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As described in the Carruth reading, “artists aligned with social practice deliberately blur the lines among object making, performance, political activism, community organizing, environmentalism and investigative journalism” (Carruth 2). Something that I found particularly interesting from this reading was the discussion of the Indeterminate Hikes+ app; the narrative behind the smartphone, an object which is essentially an embodiment of consumerism/Capitalism, depersonalization, and “rapid communication,” is subverted in a way so that it encourages deep engagement with surroundings/slow looking as well as appreciation of “bio-cultural diversity.” I think that similarly, the Still Life Project leverages the internet, a platform which we may often associate with speed and overwhelming amounts of information, and it shares a very different kind of information— it delves into the deep histories and experiences of these individuals’ lives. I think that this approach of using the internet, applications, and general multimedia approaches really resonates with me not only because I appreciate it for accessibility reasons, but also because I think there is something to be said for the way that sharing these kinds of messages on such platforms has an implicit element of “resistance” by subverting the typical uses/ideas of the internet, phones, and computers (and I am especially thinking of how I see the Still Life Project, just in its format alone, relate to or even take some roots in Net Art, which was a movement of rebellion). I think this subversion and the experience of seeing something really intimate on a platform that we spend so much time on and where we rarely see material of this sort can be very jarring/surprising, which can then be leveraged by the artist to encourage a different type of engagement and have their narrative/message come across in a new way.
In the Beyond Empathy reading, as Childress discussed the need for shifting from a focus on empathy to one of solidarity in documentary filmmaking, I thought of the Eve Tuck article from a few weeks ago and the case she makes for a shift from damage-centered narratives to those of desire. I saw some overlap between the empathy and damage-centered narratives, particularly how both authors sort of tied these respective ideas to the “colonial gaze,” and while Tuck used the term “desire” and Childress the term “solidarity,” I think that these two go hand in hand and implicate a reimagining of a community and what it means to participate or belong.
Although this may not be about social practice art specifically, during my time at Gallatin, I have really started to consider the ways that art in general has been/can be mobilized to articulate certain environmental narratives, and these narratives have not only historically shaped our perceptions of our surroundings but have held great importance in shaping physical environments and policies as well. What comes to mind is how Rachel Carson’s work Silent Spring played a part in the environmental movement and thus the passing of environmental regulations, or, perhaps for worse, how Joe Sternfield’s photographs of the abandoned rail that eventually became the Highline served as a muse and contributed to its imagining as a redesigned, “reclaimed” urban public space— and it was the construction of this park that contributed to rezoning and gentrification within the neighborhood. I do think it is important to consider what we want the takeaways from our art to be and in what ways we want it to mobilize or to be mobilized, and in my own work, I try to think of how the arts can be mobilized for the better. With the environmental movement specifically, I think it calls for the use of art quite directly. As mentioned in my previous reading response, with addressing environmental issues, I feel that narrative is everything— and I try to consider how climate change, which is usually articulated in numbers and estimates that we can barely wrap our minds around, can be made more personal or easily understood to a wide audience through various visual formats, or, in terms of the work I may be doing in the future, how environmental injustices that have long plagued communities can be amplified or made more legible in a way that works towards achieving actual change (which I think art and alternative forms of expression/engagement hold strong potential).

In the excerpt that we read for this week, “Who Deserves Housing?: The Battle for East Thirteenth Street,” author Amy Starecheski examines the case that was made by those living in the squats at East Thirteenth Street to claim ownership of their property through adverse possession; more specifically, Starecheski draws upon oral histories and archival records to explore the dimensions of how organizers created “the narrative of possession and continuous occupancy required by the courts,” how squatters articulated “property claims in court with stories of its practice in everyday life,” and “how the kinds of relatedness portrayed in the tacking narrative produced for the judge exacerbated and created social conflicts in the community of squatters” (Starecheski 99). Starecheski uses this to ultimately examine the broader relationship between the “state and its citizens,” “the nature of public property,” as well as “who decides who deserves housing” (Starecheski 95).
This was perhaps one of my first official introductions to studying oral history, and I found it quite compelling how Starecheski mentioned having to combine all of these stories together to get a fuller picture of what was happening (especially capturing conflict within the community of squatters). I feel that Starecheski’s work just reinforces how valuable of an approach this is in community-oriented research. Although it was on a much smaller scale, I am thinking back to the research I was doing on the East Side Coastal Resiliency project too and how every single person basically had such a different version of what was going on and what was the appropriate next step. I feel like the work of taking these individual strands and weaving them together is crucial in making informed community decisions and as people whose research/activism can have real life impacts, it is our obligation to try to get the fullest sense of what is going on and the most context possible to make sure we really know what we are advocating for.
In addition to Starecheski’s approach, I felt that the content of the work was relevant as well. I think something that particularly stuck with me was Starecheski’s emphasis on the importance of narrative in the organizers’ crafting of their case. The organizers could not simply present a list of names to the courts but needed to connect everything in a way that demonstrated continuity and intention behind their actions. This point actually provoked me to think of the various ways I may find myself articulating environmental narratives in my own work this summer, particularly in relation to an initiative such as ALIGN’s involvement in the 80/50 campaign and their focus on the reduction of emissions from buildings. While work related to meeting emissions targets may involve many numbers and figures, rather than just putting these statistics forth, I think it is important to consider how to convert this into a narrative that appeals to a wider audience, particularly those who may not prioritize climate change or the reduction of emissions. For instance, ALIGN is already engaged in the work of framing the reduction of building emissions as an opportunity for establishing new jobs and better quality of life, and I am thinking of ways that I could see myself contributing to this effort. Conversely, I also try to consider how this kind of initiative may be able to mobilize those from the more mainstream environmental movement to advocate for social justice and equitable jobs as well, which may typically not be at the top of the agenda.
Additionally, I thought it was interesting how there were very strong moral dimensions to the arguments that the organizers made and the stories they told, as they often tried to depict themselves as productive, responsible citizens in order to justify their right to the property. It prompted me to revisit the ideas in Harvey’s “Right to the City” as well as Ananya Roy’s lecture, and more particularly her description of “property as personhood.” Connecting all of these arguments, I am just thinking of how one’s personhood is connected to property, and how, as Harvey mentions, the right to a place also has more to do with the right of shaping and reshaping ourselves. However, as I emphasized before, the East Thirteenth Street organizers’ approaches demonstrate how morality and the rights to claim property (and thus to claim themselves) are tied up with the notion of productivity, and I suppose this just all has me thinking of the larger idea of what urban citizenship, rights, inclusion, and autonomy could look like in a world where deservingness is not based so heavily upon productivity or the ideas of capitalism at large.

In her work Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences: Research in an Age of Info-Glut, Kristin Luker utilizes salsa dancing as an analogy to discuss the kind of research she feels is critical to address our modern world; she asserts that, like salsa dancing, this kind of research is “bold and interdisciplinary” and “for all its improvisational nature…builds on some very specific steps” (2). She advocates for us to evolve our research methods and thinking beyond what has typically been practiced in the past or is even taught to us today, for the reasons that these earlier methods do not account for the fact that we are now living in a nonlinear world and the availability of literature (and filtering of literature) has changed drastically in the age of the internet. Rather than “mastering esoteric facts or techniques,” she argues that knowledge in the current era comes from making connections “across traditional boundaries— going wide rather than deep” (13).
In his piece “Understanding,” Bourdieu explores communication by exploring the “simultaneously practical and theoretical problems which emerge in the particular case of the interview between the investigator and the person questioned” (17). Although I was admittedly a bit fuzzy on some of the points that he made, I felt that he was primarily saying that we need to be more aware of reflexivity and the positionality and social relations of the interviewer and interviewee. I felt he also advocated that it is crucial, as a good or ethical researcher who is committed to uncovering social truths, to be empathetic towards interviewees, to respect them as having “lived lives” and having experiences and vast social conditions that all contribute to who they are, and to practice “active listening” and allow the interviewee to partake “in the project of self-portraiture” that they wish to “engage in” rather than imposing (27).
I actually felt there was quite a bit of overlap in the points that were made by Luker and Bourdieu as they both criticize the ways that research has more commonly or traditionally been conducted and advocate for some sort of shift (which reminded me somewhat of Eve Tuck, particularly Bourdieu). Also, I think that both of their arguments, to some degree, take into account some questions of power or accessibility involved in research. Bourdieu discusses the social asymmetry that is inherent between the interviewer and interviewee and the violence that can be exerted in this process. Luker actually cites Bourdieu in her brief discussion of cultural capital, and she talks about who used to hold the keys to knowledge and “conduct the social research” in the past vs now (as well as the audience who consumes this and who is interested in learning more about social life).
I thought that Luker’s piece was particularly relevant to the research that I envision myself conducting both this summer and well into the future, as it focuses on bridging disciplines in research, which is much of what ALIGN does as they try to link issues and interests from all sorts of (often conflicting) fields. I would actually be quite curious to read the remainder of the book and see what more concrete methods and suggestions she has for approaching this type of research. Additionally, I felt Bourdieu’s piece was quite relevant as I try to keep in mind my positionality when thinking about what communities I may be coming in contact with through my work and may be surveying/interviewing this summer.

         ALIGN is an environmental justice and labor organization that is based upon forming longstanding alliances with workers, the community, and city organizations in order to link the interests of these groups and achieve progress in three core areas: economy, environment, and equity. In the piece Beyond Amazon: Reshaping New York’s Approach to Economic Development, ALIGN, along with many other organizations, argues that in the wake of Amazon’s attempt at establishing HQ2 in Queens, we must develop a clear framework for how to protect our neighborhoods, establish local, truly democratic power, as well as hold corporations accountable for their practices. Beyond Amazon proposes a series of measures that must be taken in order to avoid an event like the Amazon HQ2 fiasco from happening again in the future, including: investing directly in good jobs and improvements in sustainability/public health,  legally requiring social impact assessments before subsidizing developments, ensuring fair labor practices, prioritizing employment of low income communities, and establishing measures to make sure corporate power does not go unchecked (such as creating a public database to transparently track relevant company data, banning non-disclosure agreements in economic development negotiations, and progressively taxing CEOs who earn more than 30x their average employee’s pay). What I feel is particularly strong about this document is that unlike the UN New Urban Agenda, it provides much more specific solutions on what needs to be done to reshape our approach to economic development in the city, and even accompanies each proposal with a piece of supported legislation; additionally, rather than simply stating that inequalities at large are wrong and need to be addressed, Beyond Amazon, unlike the New Urban Agenda, actually identifies some of the many structures and systems in place that produce these inequalities.

         As Beyond Amazon saw the aftermath of the HQ2 fiasco as an opportunity to emphasize a need for greater structural economic change, Constructing a Greener New York: Building by Building identifies how green legislation concerning the 80×50 goals and building retrofitting could provide an opportunity for a positive restructuring of the job market. In this piece, ALIGN discusses how enhancing energy efficiency can improve the local economy by keeping money used to pay for fossil fuels extraction in New York to be reinvested in sustainable development, creating thousands of new jobs (approximately 23k direct jobs and 17k indirect), allowing tenants and owners to spend less on energy costs and reinvest in other areas, and reducing local toxicity and heat. Perhaps even more so than Beyond Amazon, this piece constructs a very developed outline of what steps can be taken to achieve the desired goal (in this case sustainability, good job creation, and local economic stimulation) and provides clear empirical evidence/methodology to back their claims, as seen in the technical appendix.

         I think that often there is this notion that jobs/economy and the environment cannot coexist with one another, particularly as the mainstream environmental movement has historically been led by middle to upper class white environmentalists and focused more on preservation of “pristine, untouched nature” and less on concerns such as maintaining livelihoods and jobs. One of the primary concerns of environmental justice in itself is rethinking the priorities of the environmental movement and who leads it, especially focusing on the disenfranchised populations that have often been excluded from the mainstream narrative (and who have been traditionally coerced by corporations and powerful actors to choose between either maintaining local jobs and or preserving public health/surrounding environment). I believe that Constructing a Greener New York testifies to some of the amazing (and very challenging) work that ALIGN does in order to bridge these oft-conflicting interests of economy/jobs, the environment, and equity/inclusion. Additionally, what resonates with me particularly strongly when it comes to ALIGN’s work is their commitment to greater economic restructuring and change through the proposal of and support of individual policies/initiatives such as these.

        In their collaborative work Equity, Growth, and Community, authors Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor examine the patterns of increasing inequality, slowing economic growth, and spatial and ideological fragmentation that have been emerging in recent decades. Benner and Pastor argue that the issues concerning growth and inequality in communities are not simply structural and economic, but social and ideological in nature as well; therefore, the solutions required to address these problems require a fundamental shift towards what Benner and Pastor often refer to as the development of “diverse and dynamic epistemic communities.” Benner and Pastor identify the five main characteristics of a “diverse and dynamic epistemic community” as having “a broader membership base, an ability to accommodate multiple ways of knowing, a scope of action which stretches across multiple outcomes and conversational arenas, a desire to move beyond the episodic, and a capacity to handle conflict even as they facilitate a sense of common destiny” (16). The authors argue that creating knowledge together from a diverse, broad information base through a course of repeated and sustained interactions can help various stakeholders establish healthy, effective ways of communicating with one another, bridge the gap between the more privileged policymakers and those affected by their decisions, and most importantly, allow communities to develop shared goals and a sense of “the common good” that can be translated into action (14-18). In order to see how the development of these diverse and dynamic epistemic communities- or the lack thereof- relates to promoting inclusion, creating equitable growth, and resolving challenges in cities (and how this could yield valuable lessons for other urban regions or the nation as a whole), Benner and Pastor conduct case studies of seven metropolitan habitats.

         In chapter six, Benner and Pastor look at the role of conflict in relation to the development of epistemic communities and achievement of just growth, as it may prove a hindrance, such as with the cases of Greensboro and Fresno, or lead to collaboration, such as with San Antonio. More specifically, the authors investigate how various approaches to organizing as well as regional attitudes and differences have yielded starkly contrasting results in the three cases. In Greensboro, factors such as intra-regional competition, exclusion of community organizations and advocacy groups from decision-making, and a strong history of racial distrust and tension contribute to the lack of a diverse, dynamic epistemic community; although the region experiences spatial and economic fragmentation like many other metropolitan areas, what is significant is that underpinning this is an ideological fragmentation, particularly in regard to the racial divide, that hinders collaborative development. In Fresno, the presence of a “poverty-industrial complex,” a corrupt and top-heavy political decision-making body, and extreme spatial, socioeconomic, and racial polarization all hinder collaborative approaches; decisionmakers are extremely disconnected from the disinvested neighborhoods that are mostly inhabited by POC demographics and have done little to create fair wages/dignified jobs or bridge community. However, in San Antonio, the organizing methods of groups such as COPS and the ability of leader Cisneros to link community interests assisted the region in shifting from conflict to collaboration.

         I am interested in how this example of San Antonio relates to David Harvey’s “Right to the City,” particularly his assertion that “the right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city” (Harvey 23). While in San Antonio, the establishment of programs that linked the disenfranchised with resources was surely important, I think it is notable that establishing a true right to the city embodies more than just this; it is a mode of operating. Benner and Pastor, although they note there have been flaws or limitations at times, argue that San Antonio has largely come to embrace this attitude of collaboration and prioritizing the commons as a regional norm. I also think that while Harvey’s piece is quite theoretical and his call to action at the end may seem a bit idealistic, Benner and Pastor provide excellent empirical evidence throughout their work and provide a picture of what this “call to action” or social-movement organizing and resistance can look like in practice, such as with the case of San Antonio, and how it can effectively balance out power relations and radically transform our cities. While I do think Harvey calls for a more radical restructuring of the way our economies and decision-making bodies fundamentally operate, Benner and Pastor do provide a useful example of how a greater right to the city or prioritization of the collective could be practiced within our currently predominant economic/political framework (although I am not saying I wholeheartedly agree with this because I do think restructuring is necessary).

         I think that Benner and Pastor’s arguments prove quite useful to my research and academic interests, as I have increasingly become aware that issues of climate and the environment have more and more to do with ideological and social dimensions than many other factors. This work provides generative insights into the approaches we need to take (and those we should not) when moving towards achieving greater social/ideological unity that can then translate into action (especially concerning climate policies or initiatives).