Analyze

Afrofuturism

Misria
In response to

Sylvia Wynter (2003) suggests that our current struggles in Western colonized society regarding racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, ethnicism, climate change, environmental destruction, and the unequal distribution of resources are rooted in what she argues is the overrepresentation of the descriptive statement of Man as human, which only recognizes white, wealthy, able-bodied, heterosexual men as "human." As such, just as I argue Black feminist writers and scholars have drawn on speculative methods and Afrofuturism, the use of twentieth-century technology and speculative imagination to address issues within Black and African diasporic communities (see Dery & Dery, 1994), to insist on and explore the full humanity of Black girls, women, and femmes, so too have Black and African diasporic scholars called on Afrofuturism to imagine new ways technology and traditional knowledge practices can address environmental injustice. Suékama (2018) argues that as a form of resistant knowledge building and theorizing, an Afrofuturist approach to environmentalism “integrates speculation with the ecological and scientific, and the spiritual or metaphysical'' to make our environmental justice less European, male, human, (and I would add capitalist) centered. Thus, an Afrofuturist approach to environmental injustice asks us to think about our collective struggle for environmental justice as a part of and connected to other forms of systemic oppression rooted in the rejection of African diasporic and Indigenous people and their knowledge practices through the overrepresentation of Man as human in Western society. In this way, a speculative and Afrofuturist approach to environmental injustice draws on African diasporic knowledge practices in conjunction with modern and traditional technologies to imagine new solutions to environmental injustice that center the needs, values, and traditional practices of African diasporic people.

Peterson-Salahuddin, Chelsea. 2023. "An Afrofuturist Approach to Unsettling Environmental injustice." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

TebbeM Desert StoryMaps Question 5

mtebbe
Annotation of
In response to
  • In 2003, the Imperial Irrigation District signed the Quantification Settlement Agreement, in which they transferred the water from agricultural runoff that formerly fed the Salton Sea to supply municipalities in Southern California. The agreement kept water flowing into the lake until 2018 in order to give time to come up with ways to mitigate environmental effects of the lake's desiccation. These solutions have not materialized.
  • UCR scientists are collecting dust for microbial analysis

TebbeM Desert StoryMaps Question 2

mtebbe
Annotation of
In response to
  • Increased salinity
    • Waterfowl dieoffs
  • Desiccation produces toxic dust that blows
    • Childhood asthma and other respiratory conditions
    • 15% of Imperial County residents have asthma
    • wind-blown dust can act as a pathway for microbes, fungi, and viruses to enter lungs by attaching to dust particles
  • Municipal sewage from Mexicali
  • Waste from prisons

TebbeM Desert StoryMaps Question 5.2

mtebbe
Annotation of
In response to

The "Disparities in Environmental Exposures and Health Impacts" project has four goals:

  1. To establish a community advisory board to provide local stakeholder input;
  2. To identify spatial patterns and trends in population exposure and in pollutant transport;
  3. To distribute particle collectors at sites that represent the range of sources of particulate matter and to identify the elemental and biological composition of particles;
  4. To use environmental chamber exposure studies to develop a protocol for monitoring pulmonary inflammation impacts of aerosol particulates identified from the particle collectors.

TebbeM Desert StoryMaps Question 4

mtebbe
Annotation of
In response to
  • Investors who left in the first half of the 20th century
  • Residents who remained in the area (highly Latinx)
    • Labor exploitation, especially of immigrants through programs like the Bracero program
  • Indigenous groups - especially the Torres Martinez, 40% of whose land is underneath the Salton Sea
  • Agriculture
    • Historically not identified as an unwanted land use, which allowed farmers to get away with more than other industries