Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development (1988) (scribd)

Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development on scribd

This book was recently re-published by South End Press with a new introduction, and is sold by AK Press.

A review from Z:

“Vandana Shiva is one of the world's most prominent radical scientists . . . in Staying Alive she defines the links between ecological crises, colonialism, and the oppression of women. It is a scholarly and polemical plea for the rediscovery of the ‘feminine principle’ in human interaction with the natural world, not as a gender-based quality, rather an organizing principle, a way of seeing the world.” —Guardian


In this pioneering work, Vandana Shiva looks at the history of development and progress, stripping away the neutral language of science to reveal third-world development policy as the global twin of the industrial revolution.


As Shiva makes clear, the way this development paradigm is being implemented—through violence against nature and women—threatens survival itself. She focuses on how rural Indian women experience and perceive the causes and effects of ecological destruction, and how they conceive of and initiate processes to stop the destruction and begin regeneration. As the world continues to follow destructive paths of development, Shiva’s Staying Alive is a fiercely relevant book that positions women not as mere survivors of the crisis, but as the source of crucial insights and visions to guide our struggle.

A world-renowned environmental leader and thinker, Vandana Shiva is the author of many books, including Stolen Harvest, Earth Democracy, and Soil Not Oil. She is the founder of Navdanya and a leader in the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) and the Slow Food movement.


About the Author
A world-renowned environmental leader and recipient of the 1993 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award), Shiva has authored several bestselling books, most recently Earth Democracy. Activist and scientist, Shiva leads, with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin, the International Forum on Globalization. Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India's leading physicists.