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Event Details:
The Facing the Anthropocene: Interdisciplinary Approaches workshop presents:
"Creation before Creation": Practices of Environmental Struggle and Redemption
Alesia Montgomery (UCLA, Institute for the Environment and Sustainability)
November 19th, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. (PST)
Green Earth Sciences Building, room 365 (367 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305)
Abstract: Research on climate change mitigation and adaptation tends to be ahistorical, undersocialized, and amoral. When did deadly heat begin for racialized people in the Americas? How do intersectional identities shape environmental risks and burdens on a warming planet? Can we forge solidarities in pursuit of "the good" (and what is "the good")? This presentation explores practices of environmental struggle and redemption across three case studies: (1) the battles of Black and Latina mothers in South Los Angeles who fight to protect their children from summer heat--their struggles, intensified by residential conditions that make it hard to cope with urban heat island (UHI) effects, have centuries-old roots in the the carceral heat of plantations and mines across the Americas, (2) the local and transnational placemaking of queer Black women in the San Francisco Bay Area who--in the decades preceding the Black Lives Matter Movement--used art, music, and storytelling to forge intersectional and planetary solidarities that reduced their alienation from the earth and furthered abolition geographies, and (3) community organizing in Detroit by residents of diverse races and religions who “wage love” in pursuit of food, water, and climate justice. Across the case studies, the cultural workers describe the entwined nature of societal and environmental degradations. A Detroit ecologist and organizer, reflecting on her work, suggests that the path to the good begins with recognizing that “the good is enough.” The “I” must recognize when it has enough (food, water, etc.) and leave enough for human and more-than-human others–that recognition is, in her words, the “creation before creation” that animates movements to transform structural conditions. This recognition can be simply stated, yet its realization requires a constant (material | mental | spiritual) struggle.
Bio: Alesia Montgomery is an Assistant Professor at UCLA’s Institute of Environment and Sustainability (IoES). An ethnographer, Montgomery studies the social and environmental justice concerns of low-income, racialized communities. Her book, Greening the Black Urban Regime: The Culture and Commerce of Sustainability in Detroit, focuses on battles over the aims and strategies of green redevelopment. Her publications also include articles in the International Journal of Urban & Regional Research, City & Community, Ethnography, Antipode, Sociological Perspectives, and Global Networks. Currently, Montgomery is studying (1) the politics and consequences of water insecurity in low-income, racialized communities and (2) constructions of political, cultural, and research bridges across communities to evaluate, re-imagine, and rebuild connections with water. Montgomery’s areas of research and teaching expertise span urban studies, environmental sociology, sociology of technology, race/class/gender/sexuality, social theory, and qualitative methods. She is involved in collaborations across institutions to develop new methods and tools for gathering, analyzing, preserving, and sharing qualitative data about environmental problems, in ways that further the rigor of research and its accessibility to communities. As part of this work, she serves on the Research Advisory Board for the Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) at Syracuse University. Montgomery holds a Ph.D in Sociology from UC Berkeley and a B.A. in Political Science from UC Irvine. She was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF), an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship at UC Berkeley, and a Rockefeller Graduate Summer Internship in Womanist Studies at the University of Georgia.
This Workshop is sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and made possible by support from an anonymous donor, former Fellows, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society.