Despite its ubiquity, “property” is a difficult legal concept to pin down. The property regime an... more Despite its ubiquity, “property” is a difficult legal concept to pin down. The property regime and case law regarding property encompass many different forms of tangible and intangible property such as land and structures, intellectual property, hunting rights, personal possessions, and much more.
This article investigates whether it is possible to bring the longue durée, or the re-contextuali... more This article investigates whether it is possible to bring the longue durée, or the re-contextualization of risk distribution and accumulation, into litigation about climate outcomes. We do this by analyzing the structure of disaster litigation to identify if and whether historical harm is included in argumentation and by applying the concept of takings to a hypothetical legal argument of repetitive flooding in Alaska. We conclude that invisibility of historical harm in climate and disaster litigation gives insight into the preference and structure of the law.
This article describes social encounters produced by climate adaptation policy experimentation fo... more This article describes social encounters produced by climate adaptation policy experimentation focused on managed retreat—a concept increasingly used by academics and planning professionals to describe various kinds of relocation from areas exposed to environmental hazards. Building on scholarship that examines the political ecology of resettlement and adaptation, I draw on five years of ethnographic work conducted alongside Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribal leaders as their longstanding Tribal resettlement was transformed by government investment. I describe how Louisiana's Office of Community Development relied on Tribal planning to garner federal funds, used those funds to reduce the scope of the resettlement, and systematically erased the initial resettlement rationales and aims of Indigenous leaders. I liken the state's approach to Dina Gilio-Whitaker's notion of decontextualization as a colonial strategy, and argue that state efforts to transfor...
Despite a rich history of collaborative and engaged scholarship and the recent “participatory tur... more Despite a rich history of collaborative and engaged scholarship and the recent “participatory turn” in anthropology few anthropology departments train students in the philosophy or methods of collaboration. Graduate training is typically characterized by conventional classroom-based lectures and individualized projects, while participatory research is thought of as something scholars can do later in their careers. The 2013 Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School disrupted this paradigm. The Field School used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to train graduate students and community stakeholders in applied research methods through participation in an established community/university research partnership, examining race, racism, and health outcomes. The Field School was comprised of a racially, economically, and educationally diverse, intergenerational, multicultural, and multiethnic group of participants. Reflecting on this exper...
Despite a rich history of collaborative and engaged scholarship – and the recent “participatory t... more Despite a rich history of collaborative and engaged scholarship – and the recent “participatory turn” in anthropology – few anthropology departments train students in the philosophy or methods of collaboration. Graduate training is typically characterized by conventional classroom-based lectures and individualized projects, while participatory research is thought of as something scholars can do later in their careers. The 2013 Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School disrupted this paradigm. The Field School used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to train graduate students and community stakeholders in applied research methods through participation in an established community/university research partnership, examining race, racism, and health outcomes. The Field School was comprised of a racially, economically, and educationally diverse, intergenerational, multicultural, and multiethnic group of participants. Reflecting on this experience, we challenge the myth of the “lone ethnographer” and argue for a reorientation in anthropological methods training towards transdisciplinary, participatory, and collaborative ethnographic methods.
Despite its ubiquity, “property” is a difficult legal concept to pin down. The property regime an... more Despite its ubiquity, “property” is a difficult legal concept to pin down. The property regime and case law regarding property encompass many different forms of tangible and intangible property such as land and structures, intellectual property, hunting rights, personal possessions, and much more.
This article investigates whether it is possible to bring the longue durée, or the re-contextuali... more This article investigates whether it is possible to bring the longue durée, or the re-contextualization of risk distribution and accumulation, into litigation about climate outcomes. We do this by analyzing the structure of disaster litigation to identify if and whether historical harm is included in argumentation and by applying the concept of takings to a hypothetical legal argument of repetitive flooding in Alaska. We conclude that invisibility of historical harm in climate and disaster litigation gives insight into the preference and structure of the law.
This article describes social encounters produced by climate adaptation policy experimentation fo... more This article describes social encounters produced by climate adaptation policy experimentation focused on managed retreat—a concept increasingly used by academics and planning professionals to describe various kinds of relocation from areas exposed to environmental hazards. Building on scholarship that examines the political ecology of resettlement and adaptation, I draw on five years of ethnographic work conducted alongside Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribal leaders as their longstanding Tribal resettlement was transformed by government investment. I describe how Louisiana's Office of Community Development relied on Tribal planning to garner federal funds, used those funds to reduce the scope of the resettlement, and systematically erased the initial resettlement rationales and aims of Indigenous leaders. I liken the state's approach to Dina Gilio-Whitaker's notion of decontextualization as a colonial strategy, and argue that state efforts to transfor...
Despite a rich history of collaborative and engaged scholarship and the recent “participatory tur... more Despite a rich history of collaborative and engaged scholarship and the recent “participatory turn” in anthropology few anthropology departments train students in the philosophy or methods of collaboration. Graduate training is typically characterized by conventional classroom-based lectures and individualized projects, while participatory research is thought of as something scholars can do later in their careers. The 2013 Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School disrupted this paradigm. The Field School used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to train graduate students and community stakeholders in applied research methods through participation in an established community/university research partnership, examining race, racism, and health outcomes. The Field School was comprised of a racially, economically, and educationally diverse, intergenerational, multicultural, and multiethnic group of participants. Reflecting on this exper...
Despite a rich history of collaborative and engaged scholarship – and the recent “participatory t... more Despite a rich history of collaborative and engaged scholarship – and the recent “participatory turn” in anthropology – few anthropology departments train students in the philosophy or methods of collaboration. Graduate training is typically characterized by conventional classroom-based lectures and individualized projects, while participatory research is thought of as something scholars can do later in their careers. The 2013 Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School disrupted this paradigm. The Field School used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to train graduate students and community stakeholders in applied research methods through participation in an established community/university research partnership, examining race, racism, and health outcomes. The Field School was comprised of a racially, economically, and educationally diverse, intergenerational, multicultural, and multiethnic group of participants. Reflecting on this experience, we challenge the myth of the “lone ethnographer” and argue for a reorientation in anthropological methods training towards transdisciplinary, participatory, and collaborative ethnographic methods.
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Papers by Nathan Jessee