Ecofeminism, Subsistence & Eco-Housing

In this talk, living with earth will be presented from an ecofeminist and subsistence theoretical perspective: Modernity is based on the violent exploitation of earth and women’s bodies, as well as the bodies of peasants and colonized peoples. Everyday life subsistence activities anchored in natural ressources are replaced by massive production and devalued domestic work. Households, populated by domestic animals and organized around multiple craft activities, become nuclear families that must spend money on all their basic needs. Architecture echoes these profound social changes with another organization of space but also by changing building materials, notably forgetting that it was possible to build with earth. The challenge is to create non-patriarchal households and a different economy—not a step backward, but an invention that combines high-tech and low-tech equipment. This alternative way of life and inhabitance is already experimented by communities. How can we train our eyes for catching the complexity of their eco-housing?

Bio

Geneviève Pruvost (FR) is a sociologist specialized in work, gender, ecofeminism, eco-lifestyles and -housing. She is a research director at the CNRS (Paris-EHESS-CEMS) and has a permaculture degree. She works on ecological alternatives modes of life and inhabitance in rural areas, eco-construction, neo-peasantry, alternative birth and environmental struggles. She has published a book on subsistence and ecofeminism (Quotidien politique. Féminisme, écologie et subsistence, La Découverte, 2021) and on the economy of everyday life of baker-farmers who live in a yurta (La subsistance au quotidien, La Découverte, 2024). Her books will be translated in Danish with an introduction of Anne-Sofie Dichman in Fall 2026.

Life Terrains

All previous talks in the Life Terrains lecture series are available to stream.