Search

According to this article by Nicole Westmen (2020), police violence has been tied to the development of numerous underlying conditions that increase the risk of complications from COVID-19. Furthermore, experiences of police brutality have been shown to foment distrust with other institutions, including medical institutions. As a result, contact tracers are experiencing resistance to divulging such important information as whether or not COVID-19 patients attended a protest and who they might have encountered there, for fear of retaliation.

I am wondering how the book's central concept,  "landscapes of power,"  can be used to think about energy and infrastructural projects outside the Navajo context? The four modalities of power that make up this landscape are deeply influenced by your ethnographic data, and throughout the book you emphasize the need to pay attention to the particularities of places and communities. Thus, I would surmise that other landscapes of power would consist of different configurations of modalities of power? If so, how would you advise research into these other landscapes? What would should scholars pay attention to?

What motivated the structure of the book and the use of the interludes in particular? I'd like to learn more about the decision to include them as interludes. What was the idea behind these moments of reflection that both supplement and bring a brief pause to the argument?

How has the book been received among the communities that you work with? What have been the consequences, if any, for those actors and organizations who were featured in your analysis?

I believe one of the most important aspects the book highlights towards the end of Chapter 4, through Chapter, and within the Conclusion is the idea of false environmentalism that emerges from skewed (i.e. false) science reports. Just as much as the business representatives boasting their environmentalism when building the water dam in the Philippines had hired a group of scientists to report the positive effects of carbon emissions (against those of coal), certain energy governance entities focus on similar false science. The book seems to incite a revolution in the way energy is conceptualized and governed as specifically related to the unique psychosocial, social, and traditional attachments populations have to places (Powell, 2018:160; 237; 239). In other words, building energy plants and governing them should not come at the expense of the populations who reside there (i.e. populations should not be relocated).

1. What recommendations do you have for studying vulnerable populations? What should be the focus and of what should one be careful, specifically?

2. What would you say makes the Dine and Navajo communities particularly vulnerable to government exploitation by green jobs and what would you say are some appropriate solutions to the foregoing as particularly related to the concept of the 'double whammy’ or the 'double bind'? 

3. How are, do you believe, households vulnerable to policies surrounding transformations of governance in weatherization and construction practices (if known)?

More than suggestions, I believe this text draws great parallels for discussing the interconnectedness of economic investments, energy activism, what Dr. Powell refers to as 'greening capitalism', and the right to pollute (Powell, 2018). Power is taken out of its rightful host and appropriated by larger institutions of colonization, where Indigenous nations work to produce power but don’t have the grid to use that power and are, thus, dependent of agents of capitalism in energy production (Powell, 2018). We can think about a transfusion of power moving from energy systems that exist today, to distributions of grid vulnerabilities, to the discrepancies in energy production within the Navajo nation and against their minimal consumption (Powell, 2018). In a broader outlook of the transfusion of power in energy systems, politics, and land, we can think about the process as compounding health and social vulnerabilities that affect energy and climate justice. 

"The complex “double bind” facing movements—at the same time that it faces tribal leadership—who because of colonial logics and legacies, must work both within and against the constraints of the state." (Powell, 2018: 137). This quote is particularly significant because it draws upon the previous accounts of the sovereign powers of the Tribes whilst also accounting for their interdependence on outside entities like the DOE, and other Federal institutions. It evokes the still colonial nature of the ruling entities in the United States and a consequent false sense of independence. This false sense of independence can seemingly be drawn from the disconnected and isolated energy systems present in the Navajo Nation, specifically where Dr. Powell highlights the Nation has lacking adequate access to water, electricity, paved roads and other opportunities (Powell, 2018: 115-116). The foregoing speaks quite directly to many in the Navajo Nation being energy vulnerable and lacking access to reliable utilities, day-to-day necessities, which also bridges the connections between energy vulnerability and energy rights.

In New Orleans, African American communities were not only hit hard by Katrina's floods, but also by violent policing during the catastrophe and a disaster "recovery" effort that was fundamentally Anti-Black (closing of publich housing and the privatization of schools and health care). Recovery efforts were not organized along ideals of racial justice that would have addressed gaps in educational and health care resources. Instead, they were imagined along neoliberal principles that systematically excluded the city's Black population. I am interested in looking into how the Anti-Blackness of Katrina "recovery" set the stage for the virulent way COVID 19 is affecting New Orleans' African American communities.

In the US Virgin Islands, Hurricanes Maria and Irma decimated what were already decrepit public school and public health systems. Public schools and hospitals had not been property repaired and remained under-supported as of early March 2020. In places like the Island of St. Croix, residents reported the hospital having only one physicial on staff, and indicated fear of misdiagnosis and prolonged waiting times kept them from seeking health care there. The clientelle of the public health system is predominantly Afro and Hispanic Caribbean. Meanwhile, US "mainlanders" (who are predominantly white) are reported to seek their healthcare off island, something only those with ample financial resources can do. Infection rates and fatality rates for the USVI seem rather low from official reports, but it is important to find out if this is because testing itself is not readily avialable in the territory.

Media coverage from hard-hit cities suggests there is a disproportionate number of arrests and citations related to enforcement of social distancing among racial minorities.

Also, police response seems to have followed very different patterns in the case of "re-open" protests and anti-police brutality protests.