Attention to the urban and metropolitan growth of nature can no longer be denied. Nor can the int... more 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.
Despite compelling reasons to involve nonscientists in the production of ecological knowledge, cu... more Despite compelling reasons to involve nonscientists in the production of ecological knowledge, cultural and institutional factors often dis-incentivize engagement between scientists and nonscientists. This paper details our efforts to develop a biweekly newspaper column to increase communication between ecological scientists, social scientists, and the communities within which they work. Addressing community generated topics and written by a collective of social and natural scientists, the column is meant to foster public dialog about socio-environmental issues and to lay the groundwork for the coproduction of environmental knowledge. Our collective approach to writing addresses some major barriers to public engagement by scientists, but the need to insert ourselves as intermediaries limits these gains. Overall, our efforts at environmental communication praxis have not generated significant public debate, but they have supported future coproduction by making scientists a more visible presence in the community and providing easy pathways for them to begin engaging the public. Finally, this research highlights an underappreciated barrier to public engagement: scientists are not merely disconnected from the public, but also connected in ways that may be functional for their research. Many field scientists, for example, seek out neutral and narrowly defined connections that permit research access but are largely incompatible with efforts to address controversial issues of environmental governance.
In the wake of Georgia’s execution of Troy Davis, the importance of antiracist geographic thought... more 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 historical geographical 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.
Whether used to support or impede action, scientific knowledge is now, more than ever, the primar... more Whether used to support or impede action, scientific knowledge is now, more than ever, the primary framework for political discourse on climate change. As a consequence, science has become a hegemonic way of knowing climate change by mainstream climate politics, which not only limits the actors and actions deemed legitimate in climate politics but also silences vulnerable communities and reinforces historical patterns of cultural and political marginalization. To combat this “post-political” condition, we seek to democratize climate knowledge and imagine the possibilities of climate praxis through an engagement with Gramscian political ecology and feminist science studies. This framework emphasizes how antihierarchical and experiential forms of knowledge can work to destabilize technocratic modes of governing. We illustrate the potential of our approach through ethnographic research with people in southern Appalachia whose knowledge of climate change is based in the perceptible effects of weather, landscape change due to exurbanization, and the potential impacts of new migrants they call “climate refugees.” Valuing this knowledge builds more diverse communities of action, resists the extraction of climate change from its complex society–nature entanglements, and reveals the intimate connections between climate justice and distinct cultural lifeways. We argue that only by opening up these new forms of climate praxis, which allow people to take action using the knowledge they already have, can more just socioecological transformations be brought into being.
Citizen science and sustainability science promise the more just and democratic production of env... more Citizen science and sustainability science promise the more just and democratic production of environmental knowledge and politics. In this review, we evaluate these participatory traditions within the context of (a) our theorization of how the valuation and devaluation of nature, knowledge, and people help to produce socioecological hierarchies, the uneven distribution of harms and benefits, and inequitable engagement within environmental politics, and (b) our analysis of how neoliberalism is reworking science and environmental governance. We find that citizen and sustainability science oft en fall short of their transformative potential because they do not directly confront the production of environmental injustice and political exclusion, including the knowledge hierarchies that shape how the environment is understood and acted upon, by whom, and for what ends. To deepen participatory practice, we propose a heterodox ethicopolitical praxis based in Gramscian, feminist, and postcolonial theory and describe how we have pursued transformative praxis in southern Appalachia through the Coweeta Listening Project.
Drawing on megapolitan geographies, urban political ecology, and urban metabolism as theoretical ... more Drawing on megapolitan geographies, urban political ecology, and urban metabolism as theoretical frameworks, this article theoretically and empirically explores megapolitan political ecology. First, we elucidate a theoretical framework in the context of southern Appalachia and, in particular, the Piedmont megapolitan region, suggesting that the megapolitan region is a useful scale through which to understand urban metabolic connections that constitute this rapidly urbanizing area. We also push the environmental history and geography literature of the U.S. South and southern Appalachia to consider the central role urban metabolic connections play in the region’s pressing social and environmental crises. Second, we empirically illuminate these human and nonhuman urban metabolisms across the Piedmont megapolitan region using data from the Coweeta Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, especially highlighting a growing “ring of asphalt” that epitomizes several developing changes to patterns of metabolism. The conclusion suggests that changing urban metabolisms indicated by Coweeta LTER data, ranging from flows of people to flows of water, pose a complicated problem for regional governance and vitality in the future.
This article, along with this special symposium, engages with the lasting significance of Neil Sm... more This article, along with this special symposium, engages with the lasting significance of Neil Smith's Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space 25 years after its publication. Few books have made such productive contributions to expanding the horizons of political economy, particularly the spatiality of political economy, as has Uneven Development. This introductory article explores some of these aspects of the book's significance for the readership of New Political Economy; it remarks on the lasting if not growing significance of Smith's intellectual and political contributions two and a half decades after one of his, and the discipline of geography's, crowning achievements. At the same time it foreshadows ways in which the text can continue to push our understanding of the interconnections among nature, capital and the production of space.
This article takes the 25th anniversary of Neil Smith's Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and t... more This article takes the 25th anniversary of Neil Smith's Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space as an opportunity to consider the seminal contributions the book has made for pushing scholars to more deeply consider the connections between the persistence of capitalism and social reproduction. Furthermore, we move on from this connection to consider the emancipatory ideas within Uneven Development and their connection to prompting new forms of revolutionary imagination and political possibility.
This chapter addresses resistance and collective social action. Given the continued widespread na... more This chapter addresses resistance and collective social action. Given the continued widespread nature of human suffering, violence, and misery, and ecological destruction the world over, this topic is both crucial and a hotly contested area of intellectual debate and practical action. In this chapter we highlight key themes and intellectual trends evident in studies that have explored organizing resistance and collective action in practice. The background, what we will refer to simply as resistance and collective social action in this ...
Attention to the urban and metropolitan growth of nature can no longer be denied. Nor can the int... more 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.
Despite compelling reasons to involve nonscientists in the production of ecological knowledge, cu... more Despite compelling reasons to involve nonscientists in the production of ecological knowledge, cultural and institutional factors often dis-incentivize engagement between scientists and nonscientists. This paper details our efforts to develop a biweekly newspaper column to increase communication between ecological scientists, social scientists, and the communities within which they work. Addressing community generated topics and written by a collective of social and natural scientists, the column is meant to foster public dialog about socio-environmental issues and to lay the groundwork for the coproduction of environmental knowledge. Our collective approach to writing addresses some major barriers to public engagement by scientists, but the need to insert ourselves as intermediaries limits these gains. Overall, our efforts at environmental communication praxis have not generated significant public debate, but they have supported future coproduction by making scientists a more visible presence in the community and providing easy pathways for them to begin engaging the public. Finally, this research highlights an underappreciated barrier to public engagement: scientists are not merely disconnected from the public, but also connected in ways that may be functional for their research. Many field scientists, for example, seek out neutral and narrowly defined connections that permit research access but are largely incompatible with efforts to address controversial issues of environmental governance.
In the wake of Georgia’s execution of Troy Davis, the importance of antiracist geographic thought... more 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 historical geographical 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.
Whether used to support or impede action, scientific knowledge is now, more than ever, the primar... more Whether used to support or impede action, scientific knowledge is now, more than ever, the primary framework for political discourse on climate change. As a consequence, science has become a hegemonic way of knowing climate change by mainstream climate politics, which not only limits the actors and actions deemed legitimate in climate politics but also silences vulnerable communities and reinforces historical patterns of cultural and political marginalization. To combat this “post-political” condition, we seek to democratize climate knowledge and imagine the possibilities of climate praxis through an engagement with Gramscian political ecology and feminist science studies. This framework emphasizes how antihierarchical and experiential forms of knowledge can work to destabilize technocratic modes of governing. We illustrate the potential of our approach through ethnographic research with people in southern Appalachia whose knowledge of climate change is based in the perceptible effects of weather, landscape change due to exurbanization, and the potential impacts of new migrants they call “climate refugees.” Valuing this knowledge builds more diverse communities of action, resists the extraction of climate change from its complex society–nature entanglements, and reveals the intimate connections between climate justice and distinct cultural lifeways. We argue that only by opening up these new forms of climate praxis, which allow people to take action using the knowledge they already have, can more just socioecological transformations be brought into being.
Citizen science and sustainability science promise the more just and democratic production of env... more Citizen science and sustainability science promise the more just and democratic production of environmental knowledge and politics. In this review, we evaluate these participatory traditions within the context of (a) our theorization of how the valuation and devaluation of nature, knowledge, and people help to produce socioecological hierarchies, the uneven distribution of harms and benefits, and inequitable engagement within environmental politics, and (b) our analysis of how neoliberalism is reworking science and environmental governance. We find that citizen and sustainability science oft en fall short of their transformative potential because they do not directly confront the production of environmental injustice and political exclusion, including the knowledge hierarchies that shape how the environment is understood and acted upon, by whom, and for what ends. To deepen participatory practice, we propose a heterodox ethicopolitical praxis based in Gramscian, feminist, and postcolonial theory and describe how we have pursued transformative praxis in southern Appalachia through the Coweeta Listening Project.
Drawing on megapolitan geographies, urban political ecology, and urban metabolism as theoretical ... more Drawing on megapolitan geographies, urban political ecology, and urban metabolism as theoretical frameworks, this article theoretically and empirically explores megapolitan political ecology. First, we elucidate a theoretical framework in the context of southern Appalachia and, in particular, the Piedmont megapolitan region, suggesting that the megapolitan region is a useful scale through which to understand urban metabolic connections that constitute this rapidly urbanizing area. We also push the environmental history and geography literature of the U.S. South and southern Appalachia to consider the central role urban metabolic connections play in the region’s pressing social and environmental crises. Second, we empirically illuminate these human and nonhuman urban metabolisms across the Piedmont megapolitan region using data from the Coweeta Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, especially highlighting a growing “ring of asphalt” that epitomizes several developing changes to patterns of metabolism. The conclusion suggests that changing urban metabolisms indicated by Coweeta LTER data, ranging from flows of people to flows of water, pose a complicated problem for regional governance and vitality in the future.
This article, along with this special symposium, engages with the lasting significance of Neil Sm... more This article, along with this special symposium, engages with the lasting significance of Neil Smith's Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space 25 years after its publication. Few books have made such productive contributions to expanding the horizons of political economy, particularly the spatiality of political economy, as has Uneven Development. This introductory article explores some of these aspects of the book's significance for the readership of New Political Economy; it remarks on the lasting if not growing significance of Smith's intellectual and political contributions two and a half decades after one of his, and the discipline of geography's, crowning achievements. At the same time it foreshadows ways in which the text can continue to push our understanding of the interconnections among nature, capital and the production of space.
This article takes the 25th anniversary of Neil Smith's Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and t... more This article takes the 25th anniversary of Neil Smith's Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space as an opportunity to consider the seminal contributions the book has made for pushing scholars to more deeply consider the connections between the persistence of capitalism and social reproduction. Furthermore, we move on from this connection to consider the emancipatory ideas within Uneven Development and their connection to prompting new forms of revolutionary imagination and political possibility.
This chapter addresses resistance and collective social action. Given the continued widespread na... more This chapter addresses resistance and collective social action. Given the continued widespread nature of human suffering, violence, and misery, and ecological destruction the world over, this topic is both crucial and a hotly contested area of intellectual debate and practical action. In this chapter we highlight key themes and intellectual trends evident in studies that have explored organizing resistance and collective action in practice. The background, what we will refer to simply as resistance and collective social action in this ...
Spatial Histories of Radical Geography: North America and Beyond, Edited by Trevor Barnes and Eric Sheppard, 2019
A reflection on the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute, which was a project of activis... more A reflection on the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute, which was a project of activist geography in the 1960s.
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Papers by Nik Heynen
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.
scientists and nonscientists. This paper details our efforts to develop a biweekly newspaper column to increase communication between ecological scientists, social
scientists, and the communities within which they work. Addressing community generated topics and written by a collective of social and natural scientists, the column
is meant to foster public dialog about socio-environmental issues and to lay the groundwork for the coproduction of environmental knowledge. Our collective approach
to writing addresses some major barriers to public engagement by scientists, but the need to insert ourselves as intermediaries limits these gains. Overall, our efforts at environmental communication praxis have not generated significant public debate, but they have supported future coproduction by making scientists a more visible presence in the community and providing easy pathways for them to begin engaging the public.
Finally, this research highlights an underappreciated barrier to public engagement: scientists are not merely disconnected from the public, but also connected in ways that may be functional for their research. Many field scientists, for example, seek out neutral and narrowly defined connections that permit research access but are largely incompatible with efforts to address controversial issues of environmental governance.
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.
political discourse on climate change. As a consequence, science has become a hegemonic way of knowing climate
change by mainstream climate politics, which not only limits the actors and actions deemed legitimate in climate
politics but also silences vulnerable communities and reinforces historical patterns of cultural and political marginalization.
To combat this “post-political” condition, we seek to democratize climate knowledge and imagine the possibilities
of climate praxis through an engagement with Gramscian political ecology and feminist science studies. This
framework emphasizes how antihierarchical and experiential forms of knowledge can work to destabilize technocratic
modes of governing. We illustrate the potential of our approach through ethnographic research with people
in southern Appalachia whose knowledge of climate change is based in the perceptible effects of weather, landscape
change due to exurbanization, and the potential impacts of new migrants they call “climate refugees.” Valuing this
knowledge builds more diverse communities of action, resists the extraction of climate change from its complex
society–nature entanglements, and reveals the intimate connections between climate justice and distinct cultural
lifeways. We argue that only by opening up these new forms of climate praxis, which allow people to take
action using the knowledge they already have, can more just socioecological transformations be brought into being.
science oft en fall short of their transformative potential because they do not directly confront the production of environmental injustice and political exclusion, including
the knowledge hierarchies that shape how the environment is understood and acted upon, by whom, and for what ends. To deepen participatory practice, we propose a heterodox ethicopolitical praxis based in Gramscian, feminist, and postcolonial theory and describe how we have pursued transformative praxis in southern Appalachia through the Coweeta Listening Project.
theoretically and empirically explores megapolitan political ecology. First, we elucidate a theoretical framework in the context
of southern Appalachia and, in particular, the Piedmont megapolitan region, suggesting that the megapolitan region is a useful
scale through which to understand urban metabolic connections that constitute this rapidly urbanizing area. We also push the
environmental history and geography literature of the U.S. South and southern Appalachia to consider the central role urban
metabolic connections play in the region’s pressing social and environmental crises. Second, we empirically illuminate these
human and nonhuman urban metabolisms across the Piedmont megapolitan region using data from the Coweeta Long-Term
Ecological Research (LTER) program, especially highlighting a growing “ring of asphalt” that epitomizes several developing
changes to patterns of metabolism. The conclusion suggests that changing urban metabolisms indicated by Coweeta LTER
data, ranging from flows of people to flows of water, pose a complicated problem for regional governance and vitality in the
future.
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.
scientists and nonscientists. This paper details our efforts to develop a biweekly newspaper column to increase communication between ecological scientists, social
scientists, and the communities within which they work. Addressing community generated topics and written by a collective of social and natural scientists, the column
is meant to foster public dialog about socio-environmental issues and to lay the groundwork for the coproduction of environmental knowledge. Our collective approach
to writing addresses some major barriers to public engagement by scientists, but the need to insert ourselves as intermediaries limits these gains. Overall, our efforts at environmental communication praxis have not generated significant public debate, but they have supported future coproduction by making scientists a more visible presence in the community and providing easy pathways for them to begin engaging the public.
Finally, this research highlights an underappreciated barrier to public engagement: scientists are not merely disconnected from the public, but also connected in ways that may be functional for their research. Many field scientists, for example, seek out neutral and narrowly defined connections that permit research access but are largely incompatible with efforts to address controversial issues of environmental governance.
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.
political discourse on climate change. As a consequence, science has become a hegemonic way of knowing climate
change by mainstream climate politics, which not only limits the actors and actions deemed legitimate in climate
politics but also silences vulnerable communities and reinforces historical patterns of cultural and political marginalization.
To combat this “post-political” condition, we seek to democratize climate knowledge and imagine the possibilities
of climate praxis through an engagement with Gramscian political ecology and feminist science studies. This
framework emphasizes how antihierarchical and experiential forms of knowledge can work to destabilize technocratic
modes of governing. We illustrate the potential of our approach through ethnographic research with people
in southern Appalachia whose knowledge of climate change is based in the perceptible effects of weather, landscape
change due to exurbanization, and the potential impacts of new migrants they call “climate refugees.” Valuing this
knowledge builds more diverse communities of action, resists the extraction of climate change from its complex
society–nature entanglements, and reveals the intimate connections between climate justice and distinct cultural
lifeways. We argue that only by opening up these new forms of climate praxis, which allow people to take
action using the knowledge they already have, can more just socioecological transformations be brought into being.
science oft en fall short of their transformative potential because they do not directly confront the production of environmental injustice and political exclusion, including
the knowledge hierarchies that shape how the environment is understood and acted upon, by whom, and for what ends. To deepen participatory practice, we propose a heterodox ethicopolitical praxis based in Gramscian, feminist, and postcolonial theory and describe how we have pursued transformative praxis in southern Appalachia through the Coweeta Listening Project.
theoretically and empirically explores megapolitan political ecology. First, we elucidate a theoretical framework in the context
of southern Appalachia and, in particular, the Piedmont megapolitan region, suggesting that the megapolitan region is a useful
scale through which to understand urban metabolic connections that constitute this rapidly urbanizing area. We also push the
environmental history and geography literature of the U.S. South and southern Appalachia to consider the central role urban
metabolic connections play in the region’s pressing social and environmental crises. Second, we empirically illuminate these
human and nonhuman urban metabolisms across the Piedmont megapolitan region using data from the Coweeta Long-Term
Ecological Research (LTER) program, especially highlighting a growing “ring of asphalt” that epitomizes several developing
changes to patterns of metabolism. The conclusion suggests that changing urban metabolisms indicated by Coweeta LTER
data, ranging from flows of people to flows of water, pose a complicated problem for regional governance and vitality in the
future.