Ethical doings in naturecultures

Abstract

What new forms of ethical engagement are emerging in naturecultural worlds? In this paper I explore the example of the practical ethics of the permaculture movement. I put these in dialogue first with new approaches to ethics in biopolitics and naturecultures and second with a reading of feminist care ethics. Across this discussion I focus on the potential of ethos transformations experienced through everyday doings to promote ethical obligations of care. If we are living in a naturecultural world where politics and ethics conflate in biopolitics, the permaculture movement is an example of an alter-biopolitical intervention. It works within bios with an ethics of collective empowerment that puts caring at the heart of its search of alternatives for hopeful flourishing for all beings.

Notes

Notes

1 I dearly thank Joan Haran and Dimitris Papadopoulos for precious comments and readings of this paper. Previous versions were presented at the STS speaker series at the James Martin Institute, Saïd Business School, Oxford and at the 2009 Sociological Review Conference on The Politics of Imagination. I thank the participants to both occasions for their comments and insights.

2 EAT: http://www.earthactivisttraining.org

3 Another version being: ‘Earthcare, Peoplecare, Fairshares’ (Burnett, 2008, p. 14).

4 ‘Life itself’ is not simply appropriated, it is made to ‘collaborate’ in its own transformation – and productivity (Cooper, 2008).

5 An example of how these moves go together in naturecultures is Haraway's famous cyborg, a hybrid of organic matter and machine materials.

6 This is the perspective on practices of knowledge construction explored by the Groupe d'Etudes Constructivistes at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

7 For instance, waged care work is mostly assured by migrant women without legal ‘visible’ citizenship (Alvarez Veinguer, 2008).