Toward a feminist ethic of self-care for environmental educators

ABSTRACT

Feminist theory and philosophy have examined how dominant ideologies oppress women, nonhuman animals, and the environment. Feminist scholars also have begun to discuss how neoliberalism problematically re-inscribes women as the primary providers of care, regardless of the impact of this care work on their own well-being. This article synthesizes feminist writings about temporality, relationality, and self-care alongside Foucault's ideas about “care for self” and feminist environmental education scholarship that considers care in order to develop a feminist ethic of self-care for environmental educators that challenges neoliberal ideologies.

KEYWORDS:

• animal studies
• feminist care theory
• Foucault
• neoliberalism
• self-care

Note

Notes

1. We acknowledge that there are many subfields within the field of animal-focused education, each with its own theoretical roots and traditions, some of which embrace feminist concepts of intersectionality (e.g., Lloro-Bidart, 2016; Russell & Semenko, 2016). These traditions include environmental education with a focus on the animal, humane education, posthumanist education, interspecies education, and critical animal studies pedagogy (Spannring, 2016). For parsimony here, we will use the term “animal-focused education.”