The Air is Not Yours Alone: Feminist Pedagogies, Embodied Resistance, and Ecological Learning in Nguter, Central Java

This article examines the pedagogical and political dimensions of grassroots environmental resistance led by Sarmini and women in Nguter, Sukoharjo, Central Java, responding to toxic emissions from PT RUM, a rayon factory operating since 2017. Positioned within decolonial feminist theory and Dialogical Self Theory (DST), the study addresses a gap in feminist education research by foregrounding rural women’s embodied knowledge as a site of ecological learning and political formation. Using ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories, ritual practices, and digital activism, it analyzes how embodied suffering is transformed into collective care, environmental literacy, and gendered resistance. Sarmini’s leadership enables a relational pedagogy that integrates eco-spiritual ethics, maternal labour, protest choreography, and intergenerational storytelling. These practices function as feminist public pedagogy that contests extractive capitalism while reclaiming ecological sovereignty from the margins. Rather than rejecting state institutions outright, the movement enacts a dialogical decolonial strategy, producing counter-hegemonic educational spaces grounded in ancestral ethics, ecological intimacy, and planetary interdependence. By rereading the contemporary rural women’s struggles, the article contributes to feminist pedagogical theory and environmental justice scholarship. It argues that the Nguter movement constitutes an insurgent curriculum that teaches survival, care, and epistemic justice.