218 Communities and Social Capital
points, the ecofeminist insight that there is a relationship between the subordina-
tion of women and the exploitation of nature, the deep ecologists’ argument for a
nonanthropocentric ontology and cosmology and the Marxist analysis of the dia-
lectical relations of human material life.
The concept of deep materialism combines the adjective adopted by deep ecol-
ogy and the analytical framework associated with Marx. I would argue that the
insights of both are important and there is no necessary conflict between a radical
approach to human–human relations and a ‘deeper’ approach to human–nature
relations, although there are tensions between them in practice. The source of
these tensions is the priority in different perspectives given to human–nature rela-
tions as against human–human relations. A radical approach to ecology such as
that of Bookchin (1989) would see a fundamental reorganization of human–
human relations as essential to resolving human–nature relations. Deep ecology,
on the other hand, would see human–nature relations as the critical element. I
would argue that the one is inseparable from the other, human–nature relations
require reformulation of human–human relations and vice versa. Ecofeminists
would agree with deep ecologists that humanity needs to completely rethink its
orientation to the natural world, but like historical materialists would point to the
socioeconomic context of such a relation. I would argue that Marx had at the heart
of his work the double dialectical framework that I am advocating, but that his
later analysis and, more importantly, later interpreters, took a humanist turn that
lost the dialectic between humanity and nature. Marx’s inability to develop his
ideas in a more ecological direction was largely due to his acceptance of the sexual
division of labour (Mellor, 1992b). Ecofeminists have also criticized deep ecology’s
tendency to concentrate on the relationship between humanity and nature to the
exclusion of the dynamics of intra-human, and particularly gender, relations
(Salleh, 1992). This leads to a tendency to adopt a depoliticized and even anti-
human stance which places the blame for the ecological crisis on an undifferenti-
ated ‘humanity’. Ignoring social difference and inequality puts equal responsibility
for ecological damage on the North and the South, rich and poor, black and white,
men and women. This is not to imply that deep ecologists do not recognize the
existence of what Naess called the relationship between ‘man and man’ (sic) but
that this tends to remain theoretically unexplored. For ecofeminists the question of
sex/gender difference/inequality is vitally important given the gendered nature of
the relationship between humanity and nature.
Discussions of humanity, man, woman and nature are conceptually problem-
atic. Humanity is divided in countless ways, as are men and women. I would not
go along the postmodernist road that claims that there is no extra-discursive cate-
gory of ‘woman’ (Riley, 1988), but it is easy to slip into universalizing and essen-
tializing frameworks of thought when the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are used.
Equally nature is a deeply problematic concept (Soper, 1995). I hope in the course
of this paper to make clear the way in which I am using these words. However, to
indicate the problematic and divided nature of humanity I will write this word in
a broken form, hu(man)ity, in the rest of this chapter.