Mother Earth is The Baddest Bitch: Environmental Harm, Eco-Feminism and Gendered Constructions of Victimhood

• In Event: State and Corporate Environmental Crime Victimization

Abstract

Since the first calls for a ‘green criminology’ were made over 20 years ago, the resulting criminological interest has frequently turned its gaze to the often-intersecting ‘problems’ of gender, environment, and state-corporate crime and harm. This paper considers various cultural constructions of female victimhood and power in the construction, communication and conceptualization of environmental harm. Employing critical theoretical frameworks offered by feminist, green, and cultural criminologies, as well as feminist and ecofeminist perspectives, this paper considers the ways in which female victimhood and power are constructed, deployed, and exploited within media, culture, academia and other sites of ecological discourse. Of particular interest are the ways in which gendered constructions of victimhood work to reify problematic social constructions of gender difference, the ways academic discourses adopt and legitimize essentializing and gendered language and conceptualizations of environmental harm, and the various impacts of gendered eco-philosophical positioning. This paper employs qualitative analyses of various relevant cultural productions in order to establish the myriad ways in which differential female victimhood in instances of environmental crime and harm is both constructed and made real, and the role that various media and popular discourses play in the construction and reification of gendered victimhood.

Authors

• Molly Dunn, Eastern Kentucky University

• Bill McClanahan, University of Essex