On Abolition Ecologies and Making “Freedom as a Place”

Abstract

This introduction calls for political ecology to systematically engage with the ways that white supremacy shapes human relationships with land through entangled processes of settler colonialism, empire and racial capitalism. To develop the analytic of abolition ecology, we begin with the articulation of W.E.B. Du Bois' abolition democracy together with Ruth Wilson Gilmore's spatially attuned analytic of abolition geography. Rather than define communities by the violence they suffer, abolition ecologies call for attention to radical place-making and the land, air and water based environments within which places are made. To that end, we suggest that an abolition ecology demands attention to the ways that coalitional land-based politics dismantle oppressive institutions and to the promise of abolition, which Gilmore describes as making "freedom as a place". Resumen: Esta introducci on hace una llamada a la ecolog ıa-pol ıtica para que critique sistem aticamente las formas en que la supremac ıa blanca orienta a las relaciones entre lose seres humanos y la tierra a trav es de los procesos de colonialismo, imperialismo y capitalismo racial. Para desarrollar el concepto de la ecolog ıa abolicionista, comenzamos articulando la propuesta de democracia de la abolici on de W.E.B. Du Bois de con el concepto de Ruth Wilson Gilmore de la geograf ıa de abolici on con su anal ıtica atinado a lo espacial. En vez de definir a comunidades por la violencia que sufren, la ecolog ıa abolicionista requiere atenci on a hacer-lugares radicales y sobre los entornos basados en tierra, aire, y agua en que se hacen los lugares. Con ese fin, sugerimos que una ecolog ıa abolicionista exige an alisis de las formas en que una pol ıtica coalicional basada en la tierra desmantela las instituciones opresivas y la promesa de la abolici on, que Gilmore relata como hacer "la libertad como un lugar".

On and beyond traumatic fallout: unsettling political ecology in practice and scholarship

“…We must ask: What are the implications of reproducing careers as scholars of other people's trauma, violent encounters, displacement, and dispossession? Even when we focus attention on quests for abolition and emancipation, the ways we participate in those struggles and build careers must be interrogated (Gilmore 2017;Heynen and Ybarra 2021). These "implications" cannot merely be thought about as concerns to reflect on 'afterthe-fact' as part of our work.…”

“…We then outline a framework for political ecologies of hope, and offer three sets of propositions/questions as provocations that opens more critically attuned discussions on the legacies of trauma in political ecology. If decolonization, abolition, and emancipation are not metaphors, then there is a responsibility to account for the conditions of embodiment, material relations, and webs of power (De Leeuw and Hunt 2018;Fanon 2007;Gilmore 2017;Heynen and Ybarra 2021;Tuck and Yang 2012). Rather than flattening power relationships, we hope that our attempt to unsettle business as usual will encourage conversations that will carve out new opportunities for relations of liberation within and beyond the spaces of political ecology.…”

Racial Capital, Abolition, and a Geographic Argument for Reparations

“…As we outline, abandonment is not only central to the Lehman story, but is the key to understanding how capital works. As a result, we see abolition practice as the effort to "seek liberated life-ways through a commitment to radical place-making" (Heynen and Ybarra 2020). Radical place-making in relation to reparations is necessarily focused on the landscape and how abolition practice can resist abandonment and variegated landscapes of difference and posit new human-centred ways of being.…”

Carceral Geographies from Inside Prison Gates: The Micro‐Politics of Everyday Racialisation

“…While “carceral geographies”, as a critical subfield focused on carceral conditions and abolitionist projects, has conceptually and methodologically begun to breach the prison gates in recent years, as exemplified by the work of geographer Dominique Moran (2013a, 2013b, 2015), among others (e.g. Heynen and Ybarra 2021; Mei‐Singh 2021; Moral 2013a; Moran and Disney 2019; Morin 2016; Pickering 2014; Turner 2016), insider analyses of prison‐based racial categorisation processes at a micro scale have not been conducted outside of sociology (cf. Goodman 2008; Walker 2016).…”