Exploring Ecological Masculinities and Degrowth (Pt 1): Pedagogies and Communities of Praxis

Introduction

Over the past couple years, I’ve spent a good deal of time exploring and experimenting with different pedagogies at the intersection of degrowth, masculinities and ecological futures. Across Zagreb, Athens, Cali, Pontevedra and Oslo, I designed and facilitated workshops seeking to answer the question: what do socio-ecological transformations demand of men and masculinity? There is no doubt that systemic change must happen at the level of infrastructures, policies and technologies currently built for an ecocidal imperialist growth machine. At the same time, such changes must also happen on the level of subjectivities. It’s taken some time to realise this when it comes to the hegemony of growth, even more so when it comes to hegemonic masculinity, which is so embedded, implicit, invisibly assumed and conspicuously absent that it permeates all spheres of emancipatory action – from radical scholarship to activist organising. 

This was the gist of my first incursion into questioning degrowth from a critical men and masculinities studies perspective – and what underpins my foray into men’s workshops. Given the hegemony of the gender order constitutes the paradigm men are embedded in, the work of visibilising and transforming it might well require other methods engaging men in understanding the inner workings of hegemonic masculinity, how they are affected and privileged by it, and building pathways for change. The purpose of this article is to outline various examples of practical workshops that explore masculinities (from the hegemonic to the non-hegemonic and ecological) using embodied learning methodologies inspired by Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects, Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and profeminist men’s work. 

Work that specifically addresses the process of ecologising masculinities, bringing non-hegemonic masculinities into conversation with environmentalism, is relatively new. Academic writings started as early as 1990 with Raewyn Connell’s life histories of six men environmental activists in Australia, though it would take another two decades for the topic to return to scholarly attention – notably via the work of Richard Twine, Geta Gaard and Sherilyn MacGregor all of whom called for the need to reframe how men, masculinities and nature relate to one another and the potential to challenge hegemonic masculinity. 

Martin Hultman and Paul Pulé then popularised the concept of Ecological Masculinities giving it a theoretical framing and a roadmap for how men could embark upon a path towards ecologisation. Grounded in critical studies of men and masculinities, deep ecology, ecofeminism and feminist care theory, they proposed that the process of ecological masculinisation pass through four stages: from awareness of an issue, to  deconstructing its critical elements, thinking of its impacts on oneself and others and how one might amend one’s behaviour, and finally modifying one’s behaviour in line with the previous three precepts (see Figure 1). 

Figure 1: The ADAM-n model - five precepts to facilitate masculine ecologisation (Hultman and Pulé, 2018, p.232) 

This has recently been taken up by different groups and organisations working with boys and men, prototyping pedagogies in line with ecological masculinisation. The Swedish feminist non-profit organisation MÄN was one of the first to do so, creating workshop guides (available here) and running workshops with groups of men in Sweden (see Hedenqvist and Hedenqvist et al. for reflections on these workshops).  A list of like-minded organisations running such workshops can be found at the end of this article. Now however, I turn to the ways in which I have implemented some of this in my own work. 

Coming from the field of degrowth, which I studied for my masters in Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, I was keenly aware of the need for critical analyses when discussing environmental sustainability and the ecological crisis. The fields of ecofeminism, feminist political ecology and degrowth highlight the pitfalls of notions such as ‘sustainable development’ and ‘green growth’ while arguing for much stronger definitions of sustainability grounded in ecological limits, democratic decision-making in production and consumption and overcoming gendered patterns of inequality and domination.  

Having made a documentary as my final masters project, Fairytales of Growth, which outlined the roots and ideas of degrowth for a popular audience, I began questioning the role of feminist and ecofeminist thought within the degrowth movement. In particular, reflecting on the lack of such feminist analysis in male academic output (including my own film), I wrote a first paper questioning this lack of engagement from the perspective of critical studies of men and masculinities, gender and environment studies and ecological masculinities (Sustainable Masculinities and Degrowth. Pathways to Feminist Post-Growth Societies).  

If degrowth embraced various strands of feminism in theory, the fact that more male academics were not foregrounding it more prominently in their work suggested that, whether consciously or not, fully claiming eco/feminism entailed a threat to hegemonic masculinity. 

It has taken some time to realize and expose the fact that we are imbued in a society based on the hegemony of growth, which has justified and upheld itself rendering “the underlying social and power relations as natural, inevitable, and timeless” (Schmelzer, 2016, p. 351). Likewise, hegemonic masculinity is so embedded, implicit, invisibly assumed and conspicuously absent that it permeates all spheres of emancipatory action – from radical scholarship, to activist organising. (Smith Khanna, 2021, p.34)

Given the hegemony of the gender order constitutes the paradigm men are embedded in, the work of visibilising and transforming it (in Hultman and Pulé’s terminology, moving from awareness to modification) might well require moving beyond rationality in order to shift paradigm. Or at least complement theoretical production with other methods engaging men in understanding the inner workings of hegemonic masculinity, how they are affected by it, and building pathways for change. This was very much the motivation for conducting hands-on workshops on masculinities, bringing together the critical ecological perspectives of degrowth with those of ecofeminism and critical studies on men and masculinities (CSMM) and drawing on the practical experience of designing and facilitating alternative curricula for young adults back when I was teaching at Brockwood Park School. 

The following workshops were inspired by a variety of work developed by NGOs and other organisations in Europe, North America and Colombia, by techniques found in the work of Paolo Freire and Joanna Macy, as well as personal inventions more often than not elaborated with my partner and great facilitator, Valentina Lomanto Perdomo. Below I will give an outline of three different types of workshops, sharing some reflections on what can be learnt from them, how they can be amended, what they have inspired in participants and in myself… A subsequent post will provide a more detailed outline of each workshop for those interested in learning about them/replicating them. 

Pedagogies for Ecological Masculinities and Degrowth – some reflections on practice 

Body Mapping Hegemonic Masculinity 

The first workshop is a body-mapping workshop whose objective is to uncover the physical, emotional and aesthetic characteristics of hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity, and to reflect with the participants on their relationship towards this figure (similarities, distance, empathy, conflict etc…) and the relationship this figure has towards other humans and non-humans. The main activity here is drawing  a life-size body map of a hegemonic man (and emphasised woman) with all his physical, emotional and aesthetic characteristics, to then use this as a basis for reflection and discussion, leading to the facilitator sharing some theory on hegemonic masculinity/emphasised femininity, what gets invisibilised by such hegemony, what gets hurt or destroyed by it etc… 

This workshop is based on a workshop created as part of the Leading for Peace Program in Colombia¹ and amended to include human more-than-human relations, as well as other variations I will explain below. I have run it in several very different contexts and settings, from a group of urban gardeners in Cali, Colombia, to degrowth activists and academics at international conferences in Zagreb and Oslo, and European youth organisers and activists joining Greek NGO InterAlia’s winter schools in Athens. 

The principle variations on the basic workshop structure outlined above are: 

• Body mapping only hegemonic masculinity vs Body mapping both hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity 

• Replacing movement/icebreaker and table of sex/gender/sexual orientation with another activity (explanation below)

• Gearing the theorisation towards structures and theorising change 

On the first variation, when working with mixed groups it seems to make sense to run with body maps of both hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity with men/male non-binary doing the former, women/female non binary doing the latter - and gender non-conforming selecting one of their choice. One of the advantages of this is that men/women/non-binary are able to listen and hear the real feelings and experiences of different gendered positionalities in their own gendered skins. 

Contrasting these experiences is often quite valuable in highlighting omissions: for instance, with the group in Athens which was divided by sex, several of the women had located feelings of responsibility within the heart area of their body-map, whereas for men the same feelings of responsibility were located in the head (often associated with money and income). Likewise, whereas men had drawn many aesthetic characteristics of the hegemonic man they felt they needed to live up to (but not problematised so much), many of the women had depicted contradictory aesthetic characteristics (be smart but not too smart, be thin but not too thin and also be curvy, be sexy and available but not a slut etc…) highlighting the far more restricted grounds upon which they walk as compared to men. The point here is not to essentialise men and women but to see how gendered expectations differ and what these give rise to. 

On the other hand, it was my experience in both Athens and Cali that, when presenting their work and speaking in the large group, men tended to speak less than women. This could possibly reflect the different experiences that women have in thinking and speaking about such topics with much more frequency than men, and/or that men shy away from such discussions to an even greater extent when women are present. This was also the case in the Zagreb workshop when the body mapping exercise was done with mixed groups but focused solely on mapping hegemonic masculinity.²

What this suggested was that working with a men-only group would also be beneficial in allowing fears, doubts and questions to arise that might otherwise be shied away from – and something we did the following year for the Visualisation of Gender in Degrowth Futures workshop (see below). 

The second variation regards two short activities that precede the body-mapping activity. In the original workshop guidelines the workshop starts with an ice-breaker activity which asks the participants to play a game they used to play in the playground during break (which ever that is) and reflect on whether games were gendered or not. The following activity then presents a tripart table of sex/gender/sexual orientation, asking the participants to place various post-its where they think they belong on the table according to category (e.g. ‘man’ ‘heterosexual’ ‘pansexual’ ‘non-binary’ ‘female’ etc). More details can be found in the second part of this article below. 

The idea of replacing the movement/icebreaker and table of sex/gender/sexual orientation with another activity has to do with fitting the workshop to the specific contexts the workshop is given in. As a standalone workshop given with the purpose of exploring gender relations and hegemonic masculinity the icebreaker and table of sex/gender/sexual orientation are well suited to the task, especially if the participants are not so familiar with gender studies. With other groups however, more ground could potentially be covered. 

This was the case with the workshop in Athens, which given as part of a winter school whose theme was uncovering layers of violence. Here the movement/icebreaker activity involved three different groups playing a game in which one group had a huge disadvantage due to the way the game was set up (finding hidden pieces of felt which were coloured so as to match the environment) so as to bring up the notion of unfair, undue advantage. The table of sex/gender/sexual orientation was replaced with an Image Theatre exercise, to reflect on different forms of violence, and how they get represented, how they are felt in the body, which emotions come up etc…  Ending on their images of violence, Galtung’s triangle of violence was then presented as one possible way to view violence, to help reflect on the difficulty of representing invisible violences such as institutional or cultural violence. 

Having completed the above two exercises and the body mapping, an invitation was open to reflect on different expressions of privilege (first exercise) and violence (second exercise) as evidenced from the body mapping presentations (third exercise). The objective here is to perceive interlinkages between the personal (e.g. embodiment of hegemonic masculinity) and the structural (e.g. how this is embedded in invisiblised mechanisms of violence) so as to not remain in the realm of individual change only (e.g. stress how the unpaid resources extracted from nature, and unpaid care work from women uphold entire societies in which mainly men benefit most from these unjust subsidies). 

This leads us to the final variation, gearing the theorisation towards structures and theorising change. Again this is very much context dependent, especially with regards to the participants group make-up. For instance, the workshop in Cali was with a tightly knit group of urban gardeners/activists who worked together on a daily basis. For them (and particularly the women) it was key to collectively build strategies for how the work they had just done could be followed up on: 

Otherwise what often happens is that we finish the workshop, everyone saying how interesting it was, then go home and nothing changes. (female participant, Cali, January 2023) 

In such cases, the stress could potentially be placed on capacity-building for the group (in the form of opening a space to build agreements and follow-up actions) instead of interlinking hegemonic masculine subjectivities with broader structures of oppression. Ideally both would take place, though time remains an important constraint to consider.³  In Oslo, emphasis was placed on relating the body maps of hegemonic masculinity to Hultman and Pulé’s industrial/breadwinning, ecomodern and ecological masculinities. Given these had been presented to the participants in a previous exercise (see Prototyping Affective Pedagogies for Degrowth Masculinities below) this was a natural direction to take, though it could equally be done as a more theoretical addition to conclude the body mapping exercise, introducing linkages between industrial/breadwinning and ecomodern masculinities with the growth imperative while positioning ecological masculinities as potential pathways forwards in a degrowth-inspired world.   

In all instances of this workshop however, I have found that there is a distinct lack of time to pursue and collectively theorise pathways forwards. Given the goal is to understand hegemonic masculinity this is perhaps understandable, yet the second step is just as important to embark upon. Multiple workshop slots notwithstanding other formats might lend themselves to both a critical understanding of hegemonic masculinities and the visualisation of pathways forwards. Such was the thinking behind the design for the next workshop. 

Visualisation of Gender in Degrowth Futures 

This workshop was designed and facilitated by Christos Zografos, Tadeas Zdarsky and myself, for the International Degrowth Conference in Pontevedra, 2024. I was particularly interested in building upon the body mapping workshops and its perceived shortcomings when it came to strategising for change, as well as working with an all-men/non binary male identifying group. 30 or so people identifying as men/male non-binary attended the 90min workshop and stayed on an additional hour. 

Opening with a presentation outlining industrial/breadwinner, ecomodern and ecological masculinities and their relation with degrowth, the workshop then turned to a visualisation activity in which the men/non-binary males were invited to close their eyes and imagine what masculinity and gender could look like in a utopian degrowth future. 

Inspired by the powerful technique of visualisation used in men’s work to help men open up to more vulnerable parts of themselves,⁴ I wrote a script that would take the men on a journey to rediscover parts of their inner selves, possible hurts and misgivings that could be used as a basis for reparation and re-imagining masculinities in the present and future (script available upon request, just email me). The first section of the visualisation took the participants to meet their childhood self, a three-four year old full of delight and innocence. They spend some quality time together and before leaving the child shares with their elder self what their deepest need or desire is. They then part ways, the participants ‘return’ to the room and write down what this need or desire was.

The second section sees the participants return to meet this child who has now grown up into a young adult in a degrowth-inspired utopia.⁵ Observing what this world looks and feels like, they were asked to imagine how men have changed in this world and moved away from the hegemonic model: what is it they allow themselves to do when feeling like whole, integral beings? What is it they no longer do, in this degrowth world? Before leaving, they then asked the young adult how they managed to do it: What had to change so that all these men could be so different? The answers to these were also written down on paper upon ‘returning’ to the room. Participants then shared their answers in small groups, before meeting up in a bigger group discussion to share visions for gender in degrowth futures and discuss how we might get from here to there. 

The visualisation went well insofar as enough time was given to the participants to drop into the activity, sense that they were really meeting their childhood self and engaging with them. They were carefully brought in and out of this fictitious world, though in the second section the degrowth elements of this utopia were at times difficult to imagine for some, with the participants more easily focused on their relation to the boy/young adult and how they were acting/thinking/feeling. In the small group discussions men opened up and shared feelings touching upon topics such as love and safety – which recurred in the big group discussion. Both of these spaces were considered to be safe and well-held insofar as the participants were able to express themselves from a place of honesty and vulnerability (to the extent that the majority of them had only just met one another in the workshop itself). The connections between these masculine subjectivities and the degrowth context in which the visualisation tried to embed them were not explicitly spoken of in either small nor big group discussions. 

Though I made an attempt to steer the big group discussion towards discussing strategy and such interlinkages, this did not get picked up on. It would seem that there is already a lot to process on the individual level, requiring more time before being able to shift the discussion towards more abstract theorising about strategies for masculinities and degrowth. This is certainly the case in the context of a one-off workshop and with a group who has little to no prior experience with such work.

Here I find myself coming up against the same limitation then that was felt with the previous body-mapping workshops – that we cannot get from processing individual experiences to collectively strategising broader changes in the gender order (let alone in dialogue with radical ecological transformations akin to degrowth etc). In both cases, the dual objective of personal understanding and collective strategising would best be served by a sequence of workshops. A first could begin with the personal via methods such as visualisation, where trust and bonds amongst participants are forged. A second workshop could then focus on introducing theory and open the space for a discussion around strategies for transformation aimed at achieving particular outcomes or developing specific action points linking individual change to structural change. 

A final point raised by a transgender man once the workshop had ended reflected on the use of the term ‘boy’ during the meeting with one’s inner child during the visualisation. Noting the differences within the trans community with regards to how they relate to their gender identities as children, he considered himself to have transitioned from a girl to a boy – therefore his three year old self was in fact a girl. The use of the term ‘boy’ thus created a dissonance for him. While discussing it together and considering if the word ‘boy’ were replaced by ‘child’ he was unsure whether this would have made a difference for him however. My thoughts on this now are that facilitators should specify that the visualisation includes a meeting with oneself as a child, and use that term during the visualisation. This opens a related question regarding how the young adult is referred to in the second part of the visualisation. I used gendered language here given the workshop focused on masculinities though we could also imagine using non-gendered terminology so as to leave open the question as to how gender is configured (and whether it exists at all) in degrowth futures.  

Prototyping Affective Pedagogies - Reflections

This was a very experimental workshop that Martin Hultman and I designed in an attempt to give participants an idea of the various embodied and affective methodologies we have used in different masculinities work. The 90min workshop was given during the International Degrowth Conference in Oslo 2025 with 15 participants in attendance of which seven identified as male or men, two as non-binary, and four as female or women. The workshop ran through shortened versions of workshops given in the past by Martin and I, starting with a card game called ‘Norms in the Climate Crisis’ introducing participants to the language and concepts of industrial/breadwinner, ecomodern and ecological masculinities.  

This was followed by a shortened version of the body mapping exercise, with little time to share in a big group but instead only amongst members of the same body-map. The participants were then invited to participate in a ‘flow feelers’ activity, developed for an ecofeminist reading group/workshop with men in a small town in Sweden on a search for a culverted brook. This particular activity involved standing in a line, placing a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them and imagining the culverted book running beneath them, swaying a little, mimicking as it were the ebb and flow of the river. 

The workshop ended with a Big Room discussion reflecting on affective pedagogies and ecological masculinities as effective tools for social degrowth transformation. A short survey was distributed to them afterwards (completed by 13 participants) asking for background interests and general as well as specific feedback relating to the format and to the mixed gendered makeup of the group. The latter question was aimed at understanding how people from different gender identities perceive working on the subject of masculinities within a mixed or a non-mixed group:

Question: These workshops have also been given to non-mixed groups (identifying as men or non-binary males) - how do you think the mix of genders affected the process? Did you benefit from it, would you have preferred a non-mix group? (If so, why?) 

Whereas all the women/female/female non-binary participants replied that they greatly benefited from the mixed format, amongst the men/male participants there was more nuance: all valued the mixed format, two were unsure if a non-mixed group would have been any different (one of whom was open to finding out) four felt that non-mixed groups would also beneficial, and one felt that “a non-mixed group is always better for more targeted and vulnerable conversations around gender/femininities/masculinities”. 

The responses from women/female participants could be understood as being constrained by the formulation of the question itself given it was aimed at evaluating one’s individual experience – another formulation could ask whether non-mixed groups could benefit men and males in processing and challenging hegemonic masculinities and imagining other (ecological) masculinities for themselves and others.   

Patterns found among the men/male/non-binary male responses – though eight is too small a sample to draw meaningful conclusions from –  emerge along axes of intersectionality. Of the four who spoke about the importance of having both mixed and non-mixed groups and the one curious to know how a non-mixed group might differ, all identified as white, three as heterosexual, one heteroflexible and one bisexual. The man who was unsure whether a non-mixed group would be any different identified as african/arab and heterosexual. The only one not to mention a preference for a non-mixed group at all identified as black and gay. Finally, the male who advocated for a non-mixed group being better for more targeted and vulnerable conversations identified as non-binary and queer. 

That the only two men of colour are those who least supported the idea of a non-mixed group is reflective of broader troublesome patterns within masculinities work, which has traditionally attracted far more white men than people of colour.  

Cis men need to hear/respect/celebrate trans voices (anonymous, 35, black, gay, cis man)  

This raises an important question regarding future workshops, as I had leaned more and more towards working with non-mixed groups, very much in agreement with the opinion that “a non-mixed group is always better for more targeted and vulnerable conversations around gender/femininities/masculinities”. I now question this assumption. Who do such non-mixed workshops actually benefit? What exactly is gained and what is lost from not hearing different voices? 

Thinking back to the non-mixed visioning workshop held in Pontevedra, a diversity of perspectives were present, including cis men, trans men and non-binary males with a variety of sexual orientations. Yet despite the overwhelming positive feedback received from the participants, who really valued the intimate space held for them to share amongst themselves, to my knowledge I cannot recall any persons of colour attending the workshop.⁶ 

Question: What did you get out of the workshop? Learnings/experiences/emotions

Collaboration as a solution. Frustration around the lack of mentions to race or sexual orientation (anonymous, 35, black, gay, cis man) 

The above comment speaks, I think, directly to the question of who non-mixed workshops benefit and why that is. As a heterosexual white-appearing cis man, my work is biased towards my own experience and interpretation of men and masculinities, tailoring workshops for men/males in my own image as it were. Consciously or not, this is what happens, and I take heed of this feedback to revise such assumptions and inner mechanics that shape the drives and desires behind my work. It makes me wonder whether the process of ecological masculinisation, or flourishing degrowth masculinities, is so stifled precisely because of this. Some of the core tenets of hegemonic, industrial/breadwinner and ecomodern masculinities rest upon heterosexuality, whiteness, higher education and class. Not to say that answers cannot come from within, but surely more is to be found without. 

I think as diverse a group as possible makes human connection better & more humane. We are all highly educated though, all preaching to the same choir. So diversity across class/professions/education/location etc… can also be tried out (anonymous, 40, white, cis woman)

Final remarks 

The major limitations of this work have no doubt been time constraints. Much groundwork needs to be done with participants prior to being able to get into the important task of strategising change on a broader level. Even when this was specifically put forward as an objective of the workshop (as in the case of the visioning workshop), it was difficult to steer the discussion towards strategy. As remarked earlier, this might also have to do with the makeup of the group itself, the workshop with the community of urban gardeners in Cali being the only one to mention following up on the work in view of implementing actual changes in their community. Christos Zografos and I have planned a strategising workshop for the Political Ecology Network Conference in June 2026 and we shall see whether or not it will succeed amongst a group of academics who most probably do not know each other.  

It seems clear to me however that there is only so much one can do with a workshop that is 60-90min long. A sequence of workshops is much better suited to the task of ecologising masculinities, as proposed by the Swedish feminist organisation MÄN who have developed the workshop material Men in the Climate Crisis that starts with a five-session workshop focused solely on fostering discussions and reflections on masculinity amongst men. Only once these five sessions are completed, creating a common ground of trust and understanding of patriarchal norms and how they are experienced by participants, does the workshop move to the following four sessions focusing on masculinity and the climate crisis, including developing strategies and action points for gender equality for a sustainable future.

The other important question raised has to do with who these workshops are for. My initial feeling that they were for men is no longer as clear as it once was. Not only do mixed groups work well and offer up new insights, they might also create a more inviting space for other masculinities that are not white, heterosexual and privileged to enter. Whether or not this leads to the latter men to become quieter in such workshops and shy from engagement, what is certain is that a much broader diversity of masculinities and other gender identities is necessary to include and have presence in the work of ecologising masculinities. 

This is of course a sort of balancing act, as such broad invitations might also put off those men who are more in need of revising their own masculinity. For instance, it did not escape my attention that, as I introduced the body mapping workshop to the urban gardeners in Cali, several of the men dropped out of the circle as I spoke, to return to their work in the garden. Who were those men, and what might they have brought to the workshop and taken away from it had they participated in it? 

Ultimately it is surely a multiplicity of approaches that is best suited to the task, which can be rendered more potent if the work can be undertaken with a pre-existing community and continuously, lasting over several sessions at the very least. One could imagine such work being conducted in schools, environmental groups, neighbourhood associations, within NGOs, the public sector and perhaps even the private sector… If the communities or groups are homogeneous, one could also envisage bringing in different voices and lived experiences via interventions such as living libraries or innovations such as The Men’s Story Project.

¹ Laboratorios creativos de hombres y masculinidades en el Pacífico colombiano, se realizó como parte de las actividades del Programa Liderando por la Paz, apoyado por el Gobierno de Canadá y PLAN Internacional Canadá e implementado en Colombia en los municipios de Buenaventura, Quibdó y Tumaco por Fundación PLAN en asocio con la Unidad para la Atención y Reparación Integral de las Víctimas (UARIV), durante el periodo 2016 – 2021.

² Co-facilitated by two colleagues Christos Zografos and Tadeas Zdarsky

³ The timings of the workshops were as follows: Cali (120min), Zagreb (90min), Athens (120min), Oslo (90min).

⁴ Such visualisations are commonplace amongst Mythopoetic men’s work, which has been heavily criticised for upholding binary gender norms and roles and eschewing discussions of gender inequality, patriarchal structures and relations of power and domination. My intention here was to explore the potential of such methods applied in a context in which gendered norms and power relations are questioned and criticised.

⁵ The original script has an intermediary stage when they meet themselves as a pre-teen but was cut out here due to time constraints

⁶ It bears mentioning that both workshops took place at very similar conferences uniting the international community of degrowth with that of ecological economics, though in Pontevedra it was the European Society for Ecological Economics whereas in Oslo it was the International Society for Ecological Economics. Whether or not the international character of the latter played a part in drawing more persons of colour to the workshop is an open question. Both degrowth and ecological economics communities are also highly academic and white.

References

Twine, R (1997) ‘Ecofem Listserv: Where are all the ecomasculinists?’ Cited in Hultman and Pulé, pp.201-211

Twine, R. (2001). Ma(r)king Essence-Ecofeminism and Embodiment. Ethics and the Environment, 6, No. 2, 31–58. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/40339012

Gaard, G. (2014). Toward New EcoMasculinities, EcoGenders, and EcoSexualities. In C. J. Adams & L. Gruen (Eds.), Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth (pp. 225-239). Bloomsbury Publishing. 

MacGregor, S., & Seymour, N. (Eds.). (2017). Men and Nature. Hegemonic Masculinities and Environmental Change. RCC Perspectives. 

Hultman, M., & Pulé, P. M. (2018). Ecological Masculinities. Theoretical Foundations and Practical Guidance. Routledge. 

Hedenqvist, R. (2020) Exploring Ecological Masculinities Praxes: A Qualitative Study of

Global Northern Men Who Have Participated in Pro-Feminist and Pro-Environmental

Reflective Groups. Master’s Thesis. Stockholm University. Available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SYk4akHlZsLj5Qx9WepOl2G658vEvuQY/view?fbclid=IwAR32wqJnPI8YAS8_sHlLjsZD2VJVzaGhipiMmyhPPydRWNQvzN9hpq_u1-w

Hedenqvist, R., Pulé, P. M., Vetterfalk, V., & Hultman, M. (2021). When gender equality and Earth care meet: Ecological masculinities in practice. In G. L. Magnusdottir & A. Kronsell (Eds.), Gender, Intersectionality and Climate Institutions in Industrialised States (pp. 207-225). Routledge. 

Connell, R. W. (1990). A whole new world: Remaking masculinity in the context of the environmental movement. Gender & Society, 4, 452–478. 

Smith Khanna, P. (2021). Sustainable Masculinities and Degrowth. Pathways to Feminist Post-Growth Societies. Institute for Political Ecology. 

Smith Khanna, P. (2025). Overcoming Hegemonic Masculinity for Emancipatory Degrowth Futures. In Post-Growth Future(s): New Voices, Novel Visions (pp. 17-24). Institute for Political Ecology. 

Schmelzer, M. (2016). The Hegemony of Growth. Cambridge University Press.

Hedenqvist, R., Pulé, P. M., Vetterfalk, V., & Hultman, M. (2021). When gender equality and Earth care meet: Ecological masculinities in practice. In G. L. Magnusdottir & A. Kronsell (Eds.), Gender, Intersectionality and Climate Institutions in Industrialised States (pp. 207-225). Routledge.