Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how power asymmetries impact indigenous and Dalit women’s use of alternative media to share narratives on environmental justice, sustainable development, and climate change. It asks whether alternative media can reach its transformative potential by impacting hegemonic power.

Paper long abstract:

Alternative media is increasingly a strategic tool in environmental justice movements. However, the digital public sphere reproduces hegemonies of social structures; racial, ethnic, economic and gender imbalances marginalise those already on the peripheries (Suzina and Pleyers 2016; Gurumurthy and Chami, 2019; Harvey 2020). This paper examines how power asymmetries impact indigenous and Dalit women’s use of alternative media to put forward their perspectives on environmental justice, sustainable development, and climate change. The research lies at the crossroads of digital media and environmental justice, using their shared concepts of reclaiming power, justice and citizenship. This research contributes a feminist perspective on alternative media’s transformative potential – to impact hegemonic power and to bring new voices into the mainstream.

I examine whose knowledge is valued; who creates knowledge; and how production of alternative knowledge challenges dominant discourses in media and policy about environmental justice. Using participatory methods of power analysis and critical discourse analysis over a period of six months, I analysed the practices of two Indian organisations. These methods centred the specific needs of each organisation – the women’s collective’s need to understand their trajectory of media making, and a filmmaking for conservation fellowship’s challenge of including more women. Emerging findings suggest that alternative media must address patriarchal views of women’s role in public spaces, resources and personal networks as barriers. Simultaneously, women’s narratives actively position indigenous and Dalit women’s knowledge systems -- traditional farming practices, seed diversity, and heritage skills – as alternatives to development beyond a neo-liberal agenda.