Liberating Female-centric Forms of Knowledge and Action to Transform Society

<strong>Centre for the Study of Social Systems School of Social Sciences</strong> <strong>CSSS Colloquium</strong> <strong>Prof. Felix Padel</strong> (Visiting Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems) <strong>Liberating Female-centric Forms of Knowledge and Action to Transform Society </strong> Date : <strong>February 18, 2016</strong> <strong>Abstract: </strong>Women's subjection (or male domination) takes many different forms, including rape (which can also be understood as a standard technique of war and political suppression), prostitution and trafficking (NB Lidia Caccio), pornography, clitoradectomy, and in India from suttee to dowry deaths and honour killings. Feminist historians (Riane Eisler et al) have traced world history in terms of the rise of dominator societies that suppressed and exploited women simultaneously with nature and labouring classes; while the prison writings of Abdullah Ocalan have developed traditional Marxist-Leninism by seeing women as the primary oppressed class, which Kurds have used to make women equal to men at every level of political organisation in Turkey and Syria, giving their frontline conflict with Islamic State a character of the most women-liberated society ever fighting against the most misogynist. These ideas link up with feminist thinkers (e.g. Carol Gilligan and Mary Daly) who understand women's liberation in terms of liberating female-centric forms of holistic thought and knowledge, based more on feeling and relating than abstract thought. In India (and elsewhere), where women's prominence in social movements is marked, this may well be partly because 'thinking from the womb' makes them more aware than many men of the rights of future generations, and the disastrous effects of dispossession from the land. Do women tend to understand more empathically and instinctively the importance of ecosystems and community? If Ocalan and the Kurds are right that removing all trace of patriarchy is the first step towards transforming society into a democratic civilisation, should we be learning from this model? <strong>Bio :</strong> Felix Padel is Visiting Professor to CSSS from 10-24 February 2016, and was Visiting Professor to the North East India Study Programme, SSS-1 during July-December 2015. He is currently Consultant Adviser to the Gujarat Ecological Society and a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for World Environment History at Sussex University, UK. He was previously Senior Visiting Fellow at IRMA (Gujarat), and Professor at the School of Rural Managament, IIHMR (Jaipur). His books include: Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape (2010), Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel (with Samarendra Das, 2010), and Ecology, Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection (with Ajay Dandekar and Jeemol Unni, 2013).