Analysis Of The Land Ethic By Aldo Leopold

In the opening lines of “The Land Ethic,” Aldo Leopold describes how “god-like Odysseus returned from the wars in Troy” and “hanged all on one rope a dozen slave girls” (Leopold, 201). These slave girls “were property” and “the disposal of property was then, as now, a matter of expediency, not of right and wrong” (Leopold, 201). Leopold draws upon this example to show the ethical sequence: just as “slave girls” were once merely considered “property,” the land has not yet been included within ethics. Although Leopold’s work largely ignores issues of gender, class, and race, in these words, he begins to explore the notion of a gendered environmental ethic.
Ecofeminism continues this exploration and espouses that there exist integral “connections

For Leopold, skill is an integral part of developing a land ethic. He believes having a skill-based relationship with the land leads to the formation of “an ethic, ecologically” because relating to the land in such a way produces a “limitation on freedom of action” (Leopold, 121, 202). Leopold also interprets buffers that prevent humanity from having a direct and skill-based relationship to the environment as “spiritual dangers” because they prevent people from fostering direct connections to their ecological realities (Leopold, 6). Materialist ecofeminism also ascribes to the view that an understanding of ethics only arrives from an understanding of the materials in which people exist. For materialist ecofeminists, ethics arise from materialist relationships through which the development of a spiritual connection with the natural world is possible because of the skills, knowledge, and agency utilized when interacting with nature. However, materialist ecofeminists expand upon Leopold’s positon as they describe how many women, in particular, have “a special relationship with nature” as “a result of the situation and the specific context women find themselves in, vis-à-vis nature” (Pandey, 347). This context cultivates such a relationship because “much of women’s work…involves considerable skill and knowledge” to manage “their daily household chores and work outside, in conjunction with nature” (Pandey, 350, 347). Thus, materialist ecofeminists built upon Leopold’s position on the role of skill in connecting to the land as they specifically look to women’s relationships with