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AK COVID-Development Studies Intersections

Aalok Khandekar
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I am currently in the process of transitioning my M.A. level course on Science, Technology, and Development with 11 students to virtual instruction. One of my interests in engaging with COVID-19 is to examine how it (should) informs development ideologies and practices. How should students of development studies retool -- conceptually, methodologically, practically -- in wake of the pandemic?

What have you learned about anthropocenics in this place?

AllanaRoss
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My interests center around soil--its preservation, regeneration, and remediation. Living farther up North on the Mississippi in Saint Louis has changed my thinking around the relationships between soil, water, and contamination. Saint Louis and New Orleans are linked not just through their shared river and its attendant water management issues, but through patterns of extraction and contamination. New Orleans may also provide some clues (and potential solutions) to my community's changing relationship with water as we confront climate change. My work as an artist explores our relationship with landscape through tours of contaminated sites and remediative interventions in the landscape, so I approach New Orleans with questions about contaminated environments and water management through landscape design, gardening, and education. 

West Lake Landfill

AllanaRoss
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Most of the citizen-produced data is discounted by officials. There is little authorized data, though data has been collected and can be found with some effort. Dissemination of information is on a grassroots level. PRPs have been engaged in misinformation campaigns as well, creating organizations with misleading names who advertise on the radio and distribute flyers. 

West Lake Landfill

AllanaRoss
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Cancer cluster. Not racialized in this particular area so much as class-based. Bridgeton is a working-class, mostly white suburb. The neighborhood closest to the landfill is a mobile home park. 

West Lake Landfill

AllanaRoss
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Dualistic attitude of humanity as separate from nature led us to believe that we can dump nuclear waste in a floodplain and it will not affect us. Refusal to trust in ecological processes, hubris of engineering, and faith that we are not subject to natural laws because we are above nature led us to use the land in this way. Ecosystems compromised are innumberable because of the nature of the site--its proximity to water and the porous nature of the karst beneath it. This is still not recognized as a fundamental issue as evidenced by the fact that our solutions to these problems are always based on engineering, attempting to outsmart geography, geology, and physics...never a long-term solution or re-thinking land use practices. 

West Lake Landfill

AllanaRoss
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I think the public imagination hasn't arrived at this juncture yet. Priority=removal of hazardous waste. Some academics are imagining futures (the landscape architecture students and professors at Washington University for example). Discursive histories in use= culture of nature. Wildlife preserves on land unfit for habitation.