Gênero, neoextrativismo e agroecologia: Perspectivas feministas sobre os conflitos ambientais

Gender, neoextractivism and agroecology: Feminist perspectives on environmental conflicts

Abstract

The ways of life of traditional, peasant and family farming peoples and communities and various other local, urban and rural groups, with their specific forms of material and symbolic appropriation of nature, have been increasingly exposed to the logics of capitalist and mercantile extraction of labor and nature, resulting in environmental conflicts that impact their territories in different ways. In the 21st century, neo-extractivism expresses this particular form of capitalist dispossession, with strong state involvement. In the field of studies on environmental conflicts and neo-extractivism, the use of the "class" variable as an explicative dimension of environmental inequalities predominates and, as a result, the notable under-representation of important analytical categories such as gender, race and ethnicity. In order to reposition these analyses, the article takes a feminist perspective on the way in which neo-extractivist projects penetrate territories and combines an approach, at different scales, to the resistance led by women. Specifically, we look at how the advance of mining in the Zona da Mata region of Minas Gerais has affected the lives of communities, and of women in particular, as well as the ways in which these subjects have responded to this threat. Faced with a hegemonic masculinity that is trying to impose itself, we affirm the leading role of women in an active and decisive resistance to the dispute over territories, operated on different interconnected scales. As responses and alternatives to the neo-extractivist projects that threaten communities, we see that, in the process, agroecology has been adopted as a narrative and as concrete practices by women.