222 Communities and Social Capital
(1992) has argued. As I will argue here, and have argued elsewhere, the association
of women with nature represents hu(man)ity’s need to confront its own material-
ity, its existence in ecological and biological time (Mellor, 1992a). The relationship
is not a contingent one, an accident of historical association, it is a structural rela-
tion (Mellor, 1996).
Hu(man)ity as a natural species is embodied in its physical being and embed-
ded in its natural context. Ecological time is the time framework of ecological
renewal and of ecological change and evolution. Hu(man)ity can interfere with
this to a large extent, but rarely without consequences in the long term, for even
the most privileged, while in the short term it is the least privileged and other spe-
cies who suffer most. Biological time is the life cycle and rest/renewal timescale of
the human being. The centrality of women’s socioeconomic position in this rela-
tionship is her responsibility for biological time.
The basic argument of materialist ecofeminism is that Western society has cre-
ated itself against nature using the sex/gender division of labour as (one) of its
vehicles. That is, power is defined by the ability of certain individuals and groups
to (temporarily) free themselves from embodiedness and embeddedness, from eco-
logical time and biological time. Ecological time as representing the pace of eco-
logical sustainability for non-human nature. Biological time representing the
life cycle and pace of bodily replenishment for human beings. It appears that
throughout history women have carried the burden of biological time, and as Shiva
(1989) has argued, in subsistence economies operated within ecological time. As
Sanday’s (1981) survey of anthropological data has shown, this left social space and
time largely in the hands of men. Although men may have exploited their ‘free’
time in traditional society to make war, trade and politics, the position is much
more dangerous in modern industrialized and militarized societies. The hallmark
of modern capitalist patriarchy is its ‘autonomy’ in biological and ecological terms.
The sex/gender and ecological consequences of economic activities are cast aside as
‘externalities’ (Mellor, 1997a). Western social and economic structures are based
upon an idealized image of individuality. Western ‘economic man’ is young, fit,
ambitious, mobile and unencumbered by obligations. This is not the world that
most women know. Their world is circumscribed by obligated labour performed
on the basis of duty, love, violence or fear of loss of economic support. To take
their place in the Western public world, women have to present themselves as
autonomous individuals, ‘honorary men’, avoiding domestic obligations, under-
taking them in their ‘free’ time, or paying someone else to carry out that work.
Mediation in Human–Nature Relations
A materialist ecofeminist identification of women and nature is not based on an
essential affinity, but reflects women’s role as mediators of human–nature relations.
It is not women’s identity with ‘nature’, either as biology or ecology, that should