Paul Pulé

Patsy Hallen occupies an esteemed place in environmental and ecofeminist philosophy, due to her foundational scholarly contributions, her unique and widely influential work as an earth-centered teacher and mentor, and her decades of experience walking, camping, and sailing the stunning environs of Western Australia. We are honored to have organized an extraordinary symposium celebrating Patsy’s life and career in 2023, and to have developed this publication from the philosophical tributes from colleagues, friends and former students who presented there. On a clear, warm evening in mid-December we gathered in person and virtually on the campus of Murdoch University. We took the framework of “The Power of Ideas” as a guiding prompt, and as we gave our tributes to Patsy, we also engaged that theme through the context of the ongoing interlocked crises of global heating, environmental decline, the extinction crisis, and far too many social crises, but also inspired by the force of Patsy’s embodied, affirming, life-loving philosophy.

Around the globe, unfettered industrialisation has marched forth in unison with massive social inequities. Making matters worse, anthropogenic pressures on Earth¿s living systems are causing alarming rates of thermal expansion, sea-level rise, biodiversity losses in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and a sixth mass extinction. As various disciplines have shown, rich white men in the Global North are the main perpetrators of this slow violence. This book demonstrates that industrial/breadwinner masculinities have come at terrible costs to the living planet and ecomodern masculinities have failed us as well, men included. This book is dedicated to a third and relationally focused pathway that the authors call ecological masculinities. Here, they explore ways that masculinities can advocate and embody broader, deeper and wider care for the global through to local commons. Ecological Masculinities works with the wisdoms of four main streams of influence that have come before us. They are: masculinities politics, deep ecology, ecological feminism and feminist care theory. The authors work with profeminist approaches to the conceptualisations and embodiments of modern Western masculinities. From there, they introduce masculinities that give ADAM-n for Earth, others and self, striving to create a more just and ecologically viable planet for all of life. This book is interdisciplinary. It is intended to reach scholars exploring history, gender studies, material feminism, feminist care theory, ecological feminism, deep ecology, social ecology, environmental humanities, social sustainability, science and technology studies and philosophy.