| Much has been written regarding the gendered character of environmental problems, especially regarding countries in the periphery of the capitalist world-system. Forays into industrialised contexts have been rare and confined to capitalist societies. The impact and consequence of the human use of soils in particular have seldom been linked to gender relations, while soil science itself has not been critically examined for its gendered constructs and its contributions to soil degradation. Feminist theories on environmental problems are critically appraised and applied to a context of political economic change in SW Hungary, spanning the entire twentieth century. Integrating qualitative and quantitative methods, including semi-structured interviews and soil sample analysis, the research findings indicate a gender-based differentiation of soil use and impact. Discourse analysis of soil science texts reveals a close relationship between the gendered aspects of coeval political economic regimes and the onto-epistemological and methodological practices of soil scientists. The findings support most of the fundamental contentions raised by feminist environmentalists. Simultaneously, the data expose some theoretical weaknesses in terms of a static treatment of physical phenomena such as soil dynamics and a lack of alternative and concrete feminist propositions regarding the modification of physical science practice. To these ends, the thesis contributes to the development of a feminist environmentalist dialectics that integrates physical and social science methods. |
