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Might movement, both forced and voluntary, be a defining characteristic of the anthropocene? If not, where might this quality find a home within the analytic questions? 

In preparation for the field school I am reading Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told. Chapter 1, 'Feet', tells the history of the forced migration of slaves from northern coastal plantation colonies to the south. Men and Women, chained together by iron were forced to walk in coffles to South Carolina or Georgia. As Baptist writes 

Men of the chain couldn’t act as individuals; nor could they act as a collective, except by moving forward in one direction. Even this took some learning. Stumble, and one dragged someone else lurching down by the padlock dangling from his throat. Many bruised legs and bruised tempers later, they would become one long file moving at the same speed, the same rhythm, no longer swinging linked hands in the wrong direction (25).

One of the arguments presented in this book is that American capitalism, as we know it today, would be impossible without the the foundations put in place by slave labor. The early chapters also make clear that forced migration, the movement and redistribution of enslaved persons, allowed for the southern states to expand agricultural production and increase white wealth. This eventual transformation of land and capital was predicated on the movement of peoples from one place to another, and as the passage above suggests, this movement had a rhythm, a timbre, a musical modality. 

I contrast this with Zenia Kish's article "My FEMA People": Hip-hop as disaster recovery in Katrina Diaspora where she argues that the music that emerged following Katrina was the first time American hip-hop engaged with "the thematic of contemporary black migration as a mass phenomenon in any significant way" (674). This article also draws attention to the rhythms of post Katrina life; the call and response of Bounce, the vibrations of trauma. Although lyrical expression proved the most potent way for artists to narrate the impact of environmental change and political neglect, the music itself was borne out of the experience of moving through and with disaster. 

Both writings point to the importance of further exploring the rhythms of mobilities as they relate to environmental transformations. I'm struggling to see where this point of inquiry maps to the analytic questions and may be worth some further exploration. 

Baptist, Edward. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Basic Books. New York. (2014)

Kish, Zenia. “"My FEMA People ": Hip-Hop as Disaster Recovery in the Katrina Diaspora.” American Quarterly. 61, no. 3 (2009): 671–92.

As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

I am currently at the Ecological Society of America annual conference, so I am a bit limited on time to dig into New Orleans. I want to share the link below to the NoLA Urban Water plan. Even the nomenclature of 'urban water' allows us to think a bit deeper about how natural resources take on new characteristics, transformations, and meanings based on the spaces they inhabit. For instance, what does it mean for water to be Urban and how might that designation change how it is governed or interpreted?  

Furthermore, in thinking through the Field School's call to investigate Slavery and Labor, what might be the work of creating specifically urban waters? What forms of scientific knowledge and technological devices make urban water legible?

In asking these questions I'm thinking through a recent presentation I saw by Billy Hall who called attention to the wedding of environment and race in Baltimore City as a mechanism to encourage policies of segregation. I'm inclined, as we move into New Orleans, to think further on this provocation to examine how powerful social perceptions are wedded to techniques of governance to achieve publicly oriented outcomes. 

https://livingwithwater.com/blog/urban_water_plan/about/

Zoning – Percent of Watershed Area
Commercial – 12.7%
Educational - 0.0%
Hospital – 1.3%
Industrial – 45.8%
Office – 1.3%
Open Space – 7.4%
Residential Detached 1.6%
Residential High Density Row House - 20.1%
Residential Mixed Use -1.7%
Residential Multifamily – 0.2%
Residential Low Density Row House – 3.7%
Residential Traditional – 1.1%
No Data – 3%

Land Use Type - % Watershed Area 

Barren Land - 2.4% 
Commercial -7.0% 
Forest - 1.9% 
High Density Residential - 25.9% 
Medium Density Residential - 1.4% 
Low Density Residential - 0% 
Industrial - 42.0% 
Institutional - 7.4% 
Other Developed Land -7.8% 
Transportation - 3.0% 
Wetland - 0% 
Water -1.3% 

Property Ownership – Percent of Watershed Area

City Owned – 12.8%
Private – 37.3%
Right of Way – 23.1%
Rail Roads – 25.4%
State Owned – 2.2%
Federal Owned – 0.5%

The environmental legacies left behind by industrial production are pervasive in the air, the soil, and the water. This elemental elixer surrounds us.

In the field of STS, it is perhaps obvious to suggest that institutions have cultures, norms, standards, and professional ways of being. Yet, what are we to make of the results of industry telling its own past publically. The corporate origin story could be a footnote in Joseph's Campbells work. The allure of the lone individual working tirelessly until an innovation is produced and the market takes over. 

Yet, the Wood River Refinery tells a different story. One about place, about people, about the terrible minutia of life lived within bureaucracy. Yes, the story told is glossy and teleological, but the question emerges. What can be learned about the stories industry tells about itself? What do these artifacts contribute to histories and what weight do we give to these stories within the Anthropocene?

The factory at Wood River is both a place where labor is maximized for profit, but also where worker devote 40 precious hours of their week. Lives persist and even thrive in the factory. Are the stories of these lives at Wood River? 

Pb. Atomic Number 82. 

Divorced from its placement on the periodic table, the element finds itself exposed in a garden, nestled between bioretention and a bus depot. 

Researchers came into to town and made the lead in the soil ledgible and knowable. Soil was tested and this dirt pile was labeled a hot spot. The soil, through analysis in a lab, became suddently differentiatiated from it's environment.  Speculation on the origins of now changed earth ran rampant. Yes, the lead is a chemical legacy, but from where or from whom? Perhaps a long shuttered paint store was dumping its expired wares behind a shop. The chemical legacy proves persistant, but its origin story has degrated with time. Would there be any purpose to tracking the origin of the spot? Are there even actors to hold accountable? Should resources be spent to remediate the small environmental harms when others lurk that are larger in scale in and in affect?

While we ponder, the site is marked by a material more durable than our more human legacies. A concrete marker, or bench (depending on your tolerance for risk), tells a visitor of a history bound the earth. To intervene, the site is covered with dirt, a sign cautions the curious to resist the urge to disturb. To remediate this spot would take time, money, and expertise when all those resources are in short supply. Instead, the area is stewarded to make visible its contents. A delightfully perverse cue to care, inviting disuse and intentional avoidance. Let the earth lie.

I would love to be involved going forward in this project. I plan on attending 4S and could concieveably participate in a presentation on the work in St. Louis. I also can provide administrative support to make that field campus happen. 

Additionally, my colleagues in Baltimore are enthusiastic about bringing a Field Campus to the city. I have a project retreat early next week where I will be presenting on my participation in the campus and some brief ideas for how my research project and the Baltimore Ecosystem Study might be able to be involved.