Our Mother Ocean: Enclosure, Commons, and the Global Fishermen’s Movement

Our Mother Ocean tells the story of the Global Fishermen''s Movement from its beginnings in Southern India to its crucial role in the global movement against neoliberal capitalism. In a time of profound economic and ecological crisis, Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Monica Chilese offer a long-overdue reminder that the ocean is an integral terrain of struggle for the preservation of dignity and life.
The authors draw attention to the polyvalent functions of the ocean as a source of food, medicine, raw materials, biodiversity and culture; and also as a site of human labour, livelihood, and culture threatened by industrial fishing and tourism that distorts landscapes, depletes fish stocks, and destroys natural barriers for the protection against climate disaster. Their perspective is both practical and theoretical, exploring the related issues of globalization, development, work, and food, and illuminates strategic connections between those struggling for social justice in the global North and South.
For humanity and against capital, Dalla Costa and Chilese remind us, it is time for love and respect for our mother Ocean.

Mariaross Dalla Costa is an influential feminist author and activist, whose seminal book The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, coauthored with Selma James, has been translated into six languages. For decades, Dalla Costa has been a central figure in the development of autonomist thought in a wide range of anticapitalist movements.

Monica Chilese is a political sociologist at the University of Padua, where she devotes her study to the question of ecology, giving special attention to the marine environment, the impoverishment of the fisheries, and the analysis of social problems.

Silvia Federici is a long-time feminist, writer, and teacher living in Brooklyn, NY. Her books include Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation and Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Common Notions/PM Press, 2012). Born in Italy, Federici has lectured and taught widely in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the U.S. She has participated in numerous international movements and social struggles, including feminist, education, anti-death penalty, as well as anti-nuclear and anti-globalization movements.