Prison Ecology Project as a New Direction for the Environmental Humanities

As many of you in ENST 490 know, I am part of the Prison Ecology Project, which looks at the intersection of mass incarceration and environmental degradation. I work as a research assistant, but my primary duties are conducting archival research and developing a story map of the project. The project is definitely in the beginning stages, but the team has some goals for the project that follow some of what Gomez’s deems directions for the environmental humanities. 

One of the directions Gomez’s talks about is transdisciplinary and postdisciplinarity. Innovative and appropriate methods, approaches, theories and dialogues are necessary to achieve transdisciplinary and postdiscplinarity, and the environmental humanities should be a laboratory to develop these innovations, according to Gomez. I would argue that the Prison Ecology Project is working towards this as it is using different bodies of knowledge to work towards policy and social change of the expanding prison industrial complex. It combines the prison abolition movement with the environmental justice movement and makes connections in the fields of political science, criminology, sociology, GIS, cartography, communications, and the environmental humanities. We are working with people of all different backgrounds, from incarcerated individuals, radical environmentalists, academics, and students, which aligns with transdisciplinary as it, “involves increasing collaboration between academic scholars and other publics” (Gomez). We are incorporating visual arts, though my role as a cartographer, to communicate a global environmental and human rights issue, and are bringing to question that there may not be a difference between the two. 

The other direction that we are incorporating into the project is developing “citizen humanities.” This concept emphasizes the importance of not only working across scholarly disciplines, but working from academia to other spheres of public engagement. When the Prison Ecology Project presented at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC) in March 2016, we opened up our project to the audience and the public, asking for participation in data collection and public records requests. Through this we are able to not only gather more data on the pollution in prisons, but also have thousands of people who live in communities near a prison participate in a global movement and feel a sense of liberation. Currently, this is a goal of the project but the foundation is there. As a part of this project, I hope to liberate communities through the use of GIS and cartography. 

Through my four years as an Environmental Studies major, I have come to find a passion in social justice GIS or counter/ critical cartography. The Prison Ecology Project has fallen into my lap, and I am very lucky to be involved with such wonderful people and work for such a powerful movement. Reading this article made my work and the project feel even more validated. I hope to incorporate all four of Gomez’s directions into further work. This is exciting but also daunting, as I am sure is a feeling many of us ENST seniors feel. Here we go. 

Perception of Options to Improve the World

In “Four Directions for the Environmental Humanities”, Sergio Gomez discusses problems that “frame our relation to the environment” and then goes on to propose shifts in environmental humanities that could address these problems. One interesting problem that Gomez mentions is the “Dominant Technocratic Approach”, which frames environmental issues as something that can simply be solved by science and technological innovations. Science and “careful management” can solve all issues under this approach. The technocratic approach can greatly affect our perceptions of options available for improving the world. Under the technocratic approach it is only the “administrators” or “experts” that are “qualified” to improve the world. This leads to the perception that is not within “our power” to improve the world or that it is not our place. Ideas can’t improve the world unless they come from a qualified expert. And even those ideas aren’t said to make much improvement unless there are “material results”.

Options available to improve the world under the technocratic approach also become “simple” and “efficient”. Any option to improve the world that is deemed “too complex” will either be ignored or reduced to simple terms that will lead to ineffective and damaging solutions. The technocratic approach can also go hand in hand with negative framing. It becomes very easy to frame things in a negative light or deny that there are even options available to improve the world when the only options are deemed as “management” or “scientific innovations”. When only “management” or “scientific innovations” are said to be options, it is easy to say there are not enough narrowly defined “resources” to improve the world. Instead, when innovative thinking is thought of as a way to improve the world, there are of course much more “options” and negative framing is not quite as easy. Scientific innovations can be rare but innovated thinking happens every day.

Developing citizen humanities is just one solution to address the problem of the dominant technocratic approach. Citizen humanities “reengages publics” as producers of knowledge, and in turn “reengages publics” in improving the world. It is more than just the “experts” that have the option to improve the world. When “publics” cultivate new ideas and discussions, they are not only coming up with new options to improve the world, but they allow for others to see just how important “non-experts” are for improving the world. These diverse “environmental imaginaries” that bring in human experience and different worldviews show that there are not always “efficient” solutions. Options to improve the world will not always be a linear progression and they may be messy and difficult. This complexity is not a sign to “give up” or “simplify the option”, but instead is often just a part of diverse collaboration. Improving the world will not always be neat and tidy, and acknowledging this will help prevent options/solutions that are in the end only more damaging.