Wendy Harcourt

• Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam

In this article, I share insights from the conversations I have enjoyed with my father GC Harcourt on gender, social justice, and economic policy in the last years of his long and fruitful life. Our conversations reflected our overlapping but at times divergent responses to the disruptions caused by environmental, climate, health, economic, and pol...

In this chapter, we set out the book’s engagements with feminist political ecology (FPE) theory and practice. We first position the book in relation to FPE discussions underlying how the field is evolving as an open-ended set of discourses responding to the different crises and disruptions caused by the last years of environmental, climate, health,...

In this chapter, we explore the topic of population in the context of the latest work by renowned feminist STS scholar Donna Haraway and her call to ‘make kin not babies’. We reflect on the explosive reactions among feminists to Haraway’s recent work by paying attention to emotions in population debates among feminist thinkers. Using an informal di...

In this chapter, we share the insights of feminist political ecology (FPE) for degrowth, building from the debates on “caring communities for radical change” at the 8th International Degrowth Conference in August 2021. We discuss how FPE links to the principles of degrowth as an academic and activist movement and why it is necessary to take feminis...

In my commentary I take up the challenge of finding an academically fuelled strategy to make the necessary deep inroads into the Sustainable Development Goals by looking at lessons learnt from the struggles of the transnational feminist movement involved in UN multilateral debates and the transformative work of feminist political ecology on the eth...

In my reflections of the 2004 Editorial I wrote with Smitu Kothari, I first look at what I consider to be the salient points of our original text. I then move onto underline what I think we need to be even more vigilant about today as we consider who has the ‘right’ to development.

The process of engaging with and learning from each other that culminated in this book has been a beautiful experiment in community building. We are grateful for the time and care that each contributor has put into this—beginning with shared laughter and good food in an idyllic setting in Bolsena, Italy, and continuing with the unhurried reading of...

Our chapter builds on an intergenerational transnational exchange about how feminists can create safe places of engagement via the internet as part of embodied active research processes. We tell two stories separated by over two decades that illustrate how safe feminist and queer places are co-created and embodied as vital for connections and commu...

The editors set out what the book seeks to trouble and what we are troubled by when speaking about feminist methodologies. We highlight the commonalities and differences across the book showcasing the many methodologies feminism has inspired and shaped. We delve into the patterns we saw woven across the chapters and the major themes that emerge in...

In this article, we set out how menstrual activism is emerging as a novel strand in global feminist health demands that challenge the norms and practices which condone and institutionalise gender inequalities. Menstruation has moved from being understood principally as a biological function, invisible in the public sphere, to a vibrant form of glob...

This commentary reflects on the shifts in my personal and political lifeworld across time and space by sharing a story of changing awareness about ‘life-in-common’ in the Australian landscape; a landscape that is marked by historical, ecological and resource struggle and injustice. My commentary takes up the rethinking of differential belonging and...

This reflection, drawing on three chapters in this book, sets out the case for a feminist political ecology approach in supporting activist scholars aiming to create just spaces which question the mainstream discourses of the green economy and sustainable development in order to address the emerging questions in the gender and energy nexus.

In the paper I argue that in a world where our lives are intricately interconnected and our environments are rapidly changing, commoning produces ecological imaginaries and understandings of places that could build a sense of global commons based on mutuality, reciprocity, and relationality. In exploring commoning in the international class room, m...

Editorial of the special issue

Given a history in political ecology of challenging hegemonic “scientific” narratives concerning environmental problems, the current political moment presents a potent conundrum: how to (continue to) critically engage with narratives of environmental change while confronting the “populist” promotion of “alternative facts.” We ask how political ecol...

The chapter explores the challenges of gender for Development Studies in the new Millennium. It looks at the implications of applying a gender lens to the complex economic, social and cultural processes shaping development processes. The underlying premise of the chapter is that development itself is powerfully gendered. It argues that applying a g...

As editor of the Development journal for 23 years, Wendy Harcourt takes a walk down memory lane in order to review the main themes that stand out for her as we consider what lies ahead. She reflects on four major themes which she argues informs development’s past and future: diversity, body politics, post-development and sustainable development.

In response to Juan David Parra Heredia’s criticism of her earlier article about her use of post-development as a tool in teaching development studies, Wendy Harcourt reflects further on how the course analysed in 2016 has evolved in the last three years and corrects the misreadings of the pedagogical position-taking by the teachers in the course.

In this essay I explore the economic, social, environmental and cultural changes taking place in Bolsena, Italy, where agricultural livelihoods have rapidly diminished in the last two decades. I examine how gender dynamics have shifted with the changing values and livelihoods of Bolsena through three women’s narratives detailing their gendered expe...

The chapter interrogates the co-optation of feminist understandings of body politics in development practices and programs by constructing an ethnoscape of a recent South Asian training on gender, generations and sexuality. In a reflection on the potential of ruptures in the praxis of body politics, the chapter concludes with a consideration of how...

This intergenerational dialogue explores global body politics from our different historical standpoints. Inspired by Alexandra Garita's reflections on sexual and reproductive justice the three authors look at what sexual and reproductive health and rights means to them.

In the following extended interview Jacqueline Pitanguy shares her views on body politics and human rights in public policies in Brazil with the editor of Bodies in Resistance, Wendy Harcourt. Jacqueline Pitanguy has played a key role in Brazilian feminist politics. From 1986 to 1989 she held a cabinet position as President of the National Council...

In the form of a three way conversation the introduction sets out the main themes of the book looking at the contesting issues around the gendered political economy of neoliberalism in the different localities, regions and transnational connections described in the book. It situates the arguments explored in the book around sexualities, body politi...

This book explores how rural gender relations are changing in a globalizing world. It integrates experiences across the globe through the discussion of four key themes in rural gender research: agriculture, international development, gender identities and mobility. The first section (chapters 2-6) examines how mobility affects men and women in rura...

This article explores the ways in which western modernity, as Boaventura De Sousa Santos suggests, can play tricks on intellectuals when we try to teach revolutionary ideas in reactionary institutions. I reflect on my efforts to use Post-Development (PD) as a tool to engage students in critical reflections on development in a post graduate course i...

The article looks at how recent thinking on gender has led to discussions on how development itself is powerfully gendered, with important implications for international development studies. The essay is based on reflections from editing two handbooks for Palgrave and Oxford University Press. It describes how feminist critiques of gender can create...

The sustainable livelihoods (SL) approach to the environment and resource management has traditionally focused on poverty reduction in relation to the environment. Feminist political ecology and queer ecology have run parallel to the SL approach. These two approaches to the environment have focused on gender power relations, embodiment, nature, and...

This entry looks at how feminist practice and writing in the last 30 years has engaged in body politics. The discussion takes three main entry points: feminist theory on the body; international development policy related to bodies, namely health, sexuality, and reproduction; and popular writings on the female body as a site of political action.

The term “third world women” is a highly contested one, particularly in feminist and postcolonial studies. This entry looks at the debates around the term, specifically in relation to discussions on sexuality with the deepening understanding of gender power relations and sexuality in postcolonial and recent gender and development discourse.

This handbook starts from the premise that feminists engaged in GAD debates are caught in a dilemma. On the one hand they wish to act in solidarity across the globe, to create spaces and possibilities for all women, wherever they are placed. But, on the other hand, they can only do so by unpacking the profound divisions, tensions and systemic inequ...

I enjoyed revisiting ‘Feminism as Transformational Politics: Towards Possibilities for Another World’ by Peggy Antrobus. I recall what a courageous article it was when it was published in Development in 2002 as part of a collection of intellectual activists writing about the impact of 11 September 2001. It was the moment when the US ‘War on Terror’...

As Raewyn Connell states in her Foreword, 'this Handbook plunges us straight into some of the most disturbing and important issues of our time. Global injustice and violence; the nature of care and love; new forms of power and resistance; the politics of knowledge and the politics of sexuality; survival on an injured planet – all feature in the boo...

Using the example of a human rights training in Nepal, the author looks at global body politics in a reflexive piece on her engagement in development practices that translate western feminist ideas on gender inequality and empowerment via UN human rights policies into non-western contexts. It firsts look at postcolonial and critical literature on f...

Wendy Harcourt is associate professor at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University. She was editor-in-chief of the journal Development from 1995 to 2012 and during that period published five books, including Women and Politics of Place with Arturo Escobar (Kumarian Press, 2005). Her monograph Body Politics in Development: Cr...

Wendy Harcourt is associate professor at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University. She was editor-in-chief of the journal Development from 1995 to 2012 and during that period published five books, including Women and Politics of Place with Arturo Escobar (Kumarian Press, 2005). Her monograph Body Politics in Development: Cr...

Wendy Harcourt is associate professor at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University. She was editor-in-chief of the journal Development from 1995 to 2012 and during that period published five books, including Women and Politics of Place with Arturo Escobar (Kumarian Press, 2005). Her monograph Body Politics in Development: Cr...

Wendy Harcourt is associate professor at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University. She was editor-in-chief of the journal Development from 1995 to 2012 and during that period published five books, including Women and Politics of Place with Arturo Escobar (Kumarian Press, 2005). Her monograph Body Politics in Development: Cr...

In response to Stephen Marglin’s call for new economies, the article points to the strong and vibrant tradition of feminist scholarship inside and outside academe, which is exploring alternatives to capitalism. The article takes up the concepts of meshworks, politics of place, feminist political ecology and community economies. It argues that femin...

The article raises questions about how the economic crisis is being played out ‘in place’, taking an embodied, generational and gender perspective. ‘Place’ is used in a political context by examining how global realities are experienced in place, and the author argues the need to look at the everyday realities of the crisis from a gendered ontologi...

This is a reply to:Scholz, Sally J. 2014. “Transnational feminist solidarity and lessons from the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square.” Global Discourse. 4 (2–3): 205–219. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2014.914369.

In June 2013 I was in Vienna speaking on a panel “Vienna+20: Women’s rights at stake?!: Voices of international women’s rights activists”. The occasion was the twentieth anniversary of the UN Conference on Human Rights. Held in a chandeliered room in Viennese government offices, the event was packed with women from the civil society and policy aren...

The article reviews three entry points into a discussion of alternatives to today’s neoliberal capitalism. The first examines the need for a green new deal from mostly UK-based think tanks positioning the household as central to the economy, posing new core values for the economy that respect the environment, the social economy as well as the possi...

This contribution reflects on the changes happening as transnational feminist movements engage in the shifting global dynamics and new forms of civil action that are changing the way movements operate post-2010. The focus of the article is on the transformation of an international women's rights network, the Association for Women's Rights in Develo...

Prologue Wendy Harcourt: Space, Place and the Body Politics of Development Questions for Wendy Alice Brooke Wilson: Food Politics and Geographies of Sustenance Questions for Alice Brooke Arturo Escobar: Relational Ontologies and Geographies of Responsibility Questions for Arturo Dianne Rocheleau: Rooted Networks and Geometries of Power Questions fo...

Wendy Harcourt interviews three feminist activists who have been engaged in feminist action from the grassroots to transnational levels. They reflect on changes in feminist and women's movement organizing, both in terms of what are the new issues emerging today and what feminist organizing has given to transformational movement building.

SUMMARY Recessive mutant gene c in axolotl embryos results in an absence of normal heart function. Immunofluorescence studies were done to determine the distributions of myosin, tropomyosin and a-actinin in the hearts of normal and mutant siblings. Anti-myosin specifically stains the A bands of myofibrils in normal hearts and reveals a progressive...

Throughout the book there has been a tension around whether to engage in making policy changes that open spaces to sustain women’s livelihoods, or whether to advocate a complete overhaul of an economic system that is producing unsustainable production and consumption patterns, unfair agricultural and trade agreements, and perpetuating gender-blind...

Using a word like reclaiming in a title might well conjure up an image of looking back rather than forward. It could even suggest a notion of rejection rather than an image of opportunity. We use the term ‘reclaim’ in its most positive and forward-looking sense: meeting the challenges of the future by taking back what belongs to women. It may be a...

This article describes the situation over the last 30 years of women migrants from the Philippines in Italy, who have been caught in what many have called the ‘global care chain’. The pressure to send remittances back home is locking these women even further into the global care chain, with not only economic, but social and cultural consequences. B...

Wendy Harcourt highlights the most interesting and contentious issues to emerge during a conversation held among 25 people from key women's networks, UN agencies, research institutions and think tanks at the 54th Commission of the Status of Women (CSW) in New York March 2010. (1) Using charterhouse rules, the dialogue was an attempt to hold a new k...

There is no doubt we are dealing with multiple global crises: financial, food, fuel, climate and care. The media is full of catastrophic stories depicting increasing poverty and violence, insecurity and despair.Well-known British journalist Larry Elliot announced on the front page of The Guardian Weekly that ‘capitalism is dying’ (2009). We speak a...

The authors look at how to bridge the gap between science, technology and social justice in their examination of the gender dimension of climate change. The authors argue for the need to understand in both analysis and policy the profound link between gender and climate change. They ask in the context of the current search for ecologically justice...