Relationship to nature and gender equality. A contribution to critical theory from feminist practice and mobilisation in agroecology in Brazil – GENgiBRe

The objectives of the project require a specific approach that allows the expression and observation of the position of women farmers and their relationship to nature. For this, we rely on several partnerships, as well as on a feminist epistemology, attentive to the voice of the oppressed. At the academic level, the partnership is based on a cooperation agreement between the French National Research Institute for Development (IRD) and the Brazilian Federal University of Viçosa (UFV). Six doctoral theses, four of which at UFV, and a Master's thesis are being carried out in connection with the project. The partnership also includes two Brazilian NGOs, active in the feminist and agro-ecological movement, SOF and CTA-ZM; as well as 6 collectives of women farmers in the municipalities of Barra do Turvo, Itaoca and Peruíbe (Vale do Ribeira) and Simonésia, Divino and Acaiaca (Zona da Mata and East of Minas).
On this basis, our methodological approach is organised on three levels. At the level of women farmers, it is based on a visit to their living and working space, which we carry out with 30 women farmers and which results in a “Feminist Ethnomapping” of this space drawn by each of them. Inspired by both feminist studies and ethnoscience, it represents the vision of women farmers on their knowledge of this space, as well as agricultural diversity, economic and ecological flows, the gendered division of labour and the gendered organisation of the space. A semi-structured interview and a questionnaire with each woman farmer as well as with a male member of her family complete the data.
At the level of women farmers' collectives, our survey is based on three complementary instruments for representing socio-environmental conflicts and mobilisations: a Feminist Socio-Environmental Cartography, which focuses on the way in which these processes are represented in space by women farmers; a “Body-Territory” Map, which specifies how these processes are experienced on a day-to-day basis, starting from the dimension of the body; and a “River of Life” of the territory, which reconstructs the trajectory over time of the conflicts, resistances and collective organisation of women farmers. By combining the findings of feminist studies on the one hand, and political economy and ecology on the other, these tools make it possible to bring together the knowledge of women farmers on socio-environmental conflicts, agroecology and other forms of socio-environmental mobilisation that construct the territory.
The third level addresses the wider spaces of construction of the territory and of the relationship to nature through an observation guide used in various types of meetings and events; a semi-structured interview guide with key interlocutors; and a documentary collection matrix.
The detailed methodological guide of the project (in Portuguese) is available on the project website (www.gengibre.org).

Our survey sheds light on the worlds created by women farmers, in the gardens and spaces under their responsibility, where aesthetics, species associations and diversity prevail. A relationship with nature based on care is affirmed. This construction, both ideological and material, expresses a positive reappropriation of the care role that is socially assigned to them. Participation in the agroecological movement and in women's organisations plays a key role here. In these spaces, new agricultural knowledge and practices, the exchange of seeds and varieties, circuits for the economic valorisation of diversified production and socio-political issues emerge inseparably.
At the same time, our Ethnomappings and interviews point to multiple limitations to these processes, rooted in the gendered division of labour and agricultural and working space. Work overload, lack of income, confinement to sometimes tiny spaces around the houses, control over women's bodies and mobility, express persistent gender inequalities. This is compounded by limited access to land or unsecured rights in some families and communities.
Our long-term data (Rivers of Life) show that these social relations are evolving under the contradictory effect of activist organisations and the penetration of extractivist projects. The latter operate in municipalities dedicated to monoculture, where public policies, banks and companies work together to impose a single productive “vocation”; in communities where residents are paid by mining companies to convince their neighbours to sell their land; or where NGOs offer payments for environmental services in exchange for restrictions on land and resource use.
Our Feminist Socio-Environmental Cartographies show that these projects create fault lines from the scale of territories to that of families and that these fault lines are gendered. These projects mobilise hegemonic masculinities, in particular the responsibility of peasant class men for income generation, which they perform by putting their symbolic and material attributes on display. The consequence is a repatriarchalisation of territories, synonymous with increased gender inequalities and violence, which fuels the resistance of women's organisations. Women’s emancipation and the defence of their environment thus converge in the mobilisation against the patriarchal order and the neoliberalization of nature.
At a broader level, our data show an unprecedented acceleration of the neoliberalization of nature under the government of Jair Bolsonaro. It consists of an authoritarian and coordinated process of privatisation and commodification of resources, deregulation, externalisation of social and environmental costs and compensation of these costs as a new source of profit.

The field survey will continue until the end of 2022, particularly at the level of women farmers and their families. The diversity of the situations observed is the basis for increasing theoretical generality. Thus, the differences between women farmers in the two study regions constitute the empirical basis for identifying the common grammar of feminist practices and mobilisations in agroecology, as well as the deployment of extractivist projects. The diversity of situations between women farmers in the same region, or even in the same community, requires us to investigate the microsocial conditions and to analyse each environment and social configuration from the family level.
The analysis of the data, coordinated within the team and linked to the PhD and Master theses, is our objective for 2023 and will be the basis for the publications planned from 2024 onwards. It should combine theories from the different social science disciplines of the project (critical theory, socio-economics, rural and political economy, sociology of gender and anthropology of nature) and informed by the agrarian sciences. It must also articulate the levels of analysis, from the micro-social to the macro-economic and political. Beyond the team involved in Brazil, this construction benefits from a scientific interlocution in France thanks to the partners at CESSMA and at DYNAMIQUES RURALES / UMR_MA104.
Finally, as a contribution to critical theory, the GENgiBRe project aims to put the knowledge built up at the service of actions against discrimination, in the Academy and in civil society. This objective is notably reflected in two “Scientific Expeditions” organised in 2022.
The first took place from 12 to 16 July in Zona da Mata and East of Minas and brought together about 50 women farmers, representatives of the agroecological, feminist and syndical movements, political representatives, students and the project team. At each stage, debates, visits to women farmers, women’s organisations and agroecology organisations, as well as syntheses were carried out. The methodology was based on collective reflection on the experiences visited, forming a thematic path of exploration of the project territory. This path was based on our research materials, such as the Ethnomappings and the Rivers of Life of the territory, that were presented and debated.
The Expedition also constituted a space for the construction of new knowledge, through the unprecedented interactions between the participants, guided by three key questions: How do socio-environmental conflicts occur locally? How do they occur differently for women farmers? And how are responses constructed?
A second Expedition will be organised from 8 to 11 November 2022 in Vale do Ribeira, with the support of the French Consulate in São Paulo.

Scientific production as of 01/09/2022.
Hillenkamp I. et Mendonça M.-A., “Offensive néolibérale du gouvernement Bolsonaro sur la nature : déploiement et conflits locaux depuis une perspective de genre”, Colloque international De la démocratie au Brésil - violence et politique, Paris, INALCO, 29/06/2022. www.youtube.com/watch (5h02 à 5h30).
Guétat-Bernard H., Hillenkamp I., Prévost H., « Cultiver la nature. Agroécologie et mobilisations écoféministes au Brésil », Colloque « Dominer la nature, naturaliser les dominations », Université Paris 1, Aubervilliers, 2 et 3/11/2021, lamop.pantheonsorbonne.fr/evenements/dominer-nature-naturaliser-dominations-quelle-est-nature-nature
Hillenkamp I., Telles L. avec Mendonça M.A. «Um olhar de gênero para a modernização agrícola e a agroecologia no Brasil », Séminaire “Agroecologia e sistemas agroalimentares”, Programme de Post-graduation em Extension rurale, Université Fédérale de Viçosa, 08/04/2022.
Hillenkamp I., Nobre M., « Conservation de l'environnement, financiarisation de la nature et agroécologie. Le cas de Vale do Ribeira et du réseau agroécologique de femmes agricultrices RAMA », colloque international « Femmes, écologie et engagements politique : actualités et perspectives du Sud au Nord », Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Université de Chicago à Paris, 4-5 juin 2021. www.youtube.com/watch. Conférence invitée. Actes en cours de publication.
Hillenkamp I., « ‘Sans féminisme, il n’y a pas d’agroécologie’ : la longue mobilisation des brésiliennes pour la reconnaissance du care socio-environnemental », Congrès de l’Institut des Amériques 2021, Plénière « Construction et fonctions des mobilisations et de l’activisme dans les Amériques », Aubervilliers, 22-24 septembre 2021. vimeo.com/611985085/95c3338d3f. Conférence invitée.
Hillenkamp I., « «Sans féminisme, il n’y a pas d’agroécologie« : inégalités de genre et modèle agraire au Brésil », Séminaire « Démocratie et inégalités au Brésil », Université libre de Bruxelles, 9 mai 2022. www.youtube.com/watch.
Capredon E., Hillenkamp I. et Prévost H., « Genre, nature, environnement au Brésil » CESSMA, séminaire du groupe Genre, 19/05/2021.
« Entrevue avec Isabelle Hillenkamp. «Sans féminisme, il n’y a pas d’agroécologie« : la longue mobilisation des brésiliennes pour la reconnaissance du care socio-environnemental », Entrevue réalisée le mercredi 22 septembre 2021, dans le cadre du Congrès 2021 de l'Institut des Amériques, dans le Centre de Colloques du Campus Condorcet Paris-Aubervilliers. www.youtube.com/watch
Nathalie Blanc, Isabelle Hillenkamp, Anne-Christelle Beauvois, Table ronde : éco-féminismes - La Cité du Genre, 13 juin 2022. Compte-rendu disponible : citedugenre.fr/fr/audio-video/colloques-et-conferences/ et u-paris.fr/centre-politiques-terre/publications/

This project aims at theorizing the relationship that subaltern women establish with “nature”; and the role that this relationship plays in their involvement in practice and mobilisation against discrimination. This issue is part of the controversy over women’s relationship to nature that divides feminists, especially Western ones, for whom the renaturalisation of women is the main lever for gender inequality, and those, especially in the Global South, for whom this relationship is instead a springboard for action. The enhancement of a singular relationship with nature is also part of the debate on the formation of identities in mobilisations for the protection of territories and on the possibility of emancipatory or oppressive forms of such protection.
The originality of this project is to start from the observation that these contradictory trends are inextricably linked: they constitute the very experience of subaltern women, intertwined in their daily practices. To account for this interweaving, this project builds theory based on an in-depth, multi-level qualitative survey.
The survey focuses on women farmers involved in agroecology and the feminist movement in two forest areas of Brazil, a country where the question of the relationship between equality, democracy and ecology arises in a sharp and revealing manner. The data collection includes: agroecological practices, based on an original method of joint observation with agronomists and forest engineers, aimed at informing social theory; the socioeconomic conditions of valorisation of women farmers’ work; and broader spaces of mobilisation and the political fabric of the relationship with nature. In addition, the theory building is based on a close dialogue with the Brazilian and French partners of the project, in order to refine the results and to increase the level of generality.
This project connects three fields of literature that are generally separate: critical theory, which draws attention to the role of lifeworld, counter-publics and the plural economy in democratization, and reflexively questions the role of theorists; the sociology of rural women’s organisations, ecofeminism and care theory, which show the potential of reclaiming the relationship with nature to fuel mobilisation for gender equality; and different approaches (anthropology of nature, pragmatic sociology, agroecology) of the subjective and material interactions between humans and non-humans.
The project aims at testing and qualifying three main hypotheses:
(H1) The subjective and material relationship with different elements of “nature” (plants, insects, animals, soils, waters, etc.) reflects gender and other power relations present in the division of agricultural and care work and knowledge.
(H2) The relationship with nature constitutes an essential part of lifeworld and the source of a subjectivity shared by these women farmers which can, under certain conditions, develop into common identity, committed practice and mobilisation against discrimination. These conditions include collective organisation, the valorisation of their work, adequate technical and political knowledge and contact with the political agenda of sustainability.
(H3) However, the lives of these women are permeated by tensions originating from gender hierarchies in peasant institutions, external threats to their livelihoods, and the pervasive effects of financialisation and commodification. These tensions contradictorily shape their relationship to nature, generating practices and mobilisations against discriminations, as much as individual strategies of integration into the market and the search for protections that may be oppressive.