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Feminist Perspectives on Sustainable Development is a collection of articles based on papers given at a four-day roundtable on Women, Environment and Alternatives to Development held at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague in May 1993. This collection appeared along with other similar collections in 1994 on women, environment and sustainable development, including Naila Kabeer's Reverse Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought and Braidotti et al.'s Women, the Environment and Sustainable Development: Towards A Theoretical Synthesis, to name two. Essentially similar books, though differing in the details of their arguments, each draw similar conclusions, taking stock of the past and current debates on feminism and development and the implications for gender analysis. A reflection of the concerns arising at that time with concepts such as "sustainable development" and the desire to link feminist thinking with prevailing "debates" on development, Harcourt's collection does not particularly stand out from the others.
Papers in the first section set out the parameters of the feminist "position" (as if there is one position) on the debate on sustainable development (p.2), and how this feminist position differs from other alternative and mainstream positions both as a methodology and as a political stance. Papers in the second section challenge the assumption that the western model of economic development is universally applicable and argues for a recognition of the importance of women's role in cultural and social development. The section outlines alternatives to the dominant knowledge systems from the west and women's grass roots resistance to mainstream economic development. Section Three moves from...