HDES Scholar Profiles
AY 2010

Andy Bruno. History, College of LAS

My research examines physical landscapes, interactions between humans and the environment, and conceptions of nature in order to enhance and transform our understanding of Russian and Soviet campaigns to transform the economy and modernize the country from the late imperial to post-socialist eras (1861-2000). To address this multifaceted topic, I am conducting a case study of a far northern region and investigating diverse branches of economic change in it, including chemical production, mining, metallurgy, hydroelectric and nuclear energy, railroad construction, fishing, forestry, and reindeer husbandry. These economic activities will provide inroads into the consideration of the environment due to their dependence on different natural resources and their distinct places in ideologies of modernization.

The Kola Peninsula, or the contemporary Murmansk region, resides in the northwest corner of Russia in taiga and tundra lands bordering the Arctic Ocean. Though Russian claims to the territory extend back to the late middle ages, efforts to populate and economically develop this polar hinterland began only with the Great Reforms of the 1860s. The massive and rapid development of industry in the region in the twentieth century led to especially disastrous environmental consequences as lakes, skies, lands as well as flora, fauna, and human populations, which suffered from extreme pollution. The Soviet government also utilized prison labor in the construction and operation of heavy industry in this northern region, requiring forced migrants to cope with an unfamiliar and harsh environment. Nevertheless, this economic modernization served to legitimate the state by ostensibly demonstrating the transformative power of socialism through its ability to develop such environmentally extreme realms.

Abby Harmon. Landscape Architecture, College of FAA

I focus on how planning and design projects can be created and carried out by everyday citizens, including, and especially those who are homeless. This research begins with the goal of social change, and it has several, more specific goals. First, it challenges the notion that formally trained designers are the only legitimate designers of the world. Second, it advances the notion that community-based research is legitimate and necessary in the academic/educational realm. Third, and most important, it advances the notion that those who are homeless are untapped community resources. In terms of understanding space, homeless people on the street are quite likely the most skilled and experienced at negotiating space at a human scale more so than people from outside the community or even community members who restrict their everyday movement to vehicles. I am interested in how these skills can be applied to community planning and design projects and what research techniques might bring out latent, or obvious spatial abilities. Thus, my research will have several components: an action research methodology utilizing qualitative methods, with necessary visual communication instruction serving as an additional action research tool.

My overall goal in research is to bridge the socially imposed hierarchies between people who are living in and shaping the world around them. This type of research is quite relevant and necessary in the field of Landscape Architecture. Departments of Landscape Architecture are increasingly focused on providing their students with professionalization and skills training, to the detriment of critical thinking and productive community engagement. In response to this perceived trend, I plan to teach courses that emphasize the social elements and ethics of design as they pertain to the neighborhood and community. I also plan to teach design students how to employ qualitative methods in the “real world” to seek productive interactions between community members and themselves in the design process. As stated above, I am committed in my research to bringing all designers—defined inclusively—together to engage in productive conversation and design. Though the agenda of social change is not necessarily site-specific, I am planning to carry out the research in the city of East St. Louis, IL. I am currently working in East St. Louis as a graduate assistant for the East St. Louis Action Research Project (ESLARP), building relationships necessary for my research.

Sasha Cuerda, Department of Geography, College of LAS   

My research continues to probe the relationship between nature and culture and the role played by space in producing or facilitating power-delineating boundaries. The empirical focus of my research has shifted from chocolate production (what I outlined in my HDES proposal last year) to a focus on the emergence of Heritage Pork production in the United States and Western Europe as a form of conservation with development. I continue to be interested in exploring the role played by the body in understanding environmental conflict, specifically in understanding how bodily practices, routines and capabilities are enrolled in efforts to achieve action at a distance within environmental regulation and governance. With respect to pork I ended this interest in the body beyond the human to the porcine. In the effort to save rare pig breeds by eating them, how does the body of the pig emerge as an actor within the effort?

For this research I blend a variety of approaches including Foucauldian theories of governmentality and biopower, anthropological approaches to economics which emphasize the continued need to "perform" economic markets and the role of bodies in such making and remaking of market space, as well as a variety of perspectives from science studies particularly the work of Bruno Latour, John Law, and Michael Callon.

I use these theoretical frameworks in order to explore how heritage emerges as a way of thinking about livestock management, rural and agricultural landscape, and debates over the safety and suitability of food meat. I intend to focus on how the notion of breed and the ways of understanding of breeding have changed in response to political, economic, and ecological processes, phenomenon and events. Second, I intend to explore how heritage as a temporal privileging of landscapes and cultural, economic and ecological practices can be embodied within the living body of pigs, an animal destined for the dinner plate. If pigs become active agents in the production of meanings of heritage what does that mean for our understandings of politics, social relations and our understanding of modernity? Finally I interrogate the relationship between the rising American anxiety over impure food and the rising interest in purebreed pigs, particularly in light of the growing institutional force of Homeland Security as a geopolitical discourse. Is the reemergence of agrarian populism, technologies of biosecurity, concerns over purity, the deployment of breed as an aesthetic as well as genetic category, and the framing of the nation-state as the homeland connected, and if so what might it mean?

Heidi Dodson, History, College of LAS

I hope to accomplish two goals.  One is to explore the secondary literature on race and environmental justice.  During this academic year I have been taking classes with Prof. Rebecca Ginsburg on the connections between race, space, and power.  In order to fully develop my dissertation I would like to expand on these themes by looking at works that specifically address environmental policy and practices in minority communities.   My second goal is to examine the St. Louis Argus, an African American newspaper that reported on issues in the Missouri Delta.  I have previously done some primary research on African American communities and landownership during the 1920s and 1930s, but I would like to explore conditions in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s.  Research in the Argus, in combination with oral histories I plan to do this summer, will ensure that I am incorporating African American voice and agency.  This primary and secondary research will contribute significantly toward the development of my dissertation and participation in the HDES seminar will expand the disciplinary scope of my future research and teaching. 

Richard Doherty, ICR, College of Media

Humans have had a connection to weather for thousands of years, but in the past few hundred, that connection has changed for some people. As developed nations create more and more artificial space for people to occupy, their connection to weather diminishes. Modern television weather reporting in the United States provides a connection for many, but not all of its citizens. A hegemonic style of weather, for a privileged audience, carries undertones of oppression and nostalgia for the former culture and residents of the land. As the rest of U.S. society diversifies, the opportunity to use indigenous knowledge in weather reporting presents itself as a repairer and re-connector of citizens to the environment.

Harry Fischer, Geography, College of LAS

In developing countries, biodiversity conservation programs frequently cause severe social and economic dislocation of the rural poor. Although conservation research has historically focused on pristine areas, emerging research demonstrates that human dominated land is an important component of biodiversity conservation.

For this project, a large amount of socio-ecological data has been collected from study sites in the central Indian state Madhya Pradesh. The study sites have been selected from within a range of contexts, including inside and outside of protected areas. Ecological data will be used to calculate several biodiversity indices. Other collected data includes information on local community land use, formal and informal institutions of natural area governance, and local livelihood strategies. Satellite imagery is used to infer landscape spatial arrangements.

This project will compare the biodiversity present in sites with different socio-ecological contexts to make general inferences about the conservation value of different human-dominated landscape spatial configurations, land use patterns, and institutional regimes of governance. Quantitative analysis of trade-offs and synergies between rural land use and biodiversity will help maximize the conservation potential of future conservation projects. Further, it will suggest new ways to reconcile rural land use with broader conservation objectives.

Poonam Vanee Jusrut, Geography, College of LAS

Human-induced changes such as the present rate of climate change have moved both societies and natural systems into essentially unknown terrains with evolutionary implications for both social and ecological elements. As a result, more than ever before, people, economies and nature are in a process of co-evolution on a global scale, each influencing the others in unfamiliar ways and at scales that challenge our traditional understanding of structure and organization, with serious implications for the vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities of people and societies.  I am particularly interested in the effects of climate change that are forcing many people to leave their home, creating thousands of climate ‘refugees’ and migrants. From this perspective, I want most of my research work in the near future to deal with the coping strategies of human beings in the face of climate change impacts in order to produce a socio-spatial mapping of be it, the disaster vulnerability or the adaptation capacities of inhabitants of the developing South.

Stephanie Seawell, History, College of LAS

My research project will examine how African American communities have accessed, understood, and experienced urban parks in Cleveland, Ohio. As Galen Cranz has explained in her book, The Politics of Park Design, parks should matter to the historian because of their role in “creating social, psychological, and political order, of planning and controlling land use, and of shaping civic form” in urban settings. My project lies at the nexus of Civil Rights and Black Power history, urban history and environmental history—joining these fields in ways too seldom attempted by historians.  The research questions which will guide my investigation will include how were white power structures both reflected and reinforced by the ordering and policing of access to public space in the city during the course of the twentieth century?  How were Black populations historically excluded from these spaces?  Why did parks become battlegrounds in both the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in Cleveland?  And finally, how did urban parks function as a space for the Black community formation in the city?

Sonal Mithal Sumeshkumar Modi, Landscape Architecture, College of FAA

My research will primarily focus on the investigating the role of Micro Financing Institutions for promoting environmentally sustainable development in India. The research would focus on the case example of Fabindia, a rural handicraft retail outlet and which has been noted by Harvard Business School as model of sustainable business. Founded by John Bissell in the 1960s, it has trained rural artisans to hone their local hand-crafting skills. It involves the artisans in the wealth creation process; through its subsidiary - Artisans Micro Finance, which facilitates the setting up of regional community-owned companies partly owned by the artisans themselves. Today, it deals in cosmetics, organic foods, furniture and clothing – all involving eco-friendly and natural materials; sourced directly from village artisans.

This research would inquire into who exactly benefits from the ‘eco-friendly’ Fabindia entrepreneurship. Fabindia, in spite of its claims of being a rural outlet, is more of urban-ethnic-chic today which survives because of the urban bourgeoisie who want to appear environmentally conscious. In this regard, does the micro-financing activity of Fabindia stop itself at promotion of economic sustainability or does it answer the issues of community independence, community willingness. The other research question is what is the company’s concern and potential to stimulate economic development while addressing the looming ecolog-ical problems that threaten the global environment. Especially if natural resources of timber and vegetation are at stake and if their activities involve water and air pollution by way of dyeing processes then how does Fabindia address regeneration of natural resources, waste collection, recycling and replenishment of local environment. 

Michael Scoville, Philosophy, College of LAS

My dissertation is a philosophical exploration of what it means to understand humans as “embedded” in nature. The notion of embeddedness has both descriptive and normative elements, and involves, most basically, the following three claims: (1) that our humanity cannot be understood apart from our animal vulnerability and neediness; this suggests something important about what it means to be human, while also pointing to morally significant continuities between humans and other animals; (2) that human communities must be understood as “nested” in ecological communities, in the sense that the former are inescapably dependent on the integrity and health of the latter; and (3) that while some fundamental values (e.g. the moral standing of nonhuman animals, the importance of ecological integrity, responsibilities to future generations, etc.) are suggested by impartial reflection, other important values are grounded in the culturally specific social meanings that particular environments have for particular communities; an adequate philosophical account of environmental values needs to illuminate both of these sources of values. 

Taken together, these three claims challenge the still prevalent dualism between humans and the rest of nature, and thereby aim to situate human beings within the order of nature—as one valuable, yet historically contingent, species among others. A dualistic view holds that only human beings have value, while all other species and natural systems are simply there for us to use or consume as we see fit. In opposing this view, the solution is not to regard humans as simply on par with all other species (e.g. as biocentric egalitarians argue); nor is the solution to turn nature and other species into “art objects” in order to value them rightly (e.g. by conceiving nature as pristine wilderness, etc.). Both of these extremes are conceptually flawed. More significantly, they fail to embody an environmental ethic that we can actually live by.

James Shissel, Landscape Architecture, College of FAA

My research focuses on the work of nurseryman, horticultural advisor, and agricultural reformer Thomas Affleck (1812-1868), who operated one of the earliest commercial plant nurseries in the Lower Mississippi River Valley.  From his home base in Washington, Mississippi, Affleck played a vital role in the distribution of plants and horticultural advice throughout the American South at a time when the majority of plant distribution and plant-related literature flowed through Europe and the northern United States.  Through goods, words, and services Affleck encouraged his southern audience to express and nurture its unique identity by shaping the land.

Nathaniel Uchtmann, NRES, Law, and Medicine, Colleges of ACES, Law, and Medicine
(JD completed in May; in final year of MD and first year of NRES PhD.)  Beyond the completion of my education, and subsequent Medical Residency Program, I plan to work through an organization such as the United Nations or World Health Organization to promote large-scale awareness about global problems, coupled with advocacy for policy reform and justice-based solutions.  My career goal is to focus on the connections between global health, development, and the environment, and to use these connections in the promotion of increased biodivers-ity and conservation, along with coordinated efforts to eliminate extreme poverty.  A wealth of fascinating linkages exist among these disciplines, such as the fact that economic-underdevelopment and intense biodiversity tend to be concentrated in overlapping regions.  This means that successfully addressing either issue in isolation is highly unlikely, and that viewing them as separate or competing interests virtually ensures the unacceptable perpetuation of an unjust, and unsustainable, status quo.  Fortunately, the necessary exploration of humanity’s relationship with nature aligns perfectly with my passion for justice, and working to reduce inequality, enable people to meet their basic needs, and reverse the accelerating and exploitative human-driven trends toward environmental degradation and ecosystem collapse.