The structures of white supremacy and settler colonialism operate in tandem through control of the natural environment and the drive toward capitalist gain (Tuck and Yang, 2012; Pulido, 2016). Racial and environmental violence are intimately intertwined and have effectively “codified race into the earth” (Wright, 2018: 1), such that natural landscapes are imbued with histories of violent struggle. This call invites presentations that are grounded at the intersection of race and environmental conflict. Relevant topics might address racialized marginalizations and exclusions from aspects of the natural environment; racial justice activism addressing environmental (in)justice; environmental toxicity disproportionately impacting differently racialized communities; white and/or settler colonial control over natural resources; or any other empirical study where an analysis of racialized inequality overlaps with environmental concerns.

Portrayals of human experiences with the environment should reflect inherent complexities through “multiple strands of knowledge production, dissemination and expressions of presence on the landscape...” (Finney, 2014: 129). Accordingly, this call hopes to gather presentations grounded in empirical studies while also considering ways to engage knowledge systems rooted in Black Geographies, Indigenous Geographies, Latinx Geographies, feminist geography, queer theory, crip theory, and other approaches valuing knowledges and experience beyond hegemonic identity-based hierarchies.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Carrie Mott (carrie.mott@louisville.edu) by December 1, 2018.

References

Finney, Carolyn. 2014. Black Face, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Pulido, Laura. 2016. “Geographies of Race and Ethnicity II: Environmental Racism, Racial Capitalism, and State-sanctioned Violence”, Progress in Human Geography 41(4): 524-533.

Tuck, Eve and K. Wayne Yang. 2012. “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor”, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1): 1-40.

Wright, Willie Jamaal. 2018. “As Above, So Below: Anti-Black Violence as Environmental Racism”, Antipode (not yet available in print: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12425).

Tags: CFPs 2019, environmental conflict, environmental violence, race, racial justice, DOPE2019, DOPE9