Archive
Urban Political Ecology III: The Gendered and Queer Century
Here is my third and final report on urban political ecology (UPE) in Progress in Human Geography. A shout out to Noel Castree for excellent editorial guidance on the lot of these.
Abstract:
Given the ongoing importance of nature in the city, better grappling with the gendering and queering of urban political ecology offers important insights that collectively provides important political possibilities. The cross-currents of feminist political ecology, queer ecology, queer urbanism and more general contributions to feminist urban geography create critical opportunities to expand UPE’s horizons toward more egalitarian and praxis-centered prospects. These intellectual threads in conversation with the broader Marxist roots of UPE, and other second-generation variants, including what I have previously called abolition ecology, combine to at once show the ongoing promises of heterodox UPE and at the same time contribute more broadly beyond the realm of UPE.
Neil Smith’s Long Revolutionary Imperative
Happy to announce that we published the special collection of papers about the work of Neil Smith as both an free e-book and a special issue of Antipode:
Papers in the special collection were written by a fantastic group of scholars, including Andrew Ross, Timothy Brennan, Noel Castree, Susan W.S. Millar, Don Mitchell, John Morrissey, Tom Slater, John Paul Jones III, Helga Leitner, Sallie A. Marston, Eric Sheppard, Setha Low, Patrick Bond and Greg Ruiters.
We, the editors, wrote this introductory essay, based on some of Neil’s archival letters that Don Mitchell allowed us temporary access to. I’d urge folks to take a closer look at the cover art for the collection which is a portrait of Neil that Deb Cowen painted and allowed us to use.
Abstract: Whether writing about gentrification or nature, the production of space or the politics of scale, uneven development or public space, globalization or revolution, the geographer Neil Smith was nothing if not provocative. Neither Festschrift nor hagiography, this special issue of Antipode critically engages Smith’s work—not to unpick the rich tapestry, but to draw the threads out and spin them on in new directions. Consisting of newly commissioned essays by comrades from across the human sciences, it considers the entire range of Smith’s oeuvre. This paper introduces the essays by offering not only some thoughts about Smith’s intellectual contributions generally, but also new insight into the role he played in Antipode.
Toward an Abolition Ecology
This is one of my earliest essays on what is much larger project on abolition ecology. I was happy to have been asked to participate on the Editorial Review Board of the new Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics which quickly became a logical home for this essay which will be in the inaugural issue:
“Abolitionist politics continue to evolve in response to the ways racial capitalism exploits, oppresses and commits violence through uneven racial development. As environmental relations have always been part of this, in this short essay, Nik Heynen starts to grapple with what an ‘abolition ecology’ would look like.”
Solidarity in Climate/Immigrant Justice Direct Action: Lessons from movements in the U.S. South
Happy to have published this paper in IJURR with two wicked smart folks. Given we all continue to do work within these communities hoping for more work like this down the road.
Abstract
In October of 2012, youth organizers from the immigrant justice and climate change resistance movements in the southeastern US metropolitan region of Atlanta, Georgia, coordinated a direct action tactic framed by a unified narrative justifying collaboration between immigrant and climate justice activists on equal terms. In a continuing collaborative relationship, these organizers embraced mutually strategic narratives rooted in local civil rights history, but rejected common ‘global climate justice’ narratives used to frame social and environmental collaborative organizing. We examine the departure from ‘global climate justice’ narratives, which was exemplified by coalition building in Georgia, to argue that scholarship articulating ‘global climate justice’ as a new context for integrating social and environmental movements must anticipate barriers to these solidarities, especially historical, regional and racialized dynamics of power among organizations engaged in these developing alliances. Based on an investigation of strategic alliances between anti-racist, immigrant justice organizers and climate change activists in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta and Athens, Georgia, we argue that climate justice narratives in both activism and scholarship would benefit from more attention to the particular political and cultural geographies in which diverse forms of climate justice organizing can take hold.
If I am Troy Davis, I Failed Troy Davis: Abolishing the Death Penalty through an Antiracist People’s Geography
My Troy Davis paper was officially published in ACME:
Abstract In the wake of Georgia’s execution of Troy Davis, the importance of antiracist geographic thought has become ever more pertinent for clarifying how democratic politics and a people’s geography can help to bring about the abolition of the death penalty in the U.S. This paper seeks to engage the painful historicalgeographical legacies of white supremacism and the ways it has enabled capital punishment with an eye to moving toward a less violent and less dehumanizing state. More specifically, I imagine my historical-geographical engagement to provide a foundation from which to discuss putting into motion more deliberately what W.E.B. DuBois referred to as “Abolition Democracy”. In realizing the potential of DuBois’ notion of abolition democracy though, I will suggest more geographical attention to the ways racialized geographies have not been as explicitly connected to the notion of a people’s geography.
Urban political ecology II: The abolitionist century in Progress in Human Geography
My second UPE review titled “Urban political ecology II: The abolitionist century” in now on Progress in Human Geography’s on-line first page.
Abstract
Attention to the urban and metropolitan growth of nature can no longer be denied. Nor can the intense scrutiny of racialized, postcolonial and indigenous perspectives on the press and pulse of uneven development
across the planet’s urban political ecology be deferred any longer. There is sufficient research ranging across antiracist and postcolonial perspectives to constitute a need to discuss what is referred to here as ‘abolition ecology’. Abolition ecology represents an approach to studying urban natures more informed by antiracist, postcolonial and indigenous theory. The goal of abolition ecology is to elucidate and extrapolate the interconnected white supremacist and racialized processes that lead to uneven develop within urban environments.
Keywords: abolition ecology, antiracism, cities, environmental justice, political ecology, postcolonial, urban geography, urban political ecology (UPE)
We’ve been studied to death, we ain’t gotten anything”: (Re)claiming knowledge production through writing collectives
Many years of work has produced our second publication through the Newtown Florist Club Writing Collective. It always feels good to publish in Capitalism Nature Socialism.
