Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology, Ariel Salleh (ed.)

Book review: This book comprises a diverse set of writings at the interface of political economy, ecology and feminism. It engages theory and practice, drawing inspiration from the many indigenous, peasant, worker, ecological and women's movements challenging the economic dimensions of oppression. Its engagement with the concept of 'eco-sufficiency' highlights the notion of 'provisioning' as the fundamental economic process. In doing so, the book moves beyond a concern with the appropriation of surplus labour in production to a concern with the 'embodied debt' owed to unpaid reproductive workers who generate use-values and regenerate the conditions for production (both women and men). However, it is also concerned with the injustices involved in the 'appropriation of people's livelihood resources' (p 4). The North may be pre-occupied with financial debt but, on the reckoning of this book, it owes an unsustainable 'ecological debt' to the South.