Dimensions of Care: earth and agroecology for MST women farmers

Abstract

The text discusses how the experiences of agroecological landless farmers, and the different spheres of the relationship they establish with the earth, allow us to revisit and expand the concept of care. Interviews with four settled farmers were used, in association with a conceptual review of the history and particularities of women's access to land, as well as the theory of care as a feminist political concept. In this context, earth is interpreted in multiple meanings: it is an object of management, it is an element of biogeochemical flows, it is territory and it is also a source of identification for women as a body that shelters life. The daily experiences of these women show the breadth of care relationships, as well as the power and political need to build this concept to encompass human and non-human dimensions when making the eco-dependency of our experiences visible.