Life After Water: Detroit, Flint and the Postindustiral Politics of Health (2019)
Published Dissertation, available from ProQuest
In the wake of decades of segregated development and racialized disenfranchisement, so-called “shrinking cities” of the U.S. Rust Belt are dramatically reorganizing state services and the public sphere. Guided by austerity logics and enforced through “emergency management,” cities across the state of Michigan are experimenting with these radical retreats at a time when the problems of infrastructural collapse, legacy contamination, widespread poverty and climate change are converging in their challenges to contemporary cities.
These are active human rights violations, and ongoing crises.
These dynamics are exemplified by the rapid regression of access to safe and affordable water and sanitation in Detroit and Flint, MI In a region considered one of the most water-secure in the world, longstanding contamination from industrial toxicity today converges with financial crisis, climate-related changes, and contemporary anxieties about the future of cities. My research parses these emerging forms of water insecurity as a means of examining contemporary transformations in the biopolitics of urban health and safety. This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted intermittently between March 2015 and June 2018, and continued engagement with organizing efforts. Drawing on grassroots critique and critical race theory, I show how the legacy of racial-residential segregation and regional power are reworked into the contemporary urban environment through water in new ways.
Mobilizing Health Metrics for the Human Right to Water in Flint and Detroit, Michigan (2019)
Read in full at Health and Human Rights Journal
This paper discusses the process and potential of citizen science projects to advance the substance of the human right to water in the United States, considering their effects within and outside the law. The ongoing water crises in Detroit and Flint, Michigan, offer dramatic cases of retrogression in realizing the human right to water—particularly striking in a region that enjoys access to one-fifth of the world’s freshwater and a country that has historically enjoyed near-universal access to water and sanitation. Drawing on Amartya Sen’s theory of human rights, I elaborate the extra-juridical powers of human rights claims, emphasizing their ability to galvanize action and articulate ethical demands.
Blue Lines and Blues Infrastructures: Notes on Water, Race and Space
Article under review at Environment and Planning D: Space and Society
In Detroit, Michigan, the urban poor fear they are being displaced and replaced by water. As part of the city’s recent redevelopment efforts, planners have proposed creating green and blue infrastructure zones to manage urban flooding and mitigate the volume of overflow storm and sewer waters that pollute the Great Lakes each year. The areas slated for these water retention zones are the same marginal neighborhoods where Black residents face frequent foreclosures due to water debts and mass shutoffs from water and sewer services. In this paper, I address how water materializes and mediates uneven landscapes of livability, as well as new modes of living in common among those excluded from the urban commons. I introduce the concepts of “bluelining” and “blues infrastructures” in order to think through the contested assemblages of water, race, and space at the margins of urban life.
with Andy Silva and We the People of Detroit. Water Insecurity and Psychosocial Distress: A Novel Approach.
Article under review at Journal of Public Health
Water insecurity poses a significant global challenge to health and development. While the biophysical and economic impacts of inadequate water and sanitation are well documented, the complex emotional and social tolls of water insecurity are less understood – particularly in the global North. In this article, we advance understandings of the psychosocial dimensions of water insecurity in Detroit, Michigan, where an estimated 100,000 households have been disconnected from water and sanitation services since the city declared bankruptcy in 2013. A community-based participatory research study was conducted among residents of a local food pantry, using a measure tailored to local conditions of water stress administered alongside the Kessler Psychological Distress scale. Our ordinary least squares regression models reveal a substantial, statistically significant effect of water insecurity on psychological distress. These results are robust to the inclusion of a number of socioeconomic and demographic controls. Additionally, financial stress in paying for water and sanitation produces significant distress, even independent of water supply status.
with Anthony Wright. Protecting Urban Health and Safety: Balancing Care and Harm in an Era of Mass Incarceration. (2016)
Read from The Journal of Urban Health
This paper explores theoretical, spatial, and mediatized pathways through which policing poses harms to the health of marginalized communities in the urban US. ,We examine the influence of the "broken windows" model in both policing and public health, revealing alternate institutional strategies for responding to urban disorder in the interests of the health and safety of the city. Drawing on ecosocial theory and medical anthropology, we consider the roles of the segregated built environment and historical experience in the embodiment of structural vulnerability with respect to police violence. If public health workers and advocates are to play a role in responding to the call of the Black Lives Matter movement, it is important to understand the interpretations and translations of urban social life that circulate on the streets, in the media, in public policy, and in institutional practice.