Ariel Salleh

Who is Ariel Salleh?

Ariel Salleh is an Australian sociologist who writes on social ecology and ecofeminism. In contrast to idealist ecofeminisms coming from philosophy and cultural studies, Salleh's analysis is close to that of fellow sociologists Maria Mies in Germany and Mary Mellor in the United Kingdom. Reproductive labour and use value are central themes here. Her own "embodied materialism" addresses resistance to globalisation through the movement of movements, introducing the term "meta-industrial labour" to integrate indigenous, peasant, women's, and worker politics under the banner of ecology.

Her book Ecofeminism as Politics: nature, Marx and the postmodern outlines the scope of a materialist ecofeminism, proposing a transdisciplinary analysis of the embodied roots of capitalist patriarchal globalisation. Salleh traces the effects of what she sees as the "originary contradiction": economic resourcing of labour "as nature" and the eurocentric ideology of "humanity v nature" used to justify that systemic exploitation.

Salleh exemplifies the marxist argument that hands-on praxis is essential to grounded political theory. She was a convener of the Movement Against Uranium Mining in Sydney, 1976, and helped found The Greens in 1985. She worked on the 1992 Earth Summit with Women's Environment & Development Organization; on local catchment struggles in the mid 90s; and from 2001-04 acted as ecologist/critic on the Australian federal government's Gene Technology Ethics Committee.