Community Radio as a Space of Care: An Ecofeminist Perspective on Media Production in Environmental Conflicts

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which community radios can act as spaces and vehicles of care for communities fighting extractivism. I draw from fieldwork research carried out in Argentina, and look at experiences of community radio in four provinces: Catamarca, San Juan, Córdoba, and Neuquén. In this task, I adopt the perspectives of ecofeminism and the ethics of care. An ecofeminist ethic of care, I argue, is a useful framework for looking at community media and environmental conflicts because it allows us to jointly think about care for the environment and relations of care within communities fighting to preserve life. In my analysis, I explore the idea of care in urgent resistance and care as a quality of prefigurative social relations and processes. I identify four different ways in which radios facilitate relations of care, and argue that the underlying logic to the ethic of care enacted through these radios is one of interdependence.