Search

Why is the rate of incarceration in Louisiana so high? How do we critique the way prisons are part of infrastructural solutions to anthropocenic instabilities? As Angela Davis writes, “prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.” One way of imagining and building a vision of an anti-carceral future is practiced in the Solitary Gardens project here in New Orleans: 

The Solitary Gardens are constructed from the byproducts of sugarcane, cotton, tobacco and indigo- the largest chattel slave crops- which we grow on-site, exposing the illusion that slavery was abolished in the United States. The Solitary Gardens utilize the tools of prison abolition, permaculture, contemplative practices, and transformative justice to facilitate exchanges between persons subjected to solitary confinement and volunteer proxies on the “outside.” The beds are “gardened” by prisoners, known as Solitary Gardeners, through written exchanges, growing calendars and design templates. As the garden beds mature, the prison architecture is overpowered by plant life, proving that nature—like hope, love, and imagination—will ultimately triumph over the harm humans impose on ourselves and on the planet.

"Nature" here is constructed in a very particularistic way: as a redemptive force to harness in opposition to the wider oppressive system the architecture of a solitary confinement cell is a part of. It takes a lot of intellectual and political work to construct a counter-hegemonic nature, in other words. Gardeners in this setting strive toward a cultivation of relations antithetical to the isolationist, anti-collective sociality prisons (and in general, a society in which prisons are a permanent feature of crisis resolution) foster.

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.

My interest in NOLA anthropocenics pivots on water, and particularly the ways in which capitalist regimes of value and waste specify, appropriate, and/or externalize forms of water. My research is concerned with water crises more generally, and geographically situated in Flint, Michigan. I thought I could best illustrate these interests with a sampling of photographs from a summer visit to NOLA back in 2017. At the time, four major confederate monuments around the city had just been taken down. For supplemental reading, I'm including an essay from political theorist Adolph Reed Jr. (who grew up in NOLA) that meditates on the long anti-racist struggle that led to this possibility, and flags the wider set of interventions that are urgently required to abolish the landscape of white supremacy. 

Flooded street after heavy rains due to failures of city pumping infrastructure.

A headline from the same week in the local press.

Some statues are gone but other monuments remain (this one is annotated).

A Starbucks in Lakeview remembering Katrina--the line signifies the height of the water at the time.

Reading:

Adolph Reed Jr., “Monumental Rubbish” https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/06/25/monumental-rubbish-statues-torn-down-what-next-new-orleans

P.S. In case the photos don't show up in the post I'm attaching them in a PDF document as well! 

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. 

• I was most interested in the time spent at GCADD. I loved learning about that space, it's history, and the participants working to build it up. 
• I came out of the field campus extremely exhaused. Personally I love this feeling. There is something extremely comforting to me about having a brain exploding with new ideas and a body too tired to do anything with it. I do have concerns about how experiences like the field campus, and the exhaustive toll they take, may limit the audience who chooses to participate. I wonder if future field campuses might think a little more about how make the experience more accessible to participants with different physical or mental health needs. 
• While I enjoyed the breadth of perspectives that participated in this experience, I think the campus could benefit with the inclusion of more scientists. At Weldon Spring, I really wish we had an engineer in our group to talk about building a site like that. Even if it might be difficult to get subject area experts, just a few ecologists or engineers in the room could have added depth to our conversations.