The Public Transit Agency: Movement and Mobility in the Climate Change Era
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Mark Barnes Intrigue surrounds institutions responsible for mass population movement within and between urban regions during the course of hazard events, as this very hard and complicated task carries with it enormous risks and significant rewards. One mobility institution, in particular, the public transit agency, has entered our field of vision in recent years because severe weather events have exposed its operational systems and hard infrastructure (e.g., transit vehicles, rails, tunnels, etc.) weaknesses at great spatial and temporal scales. Across the ‘global North’ and ‘global South’ these weaknesses are being further exacerbated by exposures to budget shortfalls due to global economic crises; aging modal and civil infrastructure; increasing ridership resulting from rising gas prices; and fluctuating city and regional boundaries due to industrialization, urbanization or a combination thereof. My dissertation explores how one public transit agency—the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) which serves the Philadelphia metropolitan region—orders and organizes movement and differentiates mobility or 'the social character of movement' across different types of human and physical borders in the face of changing societal trends and accumulating and intense heat waves, snow storms, and flooding from heavy rainfalls. |
The Politics and Practices of 'actually existing sustainabilities': Urban Forestry and Urban Agriculture in New York City
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Lindsay Campbell My dissertation examines how the politics and practices of urban forestry and urban agriculture in New York City are negotiated. It centers on the municipal long term sustainability plan, PlaNYC2030, which was created in 2007 and updated in 2011. From this entry point, it pivots to examine the network of actors, institutions, discourses, and socio-natural environments that constitute urban forestry and urban agriculture as natural resource use systems. It asks: what actors via what institutions make what claims (resting on which assumptions) in order to shape the goals that are set within the plan? What accounts for the varied treatment of urban forestry and agriculture in a single city within a single sustainability planning process? And, in turn, how do the goals of the plan alter resource management practices going forward? Overall, this study examines the political and discursive dimensions of urban sustainability planning and large-scale green infrastructure campaigns in global cities. Second, it continues the project of ‘re-naturing urban theory’ by bringing a concern with materiality into the study of urban politics and policymaking. Finally, it brings concepts of urban political theory and networked governance into nature-society geography. more ➤ |
Production of Community Gardens
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Luke Drake My dissertation research focuses on the production of community gardens—the processes through which they are planned, created, maintained, and changed. In other words, I am interested in how these spaces come to exist. Much is already known about the purposes and effects of community gardens, but less is known about how they work. I draw on poststructural theories such as diverse economies and actor-network theory to investigate the many different types of spatial relations that constitute these space, and asking questions about community and scale. Community gardens are a widespread and diverse practice—they are in every U.S. state (and other countries too), found in many different types of cities, and involve many different types of people for many reasons. A better geographical understanding of how community gardens work will help increase our knowledge of how urban space is being created and help the efforts of community gardeners. |
Gendered Seascapes in Senegal
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Amelia Duffy-Tumasz My dissertation examines how seascapes are gendered in Senegal. Fishermen’s wives have historically enjoyed first dibs to their husband’s daily catch, for example, but in the wake of economic and environmental sea changes kinship-based claims appear to be eroding. To assess how heightened competition for fish is changing the terms of marriages that have historically doubled as business partnerships, I concentrate on two fish production systems: grouper, which is a highly exported and overfished species, and sardines, which are largely consumed in domestic and intra-regional markets. |
Socio-Natures
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Nate Gabriel I am interested in pushing further our ideas about what an urban political ecology can accomplish, exploring "the urban" not simply as a site in which to examine the politics of the environment, nor merely the scale at which many environmental conflicts emerge, but as a discourse through which nature and society are understood and produced. In other words, I'm interested in the urban as an object of knowledge, and its impact on the development of what some have begun to call "socio-natures". My work borrows a great deal from poststructural Marxism, most notably the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham. I am interested in appling their work to an understanding of the diverse forces that produce not only diverse economies but also diverse environments, and how environments and economies co-produce one another. more ➤ |
Socio-Economic Impact of Organic Cotton Production in Tanzania
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Samuel T. Ledermann My research investigates the socio-economic impact of organic cotton production on poverty reduction and inequalities in Meatu District, Tanzania. For this purpose, I've undertaken several field trips that included surveys of 120 conventional and organic farmers and follow-up meetings to share and discuss preliminary findings and inter-annual changes. Pictured here are previously surveyed organic farmers who joined me at Mwamishali village to spend a day discussing selling decisions for cotton vis-a-vis cattle purchases for the previous purchasing season. After several years preparing the fieldwork and studying agricultural development, the time spent on (cotton) fields with farmers was extremely gratifying and I'd like to acknowledge the ingenious farmers for their patience, and the NSF for supporting the fieldwork via a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant. |
Evolving Spaces of Bodily Control |
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Richard Nisa In my dissertation I explore spatial and technological shifts in American-run military detention dating from the signing of the Geneva Conventions in 1949 to the present day. I describe the historical development of techniques of bodily control as framed by two seemingly irreconcilable goals: one premising security on the confinement of the unruly body and the other seeking to both define and control that body through the management of spaces and technologies of circulation. My work suggests that military detention is a vital and continuously evolving instrument in discourses of security and the geography of violence. |
Class Dimensions of Racial and Ethnic Conflict |
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Laura Pangallozzi My dissertation considers tensions under racial transition in inner suburbs of Newark, NJ, where local gentrification strategies have provoked controversy. Integration management (IM) markets housing to whites in order to slow black settlement. From the practice flow questions: How do residents, new and old, black and white, interpret IM? Who wins and who loses with its implementation? More broadly, how do race and class intersect in the peculiar geography of the inner suburb? |
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation |
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Abidah Setyowati My dissertation research focuses on exploring the process and politics of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) policy development and implementation through investigating a case study in Indonesia. It will specifically assess efforts to attain REDD+ potentially competing goals of conservation and development. The proposed research will deepen theoretical debates in the emerging climate change studies literature through documenting and analyzing the set of changes that have been implemented under the “plus” in REDD+ initiatives. It will constitute one of the first empirical studies to explore the effectiveness of the expanded agenda envisioned by REDD+ policy makers. The proposed study will also examine the significance of local agency in shaping the global REDD+ agenda. The fact that the project is also being implemented in Indonesia, the world’s second largest contributor of carbon emissions resulting from deforestation and one of its most critical biodiversity hotspots, suggests that it will be closely studied as a model for future climate mitigation initiatives. The broader impact of the new knowledge created by this research will be to assist policy makers to develop better tools for the assessment of climate change mitigation projects, and thereby ensure that such projects are more likely to improve human development and empower forest dependent communities in the future. |
