The Knowledge Workshop invites submissions of abstracts for a publication that explores connections between ecology and feminism, in frameworks and practices, as manifested especially in Lebanon.

[Update: Deadline extended till August 8th]
In 2018, KW began exploring connections between environmentalism and feminism, particularly through feminist oral history, and we are interested in examining these connections further, and more collectively.

There have been varied ways in which ecology and feminism have found resonances with each other, from a simplistic parallel between women and nature (reminiscent of the association between women and gender), to analysis of how heteropatriarchal and neoliberal systems collaborate to monopolize wealth—and what is considered wealth— and to distribute violence. These systems create social relations that glorify militarization, violent masculinities and individual and corporate profiteering; they devalue relations based on care and mutuality, they dismiss communities’ histories of land-based knowledge and sustenance, and they repress intuition and spirituality. As we explore the many facets of the interactions between ecology and feminism in Lebanon, we aim to create opportunities to look deeper and wider into topics and frameworks that we haven’t adequately articulated yet.

In this publication, we are interested in capturing the horrid and the visceral: toxins and disease; sights and odors of garbage on our streets; destruction of mountains, farms and sea; privatization of public shores and closures of public spaces; the consequences of these multiple forms of warfare on us. A story, if told from the point of view of a river or land, would reveal control, commodification, and exploitation; and the struggle to live and adapt. If told from the view point of women, will reveal violence, marginalization and exploitation, but also complicity and resistance. If told by those who do not conform to gender and sexual norms, would show the oppression of monocultures, of what heteropatriachal systems deem as unnatural identities and forms of kinship, and thus subject to assaults and erasures. This publication wants to take into consideration unbalanced development policies, including the systematic destruction of agricultural sector molded by a global political economy; of profiteering from gas exploration and extraction, and the oppositions to them; how women plant and harvest, but are also deprived of land inheritance; of the histories of women working in tobacco fields and factories under colonialism and the foundations of resistance and workers’ rights that they built. This publication wants to examine expulsion and displacement, wars and reconstructions, colonialism and settler colonialism as ecological-political–social destruction.

Yet we also want this publication to hold stories of wonder: the richness of a meditative realization of oneness and how it might shift our analysis; the sensuality and embodiedness, the recognition that it is not only humans that hold wisdom. The sustenance and medicine of the earth safeguarded in recipes and herbal teas. Of landscapes lost and fading memories of those who once inhabited them— human, plant, animal – even when we can’t remember them we feel the loss, if only in the awe of recounting their stories. How would reflections that build on ecological and feminist visions and values bring these aspects into the conversation?

Ecology reminds us of the inevitability of reciprocity, decentering humans and their hegemony, looking at different forms of kinships, and understanding the value of every living being within an interconnected web of relations. Feminism ties the personal to the political, the intimate to the structural; it names violence and shows how it is gendered, and it brings to the open forms of violence and of resistance that are silenced by patriarchal institutions bestowed with sanctity. It deconstructs daily practices and identities long considered natural and relates them to socialization and construction of unjust systems and norms. Yet we also want to think more about whether the rightful rejection of an oppressive assumption of the “natural” and “cultural” (i.e. essentialism) has taken something away from us even as it benefitted women and feminism in significant ways? And how has a global system of predominantly working within ngos also kept us, like many sectors and movements, from certain conversations, certain ways of operation, that may have better connected us? At the same time, has ecology’s focus on “universal” interconnections also sometimes restricted it from serious engagement with gendered and racialized systems at play, and from considering particular kinds of resistances, more closely?

The 2015 protests against the garbage crisis and the 2019 intifada brought environmental concerns and ecological issues to mainstream attention. Today, in the midst of a pandemic, economic collapse, social struggles and ecological destruction, and having not yet collectively recovered from the Beirut port explosion, this publication aims at thinking through our present state more expansively. Our aim is to look at two significant movements so that they are no longer two, but one inclusive and nuanced framework that can help us better grapple with multiple dimensions of our realities, build momentum for more connections, and imagine more liberating possibilities for our lives. There are so many layers to such reflections and conversations, what aspect do you want to examine?
Topics can include but not limited to:

•Thought-provoking reflections on frameworks that interconnect feminism and ecology in Lebanon; that examine patriarchy, neoliberalism and ecological degradation
• Women and girls, including refugees, in agriculture
• Feminist reflections on environmental activism, or women advocating for environmental issues, historically and in present times.
• Analysis of ecology and nature in women’s literature and cultural productions, in Lebanon
• Feminist analysis of ecotourism in Lebanon
• Women telling stories of river, trees, and bees, and reflecting on communal practices and land-based rituals.
• Potentials and limitations of permaculture
• Health, food politics, and ecological changes from gendered perspectives
• Climate change and its effect on ecology and communities in Lebanon
• Reproductive labor, reproductive justice and ecology
• Urban childhoods’ access to and connection with nature
• Environmental racism in Lebanon

We accept essays that look beyond the Lebanese borders, but they do need to have some focus on, or clear connection to, Lebanon in some way.

We encourage different forms of writing styles, especially those that include creative and poetic prose, and that center storytelling and stories of encounters and reciprocities. We accept in-depth investigative and research papers to more intimate reflections. Collaborative writing projects are also welcome.
Submission Guidelines:

• Essays should be sent in a Word document, single spaced, in 12-point font, Times New Roman, following the Chicago Manual of Style
• Submissions, whether in-depth research, investigative articles, reflective or personal essays should range from 2000-4000 words in length.
• To be accepted for publication, submissions must not be published elsewhere.
• We encourage writings in Arabic, but we accept submissions in English as well.
• We will send you back your final essay submission with suggestions for further revisions before publication.

We encourage you to get in touch with us at editor@alwarsha.org for questions, concerns, or to discuss your ideas for your paper. We may even be able to read through a detailed outline or a first draft of your work and give you some feedback, so drop us an email!

Important Dates to Mark:
Writers should submit an abstract of their proposed essay (max. 500 words) and a short bio (max. 150 words) to editor@alwarsha.org by July 21st, 2021.
KW will inform writers who have been selected of our decision within ten days after the deadline. If selected, you will be asked to submit the final essay by November 30th, 2021.

KW’s planned date of publication is Spring 2022.

Payment:
KW will be compensating writers whose work appears in the publication with an honorarium: submissions that require research will be compensated with 400 USD; personal reflections will be compensated with 250 USD.