Prof Bob Pease - Masculinities, Climate Change, and Men’s Relationships with Nature

What do men, gender inequality and the climate crisis have to do with each other? What role might masculinities be playing in contributing to environmental destruction? In the wake of COP26, hear Professor Bob Pease discuss why men need to recreate our relationships with nature in order to tackle global heating in this episode of Now and Men. 

Bob is an Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Social Change at the University of Tasmania in Australia, and an Honorary Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. He is a pro-feminist academic and activist with a background in critical social work, who has been involved in research and campaigning around ending men's violence against women for several decades, and has recently been exploring the gendered dynamics of natural disasters and climate change.

The episode covers the following topics…

• Bob’s reflections on the COP26 UN Climate Conference in Glasgow.
• Why studying men and masculinities can help us to understand the climate and ecological crises, and how a pro-feminist lens offers solutions for tackling them.
• How masculinities can affect and hinder men’s emotional responses to natural disasters, such as the bushfires in Australia.
• Bob’s reflections on his participation in anti-sexist activism and research since the 1970’s, and how he came to be involved in the first place.
• His advice for men interested in getting involved in pro-feminist, anti-violence work today.
• Why men should want to work to undo male privilege.
• What Bob does to maintain a sense of hope in the work he does.

You can find out more about Bob’s work here: https://rmdb.research.utas.edu.au/public/rmdb/q/indiv_detail_warp_trans/19205. 

He has written and edited more than 15 books during his career, the most recent of which include:

• ‘Undoing Privilege: Unearned Advantage and Systemic Injustice in an Unequal World’ – the second edition of which will be published on 16^th December 2021 by Bloomsbury: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/undoing-privilege-9781913441135/
• ‘Post-Anthropocentric Social Work: Critical Posthuman and New Materialist Perspectives’ (Routledge, 2021, co-edited with Prof Vivienne Bozalek): https://www.routledge.com/Post-Anthropocentric-Social-Work-Critical-Posthuman-and-New-Materialist/Bozalek-Pease/p/book/9780367349653
• ‘Facing Patriarchy: From a Violent Gender Order to a Culture of Peace’ (Zed Books, 2019): https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/facing-patriarchy-from-a-violent-gender-order-to-a-culture-of-peace/
• ‘Men, Masculinities and Disaster’ (Routledge, 2016, co-edited with Dr Elaine Enarson):https://www.routledge.com/Men-Masculinities-and-Disaster/Enarson-Pease/p/book/9781138324602
• You can read his article, ‘Recreating Men’s Relationship with Nature: Toward a Profeminist Environmentalism’, in the journal Men and Masculinities here: https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X18805566