Vitalidades

Leticia Durand & I have a new piece in a collection called Vitalidades: Etnografías en los límites de lo humano [Vitalities: Ethnographies at the limit of the human] edited by Aníbal G. Arregui & Juan Martín Dabezies. Our chapter, called “Seaweed, monsters and the end of paradise,” is a reflection on the ways sargasso is intervening in the political ecologies of the Riviera Maya.

Ground

I am thrilled to participate in a conversation with colleagues about Shaky Grounds in Ground, an exciting interdisciplinary series on the ground’s many manifestations and meanings hosted by School of Architecture at the University of Southern California.

Join us on 22 April 2021

Border Patrol equipment to drag roads in Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge

My contribution to this conversation will address the unstable grounds of boundary enforcement in the Sonoran Desert, located in what is called southwestern Arizona. I tell a story about the desert soils that constitute the very ground on which boundary enforcement takes place. Soils moderate the capacity of boundary enforcement operations to harness the desert as a natural barrier and instrument of deterrence. Indeed, the daily practices of enforcement alter soil properties, generating effects that exceed human control. At stake in this story is a conflict between ways of worlding: boundary enforcement offers a model of hyper-separation while desert soils invite conviviality and interdependency.

new publication in Spanish | una nueva publicación en español

I am pleased to report the publication of an article in Spanish on posthumanist political ecology, co-authored with Leticia Durand, published in Sociedad y Ambiente out of EcoSur.

Tengo el placer de anunciar la publicación del artículo escrito con Leticia Durand: Sobre la ecología política posthumanista en la revista Sociedad y Ambiente editada por EcoSur.

 

Radio piece: Cosmic Diplomacy

Nicolas Perret and Silvia Ploner produced this fantastic radio piece on the ideas developed in the “Manifesto for Abundant Futures,” a collaborative paper with Rosemary-Claire Collard and Jessica Dempsey. Check out the other pieces in this series of sonic expressions, imaginaries and thought that interrogate relations to nonhumans, nature, bodies, and matter.

Nicolas Perret and Silvia Ploner – Islands Songs – live and work in Berlin and Paris. With a syncretic approach towards sound, they orchestrate the uncertainty of the heard, frame perception as doubt and invite participation in the unknown. With recorded sound material as a base, they undertake long-term projects that result in radio pieces, sound installations, performances, and publications.

The Nature of Border Control

Check out my new piece in NACLA on the ways the border enforcement regime threatens not only humans, but other living beings in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

radio interview

I was invited back to speak with Janice & Cory on their Roundhouse Radio show this afternoon. The topic: Trump’s Executive Order to build a wall on the U.S. southern border. Of course, there already are almost 700 miles of border wall, so we have to presume that Trump aims to extend the wall, though he said that the existing infrastructure is a fence, not a wall. Check it out!

 

For information on the environmental dimensions of the border wall, see the Sierra Club Borderlands Team.

Asylum-Seeking Families’ Experiences of Separation in US detention

I am pleased to share Leigh Barrick’s impressive report on family separation, prepared for the American Immigration Council. Leigh prepared Divided by Detention: Asylum-Seeking Families’ Experiences of Separation while conducting research for her dissertation.

A Manifesto for Abundant Futures

Rosemary, Jessica & I are excited to see Noah Theriault‘s review of our recent paper, A Manifesto for Abundant Futures in the blog, Inhabiting the Anthropocene.

Here is an abstract of our paper:

The concept of the Anthropocene is creating new openings around the question of how humans ought to intervene in the environment. In this article, we address one arena in which the Anthropocene is prompting a sea change: conservation. The path emerging in mainstream conservation is, we argue, neoliberal and postnatural. We propose an alternative path for multispecies abundance. By abundance we mean more diverse and autonomous forms of life and ways of living together. In considering how to enact multispecies worlds, we take inspiration from Indigenous and peasant movements across the globe as well as decolonial and postcolonial scholars. With decolonization as our principal political sensibility, we offer a manifesto for abundance and outline political strategies to reckon with colonial-capitalist ruins, enact pluriversality rather than universality, and recognize animal autonomy. We advance these strategies to support abundant socioecological futures.

Rosemary-Claire Collard, Jessica Dempsey, and Juanita Sundberg. 2015. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Vol. 105, No. 2, pp. 322-330.

Congratulations, Mike Krebs!

I am pleased to announce the release of Mike Krebs’ MA thesis,

Beyond the new Dawes Act: a critique of the First Nations Property Ownership Act. The thesis offers a critique of the First Nations Property Ownership Act (FNPOA), a contemporary proposal to implement private property regimes on First Nations reserves in Canada.

Great work, Mike!

In the news…

My work is featured in this fascinating piece by John Washington about the border wall between the United States and Mexico, published in The Nation.