Hot Girl Summer: Climate Planning and Ecofeminism in the City

Hot Girl Summer: Climate Planning and Ecofeminism in the City

Authors

    Presenter(s)

    Eleanor Yates-McEwan

    Comments

    9:40-10:00, Kennedy Union 310

    Files

    Description

    This paper investigates ongoing climate planning using ecofeminist philosophical grounding, particularly inspired by Donna Haraway’s work, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. An active comparison of socialist, Marxist, and Haraway’s self-ascribed ‘compostist’ (a cousin to post-humanist) ecofeminisms evaluates the state of city climate planning in relationship to self-narrative and ideals of flourishing. I use qualitative content analysis on ten Midwestern city Climate Action Plans (CAPs), identifying the presence or absence of commitments similar to ecofeminist projects and analyze the distribution of commitments across those ten CAPs. I found that very few cities are practicing storytelling as Haraway’s theory would recommend, rather demonstrating commitments reflecting aspects of socialist ecofeminist and occasionally Marxist ecofeminist projects. These commitments tend to stack in a “yes, and” pattern, suggesting these theories run as a spectrum, progressively adding requirements for flourishing. Radical philosophies provide helpful tools for the project of city climate planning, ever an exercise in storytelling and relationship. But radical projects are not intelligible unless a city has a standing commitment to similar ideals. This suggests climate practitioners should meet cities as they are on the spectrum to most effectively promote projects of flourishing.

    Publication Date

    4-23-2025

    Project Designation

    Course Project - SEE 490 P1

    Primary Advisor

    Zachary A. Piso

    Primary Advisor's Department

    Philosophy

    Keywords

    Stander Symposium, College of Arts and Sciences

    Institutional Learning Goals

    Practical Wisdom; Scholarship; Vocation

    Hot Girl Summer: Climate Planning and Ecofeminism in the City

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