Energy transition or new form of colonization & housewifization?
Thu
30
Jan
Thursday 30 January, 2025at 13:00 - 14:00
Online in Teams
Energy transition? Or new forms of colonization & housewifization? - A historical ecofeminist perspective from Swedish Sápmi
What can we learn from history when it is reexamined through an ecofeminist lens? Energy transitions have happened before, each time introducing new forms of subordination of both nature and women, with their exploitation going hand-in-hand. By examining past struggles, we can uncover lessons that help us politicize the current “green transition”, or “green colonialism” and even “green housewifization". This talk will explore how the essential roles of women and nature in sustaining life have been invisibilized, despite being crucial to survival. Historically, urbanization has depended on the patriarchal domination of women and nature’s reproduction to sustain production as extraction. As situated from a territory of extraction in Swedish Sápmi, we will discuss how these insights can help us collectively navigate and politicize the ongoing green transition and its alternatives.
Berta Flaquer is an architect and ecofeminist researcher with a PhD in architecture from Luleå University of Technology. Her 2023 doctoral thesis, "Urbanization as Socionatures' Reproduction: From Territories of Extraction," applies an ecofeminist lens to urbanization and examines the historical intersections of capitalist colonial patriarchal extraction processes from Swedish-Sápmi. In 2019, she was a visiting researcher at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Currently, she is attending a course on regenerative agriculture at Bäckedals folkhögskola, engaging with grassroots movements in Sweden, and leading Oikos Arkitekter, where she co-designs projects that harmonize the needs of people, animals, and nature.
