Resilience and Resistance
"I Can't Breathe": Protest During the Pandemic
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Katherine Rigsby
The death of George Floyd was a triggering event that brought hundreds of thousands of protestors into the streets, despite being in the middle of a global pandemic. There is a long history of police brutality, primarily against black men, in the United States. Floyd’s death served as an example that few would be able to dispute, as it was captured on video for the entire world to see. This paper traces the fight for equality for people of color in the U.S. during the twenty-first century, while evaluating the extent to which pandemic conditions and media messages influenced protestors’ decisions to speak out.
Locating Pachakutik: Criollo Modernity, Racialization, and Logics of Neo-Extractivist Violence View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session George Ygarza
How can decolonial frames allow us to see through what cultural theorist Macarena Gomez-Barris calls the “epistemic murk?” How far can the deconstruction of modernity take us and what can Latin American undercurrents of resistance tell us about the variegated societies percolating below? Presenting the first chapter of my dissertation, I put forth an intersectional, transdisciplinary framework within the emerging dialogical plane of critical analysis coming out of Latin America. This conceptual chapter deploys extractivism as an analytical concept to understand its entanglements with the modern Peruvian state. This chapter operationalizes extractivism and neoextractivism, presenting its significance to the state as an inextricable state-building process born alongside it. Opening with an overview of the Antapaccay and Coroccohuayco mines in Espinar, it situates the local struggle within broader colonialities and systems of violence. As with other co-constituting enclosures on which the state manifests, this study argues that extractivism must be understood as a constituting regime, with Espinar serving as a flashpoint.
The Black Lives Matter Movement: A Case Study for Human Rights View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alexia Ferguson
The Black Lives Matter Movement is being studied to evaluate whether it has the potential to expand human rights. The Movement is analyzed to identify its structure, goals, and actions. Critical race theory is used to understand the significance of the Movement. Major human rights theories, such as universalism, cultural relativism, and communitarianism are evaluated to determine if human rights can be expanded through these processes when using the Black Lives Matter Movement as a case study. This project uses archival data and other secondary sources to accumulate data on the Movement, major human rights theories, and critical race theory. The hypothesis is that the Black Lives Matter Movement has the potential to expand human rights in a culturally relative manner in communities and on a universal level because of the organization's structure and goals.
Farmers Against Fascism: How India's Ongoing Farmers' Protests are Cultivating Alternatives to Neoliberal Hindu Nationalist Dystopia View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pratik Raghu
Since November of 2020, thousands of farmers have occupied the borders of Delhi to protest three pro-corporate agricultural bills that threaten to devastate their livelihoods. Hailing from the neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana, among others, these farmers have boldly challenged the authority of the neoliberal Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The ongoing farmers' protests have spread far beyond India's capital city, as solidarity actions have been held in every state of the country as well as in numerous cities around the world. As the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the disastrous failures of the neoliberal capitalist world system, these protests have offered progressives and leftists everywhere renewed hope that mass working class mobilizations can stem the global tide of right-wing authoritarianism. My paper aims to map the contours of this transformative promise alongside the challenges to its realization. Drawing primarily upon in-depth interviews with young organizers on the front-line in Delhi, I demonstrate how the protests have not simply rejected the Modi regime's proto-fascism but offered alternative modes of political life altogether, at the same time as these alternatives are qualified by persistent social cleavages. I argue that the diversity of tactics employed by the farmers, who have set up community kitchens, learning facilities, and arts and performance venues, exemplify the principles of mutual aid, direct action, and intersectional and international solidarity. However, deep-seated caste divisions and the hegemony of nonviolence run the risk of undermining these developments if they remain unaddressed.
Social and Spatial (In)justice as the Symptoms of Sick Single-industry Towns in Post-Soviet Countries: Possible Ways to Reimagining the Urban Environment through Cultural and Social Initiatives View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sofya Krasnaya
This study focuses on the architectural peculiarities of the single-industry towns in former Soviet countries. It provides an overview of urban planning's significant features that led to a unique atmosphere and somewhat inconvenient environment. The preliminary idea is that the consequences of such a construction system biased to ideological dominants echo in the development of these towns at present. The lack of social and spatial justice is evident at the level "city-to-city" and inside the city, making the surroundings sick and hopeless for the citizens. The primary purpose of this overview is to equip the scholars and the policymakers with ideas on reimagining the single-industry towns, reverting the atmosphere to positivity, and bringing the hope back. There are examples of such successful practices, where through the design and out-of-box urban solutions, the city space is transformed into a comfortable and creative area with equal opportunities for growth and evolution of the citizens available. The author sees social and spatial justice as crucial compounds for the sustainable and even development of industrial settlements. With its strict, ideologically biased forms, the post-Soviet heritage can no longer command the urban appearance of the cities. Outdated approaches, obviously not working, should be replaced with new, fresh structures that abound ingenuity and inspire to look forward to the future. Ultimately, the article calls to reconsider the urban organization of the single-industry towns globally as there are many similar cases worldwide where people cannot fulfill their rights to have equal opportunities.
Geographies of Digital Surveillance: Who is Watching You, and Should You Be Concerned? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session David Humphreys
How is the data we key into our computers – Google searches, social media posts, online purchases – used? Who has access to it? And what do they do with it. The term surveillance denotes monitoring in order to gather information on the behaviours and activities of particular individuals or groups. Until the late-twentieth century most surveillance activities were carried out by the state - intelligence agencies, the police, tax authorities and other government bodies - to assess whether an individual was engaged in criminal activities or liaising with an enemy government. But in today’s digitally connected world surveillance is no longer the exclusive domain of those with power and advanced technology. Members of the public now regularly record photographic and audio-visual images and make them available to online audiences. While governments remain important, other actors also gather and analyse digital data. They include Internet giants (such as Facebook), private organisations (such as Cambridge Analytica) and citizen activists (such as Bellingcat). This paper asks, who is watching you now, and should you be concerned?
