Ecofeminist Degrowth for Sustaining Buen Convivir

Abstract

Translator’s Introduction This essay is a translation of “Decrecimiento Ecofeminista para Sostener el Buen Convivir,” by Amaia Pérez Orozco. This is a slightly revised version of the fifth chapter of Orozco’s book, Subversión Feminista de la Economía (Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2014), originally titled “Ecofeminism or Barbarism.” Pérez Orozco is a Spanish feminist economist and activist, who has participated in diverse feminist and ecological movements in the Spanish state, with an eye toward connecting those with struggles in Latin America. She is currently a member of the feminist research-action collective Colectiva XXK: Feminisms, Thinking & Action, which collaborates with social movements and organizations to produce research analyses and educational workshops and materials, putting feminist thought into practice. Subversión Feminista de la Economía, now in its fourth reprinting in Spanish, was a landmark publication with major impacts in the fields of both economics and feminist philosophy, but also for social movements across the country. It was groundbreaking both in introducing concepts from Latin American struggles into the European conversation, and for drawing connections between feminist analyses of reproductive and care labor and proposals from the environmental movement for degrowth. These concepts have directly fed into conversation with the wave of social movements that grew out of the 2011 Indignados movement and the renewed wave of feminist activism that the country has seen in recent years, especially in the massive feminist strikes, through Pérez Orozco’s participation in these movements and popular education processes. Pérez Orozco’s work has also had important impacts on the international stage, especially through her collaborations with the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women and other interventions with the UN about care labor and global care chains. Subversión Feminista de la Economía has been widely read and engaged with throughout Latin America, especially through Pérez Orozco’s ongoing collaborations with feminist researchers and activists in Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador, among others. However, to date, little of her work has been translated and circulated in the English language. Drawing from the wealth of knowledge produced by feminist and ecological movements across Latin America and the Spanish territory, Pérez Orozco’s work challenges both conventional economic theories and feminist theories based on Western