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Gender and Pan-Species Democracy in the Anthropocene

Strang, Veronica

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Authors

Veronica Strang



Abstract

There are diverse historical trajectories in human societies’ relationships with the nonhuman world. While many small place-based groups have tried to retain egalitarian partnerships with other species and ecosystems, larger societies have made major transitions. In religious terms, they have moved from worshipping female, male or androgynous non-human deities, to valorising pantheons of deities that, over time, became semi-human and then human in form. Reflecting Durkheimian changes in social and political arrangements, movements towards patriarchy led to declining importance in female deities, and the eventual primacy of single male Gods. With these changes came dualistic beliefs separating Culture from Nature, gendering these as male and female, and asserting male dominion over both Nature and women. These beliefs supported activities that have led to the current environmental crisis: unrestrained growth; hegemonic expansion; colonialism, and unsustainable exploitation of the non-human world. These are essentially issues of inequality: between genders, between human groups, and between human societies and other living kinds. This paper draws on a series of ethnographic research projects (since 1992) exploring humanenvironmental relationships, primarily in Australia, the UK, and New Zealand, and on a larger comparative study, over many years, of a range of ethnographic, archaeological, theological, and historical material from around the world. It considers contemporary debates challenging NatureCulture dualism and promoting ‘rights for Nature’ or—rejecting anthropocentricity to recognize an indivisible world—for the non-human communities with whom we co-inhabit ecosystems. Proposing new ways to configure ethical debates, it suggests that non-human rights are, like women’s rights, fundamentally concerned with power relations, social status, and access to material resources, to the extent that the achievement of ‘pan-species democracy’ and greater equality between living kinds goes hand-in-hand with social, political and religious equality between genders.

Citation

Strang, V. (2021). Gender and Pan-Species Democracy in the Anthropocene. Religions, 12(12), https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121078

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 30, 2021
Online Publication Date Dec 6, 2021
Publication Date 2021
Deposit Date Mar 15, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 15, 2022
Journal Religions
Electronic ISSN 2077-1444
Publisher MDPI
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 12
Issue 12
DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121078
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1212769

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Published Journal Article (1.5 Mb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0).






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