Aggregate Airs: Atmospheres of Oil and Gas in the Greater Chaco

Abstract

In the Greater Chaco region of northwest New Mexico, new fracking technologies are stirring up lands, chemicals, and relations that concentrate attention in the surround. This article argues that extraction’s cumulative atmospheric effects are experienced by Diné residents of the region in ways that cannot be accounted for by the agencies that manage oil and gas. The state’s presumption of atmospheric commensurability is reinforced by techniques of settler governance that fragment ecological and ontological domains like air and land. This fragmentation often preempts the possibility for Indigenous claims to meaningfully disrupt administrative or judicial actions. Unfolding extraction’s atmospheres across three cases, I examine how scale mediates the problem of commensurability. I describe how prevailing approaches to regulating impacts of the oil and gas industry manipulate scale in ways that obscure the cumulative effects of extraction. Drawing on fieldwork with Diné residents of the region who have mobilized to study how fracking affects their wellbeing, and I show how this scalar work facilitates the commensuration of extraction’s impacts across Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds––as well as when this commensuration fails.

Attuning to ambiguous atmospheres: Currents of air, discourse and time in a steel town

“…(Sheryl, 20s, YP)Sheryl's account exemplifies an inversion of common assumptions, given how ambient air pollution is widely recognised as causing/exacerbating a range of respiratory and pulmonary conditions. The above excerpt instead demonstrates how a shared atmospheric surround differently affects individual bodies, sometimes in surprising and unexpected ways (Shapiro, 2015; see also Choy, 2011; Grant, 2020; Kenner, 2021).…”

“…Arguing for greater consideration of air's fluid materiality (Choy, 2018), recent scholarship of air and its pollution foregrounds its dynamic, elusive and unstable character by drawing on the notion of atmosphere (Kenis & Loomans, 2022, p. 2; see also Adey, 2015; Choy, 2010, 2011, 2018, 2020; Cupples, 2009; Engelmann, 2015; Ghertner, 2020; Grant, 2020; Hong et al, 2021; Kenner, 2021; Nguyen, 2020; Tripathy & McFarlane, 2022; Walker et al, 2022). Scholars in this tradition utilise the term in two interrelated ways; first, as referring to the gaseous medium that surrounds the planet, providing ‘material continuity across space, albeit in uneven concentrations and circulations’ (Grant, 2020, p. 537); and second, as denoting a generally shared sentiment or feeling (Choy, 2010) as part of the ‘live background’ that composes ordinary life (Grant, 2020, p. 537). Simply put, atmospheres can be both literal (i.e., meteorological) and figurative (or affective in the words of Anderson, 2009), and within this line of thinking, the elemental and the affective are co‐constitutive (Adey, 2015; Verlie, 2019).…”

“…Scholars who ascribe to the inherently embodied understanding of attunement have also challenged the widely held misconception that atmospheres—whilst commonly thought of as ‘shared mediums’ (Grant, 2020, p. 537)—are encountered in the same way by all. Attributes such as gender, class, race, and disability have all been shown to differently shape atmospheric attunements (see Choy, 2011; Ghertner, 2020; Grant, 2020; Kenner, 2021; Nguyen, 2020; Shapiro, 2015).…”

“…Scholars who ascribe to the inherently embodied understanding of attunement have also challenged the widely held misconception that atmospheres—whilst commonly thought of as ‘shared mediums’ (Grant, 2020, p. 537)—are encountered in the same way by all. Attributes such as gender, class, race, and disability have all been shown to differently shape atmospheric attunements (see Choy, 2011; Ghertner, 2020; Grant, 2020; Kenner, 2021; Nguyen, 2020; Shapiro, 2015). Kenner's (2021) work on indoor air quality demonstrates that, rather than developing an awareness of the qualities of a shared atmosphere, people with asthma attune to qualities that disorder their breathing, marking a differential response to place that sets them apart (p. 1125).…”