Ariel Salleh (2017) Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern. 2nd edn. London: ZED Publishings.
  7. Ariel Salleh (2017) Ecofeminism as politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern. 2nd edn. London: ZED Publishings.
  8. Ariel Salleh (2017) Ecofeminism as politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern. 2nd edn. London: ZED Publishings.
  9. Canavan, G., Klarr, L., & Vu, R. (2010). Embodied materialism in action: an interview with Ariel Salleh. Polygraph, 22, 183.
  10. Salleh, A. Global alternatives and the meta-industrial class (201-211) In: Albritton, R., Bell, S., Westra, R., New Socialisms. Routledge Taylor & Francis Groups. London and New York
  11. Canavan, G., Klarr, L., & Vu, R. (2010). Embodied materialism in action: an interview with Ariel Salleh. Polygraph, 22, 183.
  12. Ariel Salleh (2017) Ecofeminism as politics: Nature, Marx and the postmodern. 2nd edn. London: ZED Publishings. Chapter 1.
  13. Salleh, A. (2005). Moving to an embodied materialism. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 16(2), 9-14.
  14. Ariel Salleh (2017): Ecofeminism (48-57) In: Spash, Clive L. (2017). Handbook for Ecological Economics. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. London and New York
  15. Salleh, A. (2010).From Metabolic Rift to “Metabolic Value”: Reflections on Environmental Sociology and the Alternative Globalization Movement. Organization & Environment. Vol. 23, 205-219.
  16. Salleh, A. Global alternatives and the meta-industrial class (201-211) In: Albritton, R., Bell, S., Westra, R., New Socialisms. Routledge Taylor & Francis Groups. London and New York.
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