CAREGIVER VS. CITIZEN? REFLECTIONS ON ECOFEMINISM FROM KERALA STATE, INDIA

This paper discusses the possibilities of a local ecofeminist politics from within the context of changing gender and eco-politics in Kerala State, India. Rather than advance a case for an idealized ecofeminism, it seeks to reexamine the ongoing critical debate around and within ecofeminism from within the local context. It thus turns to the sites of nurturance in Kerala in the light of the critical insights generated by the ongoing debates on ecofeminism to ask questions about their potential to generate a new ethics of connection that could form the core of a new ecofeminist politics adequate to the regional context. First, the currently-dominant institution of care the modern family and currently dominant childrearing practices are discussed. Against these, instances of 'caring beyond families and humans' from recent fieldwork among 'visionary' women in environmental activism in Kerala are examined. These instances indicate a different mode of care and nurture that is often at odds with the dominant mode; they also seem to confirm the recent sympathetic critiques of dominant ecofeminisms which seek to reconfigure it beyond dualistic thinking. The conclusion, however, seeks not so much to enthrone these women as the privileged bearers of 'true' or the 'pure' ecofeminism worth emulating, as to highlight the questions they raise about reconciling caregiving and citizenship.