Why & How struggling for earthcare is a matter for everyone
This online course aims to channel radical forces of care for the Earth by learning from and engaging with feminist, agrarian, ecological, and labor struggles. It serves as a space for sharing experiences, concepts, and alliances rooted in practice. Together, we seek to forge new common notions—such as earthcare labor, feminist and anti-racist social syndicalisms, agroecology, popular peasant feminisms, and ecofeminism. These frameworks help us explore why and how socio-ecological transformation and climate justice must involve rethinking Earth and care as interconnected.
Earthcare is essential to counter the separation of “nature” from (agri)culture. It supports building and repairing soils, defending communities and territories, and aligning the fight against human exploitation with the fight against land exploitation. By fostering food commons as spaces of solidarity and resilience, Earthcare helps combat segregation caused by borders and capitalist migration regimes.
This course offers a space for learning and networking across diverse places and struggles. It will focus on the knowledge, alliances, and strategies we need for collective action, drawing insights from Spanish, English, and German language contexts.
The transformative potential of earthcare labour and the forces of reproduction.
With Stefania Barca
In this introductory session, we present the overall course and set out some first key concepts via the work of Stefania Barca. Stefania has recently published a book about how we might channel the forces of reproduction and build alliances across movements and practices, a key inspiration for this course. With her, we will speak about the labours of environmental defenders, peasant farmers, climate activists, urban social movements, and other actors of Earthcare – and about what connects them. We’ll speak about the labours this implies, how these challenge our ideas of work and environmentalism at the same time, and point to urgent alliances. We’ll talk about what relations and articulations we may need to forge to make Earthcare labour a force to reckon with, and to build power across different struggles that seek to value and sustain life in our communities and on the planet.
Stefania Barca is an activist, ecofeminist researcher focussing on the intersections of social justice, labour environmentalism, agrarian history, food politics and feminism, currently a professor at Universidad Santiago de Compostela in Spain. She has recently published Forces of Reproduction (Cambridge, 2020) see also our Earthcare fieldcast episode with her.
Feminist and anti-racist social syndicalism
With Pastora Filigrana
This session is based on the new book Del Campo a los Cuidados: el Sindicalismo Feminista y Antirracista que viene which explores the potentials and challenges of feminist organizing across different spheres of social reproduction. Pastora tells of feminist and anti-racist struggles emerging across agricultural workers and domestic care workers’ organizing in Spain, constituting new forms of biosyndicalism that place life at the centre of politics. From such alliances, conceptualizations, and strategies we can learn ways out of the deadlocks of precarization and violence against women, gender-diverse people and migrants.
Translation from Spanish to English by Maggie Schmitt of Zenobia.
Pastora Filigrana is a lawyer specialising in labour and union law, and immigration law. She is a member of the Andalusian Men’s and Women’s Workers Union (SAT) as well as of the Red Antidiscriminatoria Gitana, and has recently published Del Campo a Los Cuidados (La Laboratoria and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 2021) and El pueblo gitano contra el sistema-mundo. Reflexiones desde una militancia feminista y anticapitalista (Akal, 2020).
From Farm Work to Care Work
Read the English translation of the introduction to Pastora’s book Del Campo a Los Cuidados here.
Learning from feminist & anti-racist organizing in industrial agriculture
With Jornaleras de Huelva en Lucha (ES), Sezonieri (AT) and Widerstand am Tellerrand (CH)
This session brings together three vibrant feminist campaigns for agricultural worker’s rights, in Spain, Austria and Switzerland. They fight for workers’ rights, be they seasonal/day labourers, local or migrant, undocumented or regularized. We’ll hear about regimes of importing agricultural workforces to the EU, the exploitation and sexual abuse that women face as they work in the fields, and the stories of feminist solidarity and mutual aid that led to three powerful campaigns. Discussing alliances within the broader labour movement and ecological struggles, we’ll also discuss how agricultural workers campaigns link with movements of food sovereignty, agroecology, feminism and climate justice, exploring common horizons and demands. This session translates across contexts and experiences in Spain, Austria and Switzerland, looking towards translocal solidarity and building broader support.
Jornaleras de Huelva en Lucha is a collective of women strawberry pickers from Spain and beyond, organizing in the agri-industry fields of Huelva, Spain. Check also our Earthcare fieldcast episode with them.
Sezonieri is a campaign for the rights of seasonal agricultural workers in Austria, a common initiative of the PRO-GE union, the Nyéléni forum for food sovereignty, the UNDOK alliance for union-based support of undocumented workers and other platforms for migrant, global and labour solidarity. Check also our Earthcare fieldcast episode with them.
Widerstand am Tellerrand is a Swiss-based campaign for the rights of migrant agricultural workers and solidarity-based agriculture. Check also our Earthcare fieldcast episode with them.
The Popular and Peasant Feminisms of La Via Campesina
The Popular and Peasant Feminisms of La Via Campesina
With Yolanda Areas of La Via Campesina
In this session we hear from some of the editors of the new publication on Popular and Peasant Feminisms of La Via Campesina, just out as report and graphic book.
We speak about the global struggle to put women at the forefront of agroecological change, the kinds of processes this has implied within La Via Campesina, and how emerging horizons of ecology, earthcare, and ecofeminism need to look to and ally with peasant farmers for transformation. This is not just a matter of who feeds the world – we’ll hear about peasant’s and women’s key role in global food production – but also of how we must transform landscapes, territories, and soils in a just and sustainable way to face climate crisis. Hint: this is not done by separating nature from agriculture, but by struggling over land and property, to transform our mode of production.
Yolanda del Carmen Areas Blas is national coordinator of the Movimiento de Mujeres del Campo de la Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo ATC-Nicaragua, and is part the women’s cluster of CLOC-La Via Campesina, with more than 20 years experience working with women peasants in Nicaragua.
Ecofeminism, Climate Crisis and Urban Food Politics
With Amaranta Herrero
How can we reimagine and transform the relations between the city, peri-urban and rural dimensions? What ecofeminist proposals and municipalist public policies can we learn from for transforming our modes of food production and confronting the climate and ecological crisis? How may movements put pressure on institutions, and what demands might we make for food & climate justice?
In this session we will get a broad picture of the key stakes and contradictions within food politics, from the concrete perspectives of an activist researcher working within the design of new municipal frameworks. We will also discuss regimes of knowledge production, what knowledges mean for strategies for transformation, and where we put our energies as collectives and individuals.
Amaranta Herrero is an ecofeminist sociologist and agricultural engineer who has studied and written about socio-ecological conflicts related to energy and food systems. She is currently coordinator of the Barcelona 2030 Sustainable Food Strategy and works for the Barcelona Strategic Metropolitan Plan (PEMB) of Barcelona City Council. Amaranta is a fellow traveller and advisor of the Common Ecologies school, sharing her long-term activist research experience and cross-institutional experience.
Sessions 2, 3 and 4 of this course are organized in cooperation with the MovE research project at Jena University.
