ESPM 50ac Lecture Notes Unit 1 PDF

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lecture notes from unit 1 with professor Kurt Spreyer...

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UNIT 1 NOTES: -

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Hurricane Katrina - Sense that there was a failure to respond (local gov’t) - Sparked national convo about poverty and race How society and nature fit together (environmental history) - Rejects assumption that nature and society are diff. Things (New Orleans- levees separating) - Limits and opportunities in uneven spatial and temporal patterns (provide context for patterns of social and economic development) - Nature affected and changed by humans Forms of cultural and social adaptation to perceived limits and opportunities in nature - Instrumental: Levees only approach: nature is seen as passive object to be controlled by humans - Inter-subjective adaptation: Recognition and respect: nature as subject and (active) force to be reckoned with Louisiana - swamp land, flood plain - Deltaic lobes, low elevation prone to flooding - Floods replenish land base by depositing sediment which builds up soil; prevents wetlands from sinking away (subsidence) - Wetlands provide ecosystem services: absorb floodwaters, serves as vegetative buffer against storm surges - Turn nature into instrument for use in society organized to exploit natural resources - slaves coming to New Orleans - 1808 no longer legal to import slaves, but gave rise to the internal slave trade - Depletion of soils, surplus of enslaved human labor (transport 700,000 slaves) - Sugar is initial commodity, right next to natural levees allowed for controlled flood irrigation - Build up flume by reinforcing levees, diverts annual flood waters past New Orleans and towards SE part of state, don’t have recharging of wetlands - Cotton expands tremendously, market for human labor and clearing of forests in these areas (reduced absorption capacity and greater runoff and flooding) - Control nature by exploiting enslaved labor (instrumentalist approach extended to human bodies) - Culturally and racially diverse city - Levee improvement became major objective - After civil war, New Orleans expanded as major port for imports and exports Emergence of Jim Crow Laws, segregation and reconfiguration of public space - Impeded upward mobility and political power available to african americans

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Development of aggressive era drainage system (water management) - Reinforce levees with concrete and setting up pumps and canals - Gov’t has active role in creating public services - Advent of technocratic management - Expansion of city to north; physical geo causes changes in racial geography (whites in higher ground, migrated north; blacks pushed in lowline areas vulnerable to floods associated with many diseases) - Discriminatory covenants- sale of houses (can’t sell to non-white person) - Round of white flight, development of black residential neighborhoods (public health problems) 1927 Mississippi River Flood - Results in Flood Control Act, turning point in water management infrastructure - Construct levee system lining river, divert water to save N.O., also use dams to prevent sediment from flowing downstream; not being recharged by sediment anymore Development of Petrochemical industry (post war) - Create canals, pipeline networks - Loss of weapons Miss. River Gulf outlet Race: a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies - Social construct - Reflects constructs and interests spurring from colonialism - Racial formation: the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed and destroyed - Social position associated with racial identity, life chances, limitations on life (patterns in society associated with race) - Racial projects: racial formation is a process of historically situated projects in which human bodies and social structures are represented and organized - Interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics in an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines (political rights, education, health care, access to safe housing) - Span cultural and social sense - Linking ideas about racial categories to social position, serve to make sense of initial encounters with people, explain where social groups fit in - Start to get policies that reflect these sentiments - Liberal (center left): recognition of legacy and significance of racism for social structure (create policies that are manifestations of racial projects i.e. affirmative action- seeks to address structural inequality; - Center right: post-racial society; don’t pay attention to race only to individual achievements - Micro: internalized meaning and everyday experience

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Racial common sense: internalized set of assumptions and ideas held in common by a culture - Macro: cultural significance, ideology, and social structure - Race and the state: racial dictatorship, racial democracy - Sustained through consent of others - Power: manifested in exercise of the will (Jim Crow Laws are white supremacist exercise of will); racial dictatorship - Power relations reproduced (those in power stay in power) - Hegemonic power: dominant culture maintains its dominant position - Power exercised through coercion and consent of the governed (perceptions are shaped through education and the media; prevent people from questioning “common sense”) - “American Dream” hegemonic narrative that skews reality - Hegemonic narratives are expressions of racial projects by which identity and racial formation play out - Media revealed shock of poverty; fear of chaos, vulnerability - Sense of gullibility; exaggerated violence in New Orleans; looking for scapegoat - Chaos coming from people needing to be contained by the military (this is what pictures suggest) - Playing into stereotypes (irresponsible, lazy, lack of personal accountability) by showing children with no parents taking care of them - George Bush: sense of detachment, worried about own image and reaction rather than the people suffering Rebuilding a resilient city and state - Multiple lines of defense - Flood mitigation and recharging wetlands with sediment - City resilience - Environment: adapt to thrive, equity: connect to opportunity, infrastructure: transform city systems - Levee reinforcement - Sustainability and green infrastructure: use natural processes (like wetlands) - Convert largely african american communities into green areas? - Waterfront redevelopment - Biomimetic design: rather than build modern linear infrastructure that ignores the past, design something that looks like in between allowing water to move where it naturally would (mimic natural patterns and processes to enhance resiliency and adapt to climate change) - Flood control: Bonnet Carré spillway (biomimetic design) - Planning to use it a lot more (built in 1930’s) - Diverts into Lake P - Looks to rebuild wetlands by depositing sediment - Effort to recreate natural floodlands - Creates issues in ecosystem and economy

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Change salt content in the lake and brings freshwater in which changes species in lake - Devastating to salt water fisheries, oyster beds, etc that have developed around the lake - Protecting city but devastating communities and industries based on ecosystem - City planning needs to be implemented at a regional level - Need to be equitable and just about distribution of costs and benefits (sacrifice zones) - Racially coded landscape with differentiated risk, how is this reproduced in geography of resilience? Post katrina demography and geography - Displacement - Poverty being displaced NE - 600,000 households still displaced a year later - Change in class and race composition; decline in black population 66% to 9% - Increased economic and racial polarization - Uneven recovery

UNIT 2 NOTES -

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Property: rights and obligations to things that are enforceable by custom, law, or norm - Not the things themselves - “Bundle of rights” Tenure: the system of rules defining the allocation of property sovereignty : supreme political authority in a geographic region or group of people Types of property: - Private- individual right to exclude - State- institutional right to exclude - Common- community member right to not be excluded Property- rights and obligations - Exclusion rights - Non-exclusion rights - Control rights: how something may be used - Use rights- usufruct rights: based on custom (limited by time, place and specific uses) - Transfer rights (alienation): rights to sell or mortgage land or resources to others (through inheritance, heirs, reallocate to others) - Rights of individual and collective interests- individuals or community or state may have ability to assert claims on another person’s land etc.

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Formal property rights (de jure): rights explicitly acknowledged by state or authority which may be protected by legal means - Informal property rights (de facto): - Overlapping rights: can lead to criminalization of native practices - Obligations: paying taxes, etc - Property relations shape and reflect society - Locke - Liberal social contract theory - Assumption that humans live in state of anarchic nature - Can be overcome by citizens having contract between each other that says they will act a certain way, then give power to state (laws) - Laws are glue that bind contract together (citizens must submit to them) - Universalist catholicism and individualist protestantism Burning returns nutrients to soil Subsistence mode of production Social organization - Gender based division of labor: men clear fields, hunt, part of political and social aspects, burn understory of forest (creates more fertile understory so there will be fresh growth in spring which attracts and raises population of animals, also makes hunting easier, makes travel easier); women plant, cultivate, garden, harvest, gather; children garden - Technology: materials based on what is locally available like stone, antlers, wood (not involving large scale metallurgy); low impact in terms of supply, exchange networks - Production and reproduction: system of production was oriented to and allowed for reproduction of system - Women produce 90% of calories in this system - Women hold knowledge of agriculture to sustain the system (play big role in reproduction) - Production in system was primarily for subsistence and long term reproduction of tribe, family unit, kinship group, village; not for surplus; depends on reproductions of ecosystems Traditional ecological knowledge - Cultural forms and traditions that stress averting risk by adapting to and reproducing dynamic natural systems that had been modified to be used by human beings (sustain and reproduce eco and social system; enforced by stories and myths) - cosmology - live with animate nature; nature is alive and spiritually infused; no separation between nature and culture; nature and society are intertwined - Form of adaptation to nature that is resilient, flexible, adaptive based on nature of respect and mutuality (intersubjective) - Close up, intimate, localized view of nature

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Myth -

Set of principles and values that allow for reproduction of management systems

Symbolic tales concerning origin and nature of universe or key elements of culture - Reflect world views - Charters for social action English colonists - Saw commodities (land, animals, etc.) - Instrumentalist vision of nature as object for exercise of human will; arena to realize god’s will through cultivation, transformation of landscape - Focus of market based production, extraction of products from landscape - Trying to produce a surplus - Changes in application of scientific knowledge, development of new technologies (designed to increase yield) - Focus on monoculture - Improvements in transportation infrastructure (canals, toll roads) - Large scale landscape change (forest to agriculture) - Crop rotation; plant turnips in winter (allow for drawing minerals deep out of the soil, clover: nitrogen fixing crop - Pushing system beyond natural limits (leads to problems with soil fertility in long run; erosion) - Development of national markets in sale of agricultural commodities - Some land was given as communal, privatized quickly (enclosed and put into private hands) - Increased yields and associated inflation in land prices (agricultural land) - Relationship with animals: animals seen as instruments for human use - Metallurgical technology: cut trees, plow fields (greater impact on nature) - Division of labor still gender-based, but indentured servitude becomes common - Expansion of systems (growing and moving west), driven by need for new areas for grazing, pushed by exhaustion of soils and depletion of forest resources - Undermining of bases of reproduction (biodiversity of forests, fertility of soils) - Because production system designed to extract as much as possible and move on Fashion craze in Europe (beaver hats, coats) North American Beaver - Beaver lodge provides protection from predators - Keystone species: essential to function and structure of ecosystems (affect population, biodiversity) Sediment builds up and will eventually fill the lake Beavers shape landscapes over time European settlement - Rush for territories by great powers

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Spain, Portugal claimed much, took longer for French, Dutch, Swedes to come over because Spain was hegemonic in geopolitical sense and kept other countries out - Difficult until 1588 when Spanish Armada went belly up (naval disaster) - 1603 death of philip 2 king of spain - Rush into the new world; scramble for territories - Conflicts over access to labor, territories, raw materials 7 years war: great britain becomes dominant Fur trade: means of controlling territories by gaining indian allies (strategic basis to relationship with tribes) Mercantilist system: dominant theory; high volume and positive balance of trade - Import raw materials and export valuable manufactured products - Monopoly rights to Hudson Bay Company Geography of Commodity Exchange (Commodity chain) - Transport in raw form, bring pelts to wholesale market, transpo across ocean, manufacture product, wholesale/resale Territorial expansion - Extractive mining of beavers; don’t allow them to reproduce and bring population back up - West coast movement - Much of beaver traffic goes up into Canada and down in the Rockies Capital (global investments-high risk high reward), labour (native americans), state (military power, institutional structure like law and policy) Times changed: styles changed (people didn’t want beaver stuff anymore, wanted silk clothing) Abenaki: hunter gatherer group; population decimated by disease - Displaced by land, entered into trading relationships with commercial entities to supply them with pelts - Move North trapping beavers until they get stuck; helped by jesuit missionaries, converted to catholicism and settled down returning to agricultural lifestyle - Decimation of beaver population - Women lost status because of focus on hunting Middle men tribes: Huron, Iroquois - Huron- in french territory, had history of trading with neighbors - About 30,000 people, very militarily advance - Iroquois: Dutch supply them with guns and military training and use them to go after the french - Five tribes 20,000 people; much more effective militarily - Become very militarized society - Bring back slaves - Beaver wars - Tribes are forced to move - Western tribes: Fox, Sauk, Potawatami

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- Pushed west; displaced - Lose population, social system disintegrates, more of a focus on hunting Native American Societies and the Fur Trade - Patterns across landscapes Essentialism: idea that things have a set order of characteristics that really define them Anachronism: The Frontier as crude outback (17th-18th centuries) - Settlers: poor, backwoodsman, scotts irish (anti hero) - Seen as uncivilized, lack of education, irreligious, lawlessness, simple, drunk, mixing with indians so “impure” Louisiana purchase 1803: frontier as part of america’s agrarian future - 1820s-30s: economic and demographic expansion Manifest Destiny (O’Sullivan, 1845) - U.S. is destined, chosen; people are manifestations of progress - Progress is God Turner’s Thesis - Unique american identity Imagery and Social Construction of Native Americans - Noble savage - First and baseline representation of NA’s from western perspective - Separated from civilization - Savage (chaotic aspect to identity), associated with wilderness - Something noble and independent about them that is revered by western society (connection to nature and ability to survive) - Moral decay in western civilization - Brutal savage - Conquered peoples - Dependent indian - Ecological indian - Independent indian Federal Indian Policy - Trades and treaties - Separation between tribes and colonists (partly voluntary partly involuntary) - Guardianship theory: native peoples can’t care for themselves and need the help of whites - Executive: great father (treaty and war making power, administer laws, create agencies) - Legislature: authority established under interstate commerce clause; making laws - Judiciary: defines and interprets laws - Removal and reservation (post war of 1812)

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Westward expansion, brutal savage, some “civilized” tribes that adopted western alphabet, dress, and government (cherokee) - Indian removal- trail of tears - Johnson v McIntosh - Gave fed gov limited first rights to land and alienation rights (doctrine of discovery) - Tribes retain rights to occupancy (not full sovereignty) - Indian Removal Act 1830 - Cherokee nation case All tribes moved to reservations 1904 - Drastic loss of indian controlled land - Establishment of rancherias (small areas of land given by govt to landless tribal entities in CA) Historical context - Military surrender, territorial containment and economic dependency - Reservations: administration, policy, and corruption (corrupt bureau of indian affairs; did not fulfill responsibilities) - U.S. vs Kagama 1886 - Two native americans murder another native america - Tribal vs federal jurisdiction - Tribe wants them tried in hoopa courts - Result: fed gov has jurisdiction in cases of violent crimes of native americans even on reservations - Tribal sovereignty basically nonexistent Idea that native people have been conquered, defeated and now they are dependent - Acculturate to integrate into economy and follow western ideas about family - “Kill the indian, save the man” - Job training - Settle tribes on farms - Acculturation is the basis of assimilation Dawes act - Division of tribal holdings (land) into private allotments IRA: no new allotment of land

UNIT 3: -

Capitalism - system in which capitalist class controls the means of production and purchases wage labor to produce things (goods and services) seeking to realize a profit through exchange in the marketplace leading to a cycle whereby these profits are reinvested into the means of production and buying labor to produce for the marketplace (accumulation of capital and reinvestment) - Wage labor: hired for wages to produce goods and services and seek a profit - Profit is value realized above costs of production

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- Used as basis of reinvestment, accumulation of private wealth - Capital accumulated by realization of profit in the marketplace - Use value, exchange value Richard Walker - Argument: “with due regards to the gifts of nature, the secret of CA’s success is to be found in its social relations of production, especially open property rights and a syncretic class system, rapid capital accumulation, and a redoubtable state based firmly on the capitalist society that crafted it.” - 4 important things: - Property regime - Regional accumulation: money, circulation, and finance - Resource industria...