Format/Structure

This will be a hands-on workshop, requiring an open space free of tables and chairs. It could even be done outdoors if weather permits.

Long Abstract

Ecofeminist and Feminist Political Ecology scholars have long pointed out the interrelations between the objectification of nature and women’s bodies, the hierarchisation of male over female, culture over nature, mind over matter, productive over reproductive labour – all of which represent foundational roots of the current socio-ecological polycrisis (MacGregor 2017; Rocheleau et al. 2005). More recently, some scholars have shown how these structural dynamics are upheld and embedded in configurations of industrial/breadwinner masculinities and ecomodern masculinities, posing as central embodiments of fossil capitalist hegemony (Hultman & Pulé, 2019). What this all leads to is the urgent need for new configurations of masculinities that challenge these hegemonies and offer new pathways towards socio-ecological transformation, to be studied (Kennedy & Russell, 2020), theorised (Smith Khanna, 2021) and explored via alternative pedagogical practices (Hedenqvist et al., 2021).

Building on previous work exploring the interlinkages of hegemonic masculinity and the ecological crisis in past POLLEN (Lund) and degrowth (Zagreb, Pontevedra, Oslo) international conferences, this workshop aims to strategise pathways for ecological masculinities. Using techniques of embodiment drawn from Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects, Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, and exercises from pro-feminist mens’ work, our workshop will engage participants to think and feel how radical socio-ecological transformations might come about at the personal and collective level, as well as question the specific challenges posed by privileged positionalities in engaging in and supporting such transformations. This will help reflect on how to create novel pathways for change, away from the dead ends offered by the mainstream men’s movement that takes men out to the forest to become even more binary, and that offered by racist ecofascism that upholds an artificial, nationalist, and exclusivist vision of nature for (white) men to dwell in.