The Subsistence Perspective

Two leading feminist thinkers, posing a radical alternative to the current free-market industrial system, show how if we are to survive, economies must become needs-based, environmentally sustainable, co-operative and local. They explain how the current capitalist system is none of these things, is inherently unstable and is dependent on the exploitation of various marginalized groups, particularly women, and of the environment. They call instead for a new politics and economics based on subsistence and, drawing on practical examples from Africa, Latin America and Europe, show how this principle can and does have a positive effect on market exchange. The book demonstrates how development only works when it is done from the bottom up and concludes with a call for a new politics based on this view from below.

Author Biography

Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen is an ethnologist and sociologist at the nonprofit Institute for Theory and Practice of Subsistence.

Maria Mies is a renowned Marxist-Feminist scholar. Her books include Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (Zed 1986, reissued 2014) and Ecofeminism (with Vandana Shiva, Zed 1993, reissued 2014).