The author uses the convergence between his work on emerging evangelical movements and agri-culinary movements to consider “place” as a central topic of a comparative ethnography of late modernity.
“We late moderns are said to struggle to maintain meaningful place attachments and places themselves struggle to be distinctive” (1). “What is clear is that a diverse set of social actors in late modern America are making place vital to their cultural existence. Place is being positioned as central to the construction of selves and communities. Emotionally felt and morally loaded meaning is being attributed to place. Place is being used as a symbol of, a resource in, and a starting point for resistance to expansive and powerful macrosystems.
Why is the idea of local so effective for collective action? How do individuals, embedded in communities of practice, make and remake their senses of place? How might modes of temporality intersect with place? In relation to questions of cultural production and place: In a complex field of knowledge production, who do you trust? What cultural forms — specialized language, key symbols, and narratives — do you use as clues to target your trust? Where does status come into play? What kinds of cultural capital generate status in place-centered movements?
What are the politics of place at play in installation ethnography? How has collaboration and experimental ethnography pushed new conceptions of place?
This visualization and caption advance ethnographic insight by providing a striking map of the uneven distribution of toxic release in Los Angeles and the surrounding area, and in particular, illustrating how activist translation of multiple forms of publicly available environmental data together problematize the clustering of racialized populations and heavy industry. Such a map is part of a historical archive of how toxic data has come to be represented in the United States in the wake of Bhopal.
The caption could be elaborated to comment more on how this image connects to current forms of data available about toxicity in Los Angeles— does updated TRI data show the ongoing reconfigurations of emissions and industry relative to environmental activism since 1990? Which forms of chemical toxicants and industries were not yet added to the TRI at this point in time, thereby making this map perhaps even an underestimation of uneven exposures at the time?
This found image from Laura Pulido (2000) is a GIS produced map which combines TRI data with census data to illustrate the scale of correlation between places of toxic release and racialized communities in Los Angeles. Its scale of attention is notable, as it shows not only the city limits of Los Angeles, but also the industrial infrastructure of the surrounding area, and how closely it corresponds to the location of non-white communities. This scale is part of the creative translation of data by environmental activists.
One way to enrich this image might be to surround the initial map with other aerial images which represent sites from within the different TRI clusters, or locations of the emissions of particular air toxics, so that the harmful qualities of industrialization can be visualized.Another possibility might be to compare this map with a more recent map, and pinpoint areas of recent deindustrialization, in order to see if it has a relationship with ongoing gentrification?A third possibility would be to integrate “illegal” toxic emissions in some format—either through highlighting several industri
This visualization and caption suggest that by manipulating public environmental datasets, it can be learned how toxics share multiple geographical points of intensity in the region. These intensities include many forms of clustered harmful substances which undoubtably combine in the atmosphere, ground, and water, in long-term exposures for the surrounding residents and communities.
This visual evokes a powerful message about the intersection of racialization and environmental injustices that warrants deeper investigation. The layering of statistical data gathered from census tracts with other information such as "brownfield sites" using cartography serves an indispensable tool for visualizing how racializing assemblages manifest spatially. It reminds us of the influential work of Ian McHarg, prior to the advent of GIS technologies in his 1969 published book, Design with Nature.
