Description:

EDGS Graduate Lecture Series on Political Ecology

Dian Ekowati, University of Brighton.

Ekowati joined the School of Environment and Technology at the University of Brighton as WEGO ITN early-stage researcher at the end of March 2019

In this presentation, I want to discuss the traveling concept of feminist care. This discussion is an initial finding of my thesis research entitled "Crowding Out Care: The Gendered Discourse Analysis of Care and Family Farms in Indonesian Oil Palm". My research is built on a feminist political ecology approach. 

I build my discussion on Said's traveling theory. I explore how the feminist's care concept travels trans-nationally between North and South, travel that involves language, spatial and ideology. My finding emphasized Said's argument on how theory/concept travels, but only partially and not wholly – depending on the paradigm at the other end, in line with Said's notion on "acceptance" and resistance. 

I based my discussion on two reflections: First, the linguistic term of care when I compare the term in Western and Indonesian literature and its nuance. Secondly, I base it on the embodied experience as a result of my positionality. My positionality is that I am an Indonesian doing research as a United Kingdom-based PhD, a carer of two young children, and as an early-stage researcher in oil palm community research.

Dian has a MA in Rural Sociology and BA in Communication and Community Development from the Bogor Agricultural University. 

She is now based in Bogor to implement her research fieldwork.