TY - JOUR
T1 - Unsettling Race, Nature, and Environment in Geography
AU - Meehan, Katie
AU - Gergan, Mabel Denzin
AU - Mollett, Sharlene
AU - Pulido, Laura
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 by American Association of Geographers.
PY - 2023/8/3
Y1 - 2023/8/3
N2 - What might it mean to “unsettle” our disciplinary understanding of race, nature, and the environment? In this introduction to the 2023 Special Issue of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers—focused on Race, Nature, and the Environment—we reflect on the meaning and practice of unsettling in a time of climate crisis, toxic legacies, uneven development, state violence, mass extinctions, carceral logics, and racial injustices that shape—and are shaped by—the (re)production of nature. We note the ascendancy of critical scholarship on race and racialization in Anglo-American geography; its uneven diffusion and unmet challenges; and the unstoppable force of insurgent thinking, abolition geography, critical race theory, Black and Indigenous geographies, scholar activism, and environmental justice praxis in taking hold and transforming the discipline. The sixteen articles in this special issue embody different ways to “unsettle” disciplinary thought across the vibrant fields of political ecology and human–environment geography. We discuss how the articles collectively grapple with timely questions of land, water, territory, and place-making; render visible the spatial and socioecological reproduction of power and violence by capital and the state; and make space for the enduring politics of struggle on multiple registers—body, home, classroom, park, city, community, region, and world.
AB - What might it mean to “unsettle” our disciplinary understanding of race, nature, and the environment? In this introduction to the 2023 Special Issue of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers—focused on Race, Nature, and the Environment—we reflect on the meaning and practice of unsettling in a time of climate crisis, toxic legacies, uneven development, state violence, mass extinctions, carceral logics, and racial injustices that shape—and are shaped by—the (re)production of nature. We note the ascendancy of critical scholarship on race and racialization in Anglo-American geography; its uneven diffusion and unmet challenges; and the unstoppable force of insurgent thinking, abolition geography, critical race theory, Black and Indigenous geographies, scholar activism, and environmental justice praxis in taking hold and transforming the discipline. The sixteen articles in this special issue embody different ways to “unsettle” disciplinary thought across the vibrant fields of political ecology and human–environment geography. We discuss how the articles collectively grapple with timely questions of land, water, territory, and place-making; render visible the spatial and socioecological reproduction of power and violence by capital and the state; and make space for the enduring politics of struggle on multiple registers—body, home, classroom, park, city, community, region, and world.
KW - environmental justice
KW - geographic thought
KW - nature
KW - political ecology
KW - race
KW - white supremacy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85166746088&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/24694452.2023.2231824
DO - 10.1080/24694452.2023.2231824
M3 - Editorial
AN - SCOPUS:85166746088
SN - 2469-4452
VL - 113
SP - 1535
EP - 1542
JO - Annals of the American Association of Geographers
JF - Annals of the American Association of Geographers
IS - 7
ER -