Earth Follies: Coming Feminist CL T

Seager, who teaches geography and women's studies at the University of Vermont, has grafted an intriguing feminist critique onto an overlong survey of environmental disasters and depredations. ``Our environmental problems are the progeny of very particular clusters of powerful institutions''--the military, multinational corporations, governments, the environmental establishment--that are controlled by men and imbued with a ``masculinist'' institutional culture, she argues. She devotes the bulk of the book to descriptions of environmental problems caused by those institutions, and delivers provocative analyses of such issues as how maleness contributes to the corporate ethos and why male-dominated environmental groups see population control as more important than demilitarization and redistribution of global resources. She criticizes fringe ``deep ecologists'' for their ``macho-redneck style,'' and ecofeminists for their apolitical, acultural, ahistorical tendencies. Finally, she finds inspiration in the grassroots environmental movement, which has begun to see the links between the environment and the masculinist power structure. Illustrations not seen by PW. (May)