Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation (review)

Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation. By Ivone Gebara. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999. 240 pp. $22.00.

Connections among the unjustified domination of women, other oppressed groups, and nonhuman nature have long been recognized. In the pioneering works of authors such as Francoise d'Euabonne, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Karren Griffin, and Carolyn Merchant in the 1970s and early 1980s, the movements for justice toward women and the environment came together. Not only did these early authors advocate ethical consideration of nonhuman nature and the liberation of women from patriarchal domination, they also provided conceptual frameworks for understanding how European and Euro-American philosophical, economic, cultural, and religious systems have historically identified women, the poor, people of color, and nature as objects to be controlled and manipulated.

Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara's Longing for Running Water builds on assumptions now common among many ecofeminists and other environmental philosophers, and does so in a distinctly theological mode. Her work has important implications for those interested in Christian spirituality, especially ecological, feminist, and liberation spirituality. However, because instead of a single ecofeminist position there are multiple, often competing expressions of ecofeminist philosophy, Gebara offers her work as one attempt to interpret philosophical ecofeminism from the perspective of Christian religious experience (6). Her effort brims with promise, but also has several shortcomings. Ultimately, it offers a creative contribution to the burgeoning literature in ecological and liberation philosophies, theologies, and spiritualities, which all seek to answer this paramount question: How should we live together on this earth?

Gebara begins her work by relating an experience of conversion. Her own life experience had been "totally urban"; she claims that she was always sheltered from the elements and viewed trees, gardens, and flowers from afar, as objects to be examined like paintings. However, she has recently undergone a significant perceptual shift, which has led her to understand the interdependence of living things--a bodily perception of the unity between human beings and the cosmos (v-vi). This shift in perception has led Gebara to formulate her ecofeminist perspective, and it suggests an epistemology she develops throughout the book. Immediately, Gebara warns the reader that this book will not indulge in abstract or romantic meditations on contemplative experiences with "nature" detached from the everyday realities faced by the urban poor. Instead, Gebara wants to create an "urban ecofeminism . . . based on the experience of those who have diminishing access to green things and clean water; of those who breathe an ever greater amount of the air pollution that has spread everywhere" (vii).

Gebara's starting point is promising, because she recognizes the connection between the oppression she witnesses, experiences among impoverished communities in the Third World, and ecological destruction. Admitting the tension that seems to exist between ecological concerns and justice issues, Gebara's conversion of perception has caused her to take a greater interest in ecological issues. The fundamental starting point she claims for all theological work is the concrete everyday needs of various popular groups. Given this assumption, she understands that patriarchal political and economic systems based on the domination of women, the poor, and the environment prevents human beings from getting what they need from the earth to survive (1). When one sees the wealthy dumping their garbage (toxic and otherwise) in the neighborhoods of the poor, or women walking miles each day to secure drinking water for their families because the water in their communities is polluted, or indigenous cultures pushed off their land as it is clear-cut to make way for industrialization, then one understands that ecological concerns go beyond the preservation of wilderness for tourists or the protection of endangered species to the exclusion of human well-being. Destruction of the land, water, and air go hand in hand with the oppression of those who must live in such devastated places. Christian theology and spirituality centered on ecological realities must respond appropriately in light of...