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environmental hazards

ghakim
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  • includes severe water pollution -- tied to militarism, including raw sewage and petroleum contamination (incl. in Oahu's sole aquifer) - O'ahu Water Protectors, calls to shut down the Navy's Red Hill facility
  • (combo disaster) potential radioactive contamination and legacies of U.S. nuclear weapon testing -- "The Runit Dome is a relic of America’s atomic past. It’s home to 3 million cubic feet of radioactive waste that was buried there as part of the government’s effort to clean up the mess left from dozens of nuclear tests in the 1940s and ’50s that decimated the atoll. A warming climate and rising sea levels now threaten the integrity of the saucer-shaped structure, which, if it fails, could spill its radioactive contents into the Pacific, a scenario that would threaten both people and the surrounding environment." (source)
  • wildfires, compounded by climate change

intersecting factors

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  • settler colonialism - Haunani-Kay Trask's concept of "settlers of color" and "immigrant hegemony" (The Mauna Kea Syllabus), Kēhaulani Kauanui's article on enduring indigenity/asserting indigenity as a category of analysis
  • military-industrial complex + Hawaii as a linchpin of U.S. military interests - Ke'awalau o Pu'uloa (Pearl Harbor) alone has six superfund sites (Cultural Survival)
  • tourism - functioning hand in hand with militarism. From Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez's book, Securing paradise : tourism and militarism in Hawai'i and the Philippines: "For instance, in both Hawai'i and the Philippines, U.S. military modes of mobility, control, and surveillance enable scenic tourist byways. Past and present U.S. military posts, such as the Clark and Subic Bases and the Pearl Harbor complex, have been reincarnated as destinations for tourists interested in World War II. The history of the U.S. military is foundational to tourist itineraries and imaginations in such sites. At the same time, U.S. military dominance is reinforced by the logics and practices of mobility and consumption underlying modern tourism. Working in tandem, militarism and tourism produce gendered structures of feeling and formations of knowledge. These become routinized into everyday life in Hawai'i and the Philippines, inculcating U.S. imperialism in the Pacific."

University of Hawai'i Resource

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The University of Hawai'i has this incredible resource of resistance movements from 1960-2010. The section on  militarization, for example, includes resources on issues such as the environmental degradation of Kaho'olawe (used as a target range by the U.S. Navy), evictions in the Mākua Valley, and the construction of the H-3 Highway (and how tourism and militarism function together). 

The Glass Plate

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By Scott G. Knowles: As part of the STL Anthropocene Field Campus the research team visited the Wood Refinery Refinery History Museum on March 9, 2019. This museum is located on the grounds of the Wood River Refinery, a Shell Oil refinery built in 1917 and today owned by Phillips 66. The site is Roxana, Illinois, just upriver from Granite City, and just over two miles from the convergence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Sitting on the actual grounds of the refinery, the museum is an invitation to think across the micro, meso, and macro scales of the Quotidian Anthropocene, in terms of geography and also in terms of time. This refinery was built at the crux of the WWI, at a time when United States petrochemical production was entering an intensive phase of production, invention, corporate structuring, and global engagement. The museum is an invitation to think across temporal scales, backwards to the start of the refinery--through the individual lives of the workers and engineers whose lives defined the refinery--and forward to indeterminate points of future memory. This photo captures a key moment in an informal interview we did with one of the history guides. He had worked in the museum for decades before retiring. He explained to us that the museum sits in the former research facility of the refinery--and the glass plat he is showing reveals a beautiful artifact, a photograph made of the complex when it was built. Our guide only showed us this collection of slides after our conversation had advanced, perhaps after he was sure we were truly interested in his story, and the deeper history of the refinery. The pride in the place, the community of workers, and the teaching ability of the museum was manifest. The research team felt impressed, but also concerned about the health impacts (and naturally the environmental impacts as well) of the refinery. There was a mismatch in the scales--the memory of the individual tied to emotions of pride and knowledge of hard work done there--and the Anthropocene, global scale of petrochemicals. How do we resolve this mismatch? The glass plate is somehow a clue.

ghakim ecogovlab annotation 1

ghakim
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I hope to create a community of people working on/driven by similar topics, similar goals and ways of seeing the world. For my dissertation project, to connect more to environmental injustice in wilmington and through this lab to also build long term relationships of collaboration and service with environmental groups + others in Southern California (I’m from Southern California but was never as engaged w/social justice here as i was when i lived in new york, something i’m looking to change). To connect with people across all stages of academia, and experience and be reminded of the reasons why i came to grad school. Also as a push to actually present and write/public my research