Disentangling gender and social difference for just and transformative biocultural approaches

Abstract

Abstract Advancing research and practice that recognize diverse worldviews, knowledge systems, and value orientations is essential to enable transformative change towards sustainability. Biocultural approaches recognize the diverse ways in which people relate to nature, offering a potential pathway for sustainability transformations. However, recent scholarship on biocultural approaches to sustainability has highlighted that social aspects such as equity and justice have not been substantively addressed, whereby gender issues have been overlooked to a great extent. Through qualitative content analysis, this review synthesizes the conceptualizations of gender and social difference within the literature on biocultural approaches to sustainability published in English and Spanish. The biocultural literature predominantly focuses on describing knowledge and management practices, neglecting power and gender relations that affect access and control over resources, and how different axes of social difference matter across different social‐ecological contexts. Overall, we found that gender considerations within the literature reviewed do not build upon feminist and gender theories. Based on these findings, we provide insights into how more nuanced engagements, especially in relation to feminist theories and tools as intersectionality and decolonial perspectives, can allow for more just scholarly efforts to address biocultural relations. Finally, we draw attention to responsible and engaged praxis towards promoting biocultural approaches that include the diverse perspectives of those who can contribute to transformative change, and which prevent the reinforcement of gender‐based power relations. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Keywords

• environmental justice
• feminist approaches
• indigenous and local knowledge
• intersectionality
• non‐humans
• power relations