AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Vandana Shiva is an ecological thinker and food justice activist renowned for her incisive critiques of industrial agriculture. Shiva’s vision of the appropriate human-nature relation and the good life, I argue, is often expressed via an informal use of virtue language. Although her work makes no direct reference to virtue ethics, it is deeply suffused with essential components of virtuous appraisal. Shiva’s holistic understanding of ecology and the role of smallholder farmers valorises particular characteristics, behaviours and actions that are specific to the practice of farming. Across her body of work, Shiva provides a thick account of virtuous behaviours and dispositions to realise in the agricultural context. In this talk, I make explicit the agrarian virtue ethics that is arguably implicit in Shiva’s work. I explore particular virtues I deem to best capture her implicit ontology of engaging in a virtuous life.