the
ecotone Journal of Environmental Studies | University of Oregon
on the cover: “Conditioning, Montevideo” By Aylie Baker
about
the ecotone
THE ECOTONE is the journal of the Environmental Studies Program and is created by graduate students at the University of Oregon. The journal provides a venue for communication and exchange within and beyond the Environmental Studies Program among undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and facilitates cross-campus dialogue between disciplines and departments. The Ecotone serves as a venue for sharing professional interests, discussing environmental concerns, and facilitating creative expression. The Ecotone is published annually and includes journal articles, nonfiction, fiction, poetry, art, and other creative submissions. If you have questions or comments, would like to submit work, or want to be placed on the mailing list, please contact:
The Ecotone Environmental Studies Program 5223 University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403 ecotoneuofo@gmail.com
photo: Wenhui Qiu | “Unidentified Moth�
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tableof
contents
About the Ecotone Editor’s Note About the Contributors
1 4 7
text
2
Mahi Mahi Aylie Baker
10
How to Imagine Tomorrow for Today? Shane Hall
14
Mountain Agriculture Adrian Robins
25
Portrait of a Bryozoa Keats Conley
34
Fossils Are Heating Up Samuel Moore
37
Hopes of an African Child Sigride Jenniska Asseko
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the ecotone | 2014
Ice Storm Gayla WardWell
50
Pitchpoling Allyson Woodard
54
Biodiversity at Twenty-Five Brendan Bohannan Alan Dickman Nicolae Morar Ted Toadvine ed. Allyson Woodard
58
Eating In Urban Frontiers Brooke Havlik
74
art Aylie Baker Timothy Chen Keats Conley Hannah Fuller Jordan Grace Brooke Havlik Solveig Noll Bryan Putnam Wenhui Qiu Adrian Robins Celina Stilphen Allyson Woodard
12, 23, cover 6, 15, 18 35 42, 45, 63 51, 52 74-86 20, 72 9, 46, 119 1, 59, 66, 96 2, 24, 28, 32 5, 68 36, 41, 60
editor’s note
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Adrian Robins | “Nepal, Breathing”
editor's
note
I’VE BEEN THINKING recently about a phone call I received almost
exactly two years ago: I was sitting at my desk at work, and an Oregon
number popped up on my cell phone. It was Alan Dickman, calling to tell me that I’d been accepted into the Environmental Studies Master’s
program. I think at the time I made sure to sound grateful yet undecided (why not relish a fleeting opportunity to act coy?), but truth be told, I would have signed my name then and there to the decision. Like many
of my soon-to-be peers (I later learned), I felt that ENVS would offer me
something rare—perhaps even unique—among graduate programs. I wanted to interact with scientists without having to become one. I wanted
to study with writers, but I also wanted to study with historians. I felt that my college education had given me the basics of conservation biology and
a good nose for environmental themes in gothic literature, but I wanted more pragmatic answers. How do we solve our energy crisis? How do we best integrate social justice into environmental politics?
I haven’t found all those answers. ENVS can be unnerving, actually, in
its ability to test every answer you thought you had, and I now find it laughable that I expected any kind of calming resolution. Environmental issues are a big, complicated mess, and none among of us know the full
solution. What I wasn’t naive about, however, was my instinct that an
interdisciplinary community was where I wanted to be: it’s difficult to be
individually prescient, but as a collective, I still cling to an optimism that we can craft intelligent, compassionate plans of action.
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Celina Stilphen | “Crater Lake, OR”
The Ecotone is an expression of that collaboration. Read on and you will learn about paleontology’s contribution to climate science; you will find fiction about a fishing vessel, and an interview with ENVS faculty about
the debatable value of biodiversity. You will see photographs by Adrian
Robins, an undergraduate who recently travelled to the Himalayas, and poetry by our rock, Graduate Programs Coordinator Gayla WardWell,
who recently survived an ice storm. This is the community that was on the other side of that phone call. I have relished the opportunity, as editor, to
show them off, and I remain ever grateful for their fire, their warmth, their disputes and collaborations, and their eagerness to share.
—Allyson Woodard April, 2014
editor’s note
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Timothy Chen
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contributor bios
SIGRIDE JENNISKA ASSEKO is a senior in environmental studies
who will also graduate with a minor in geology. She is from Gabon, and is very much interested in natural resources management and preservation, as well as environmental health and safety.
JULIE BACON, aka “Pazamàdjigan,” is a PhD student in environmental studies and sociology. Her loves include pitbulls, stick games, and tintype photography.
AYLIE BAKER is a first year master’s student in environmental studies.
She enjoys long walks and is currently hard at work on an eco-critique of Frozen, but is thinking of letting it go.
TIMOTHY CHEN is a master’s student studying environmental justice. He likes ice cream and super cheap wine that comes in large jugs.
KEATS CONLEY is an alumna of the master’s program in environmental
studies who has remained at the U of O to pursue a Ph.D. in biology. A member of the Sutherland lab, she studies hydrodynamic aspects of feeding by marine mucous-net filter-feeders, such as salps and appendicularians.
HANNAH FULLER is a lover of music, nature and community service. She is majoring in environmental studies with a minor in geology. Born
and raised in Oregon, her favorite thing to do in her free time is find a cozy spot—particularly in the sun—and read a good book.
about the contributors
7
JORDAN GRACE is working toward a degree in environmental science
and PPPM (Planning, Public Policy, and Management), which will be completed in 2014. His interests include photography and outdoor
adventures, and he hails from the land of the sun: Huntington Beach, Southern California.
SHANE HALL is going into his fourth year of the ESSP doctoral program.
He studies the ways global environmental crises are represented in literature and teaches as a GTF for environmental studies and composition classes. He can hum and whistle at the same time, which allows him to attract leopard frogs during mating season.
BROOKE HAVLIK graduated in the fall of 2013 with a master’s in
environmental studies, after which she moved 3,000 miles to Boston and currently works for the local PBS and NPR station. She spends her spare time growing food and practicing her Bahstonian accent.
SAMUEL MOORE is a master ’s student in environmental studies, focusing on environmental history, ecology and photography. He grew
up in Massachusetts, in the snow and on the beach. He love bikes, tripods, charismatic megafauna, and college radio.
SOLVEIG NOLL is an environmental science and geography double major, but devotes a lot of his time to painting and craftsmanship inspired by the natural environment and the balance between fine art and science. Someday, he hopes to create sustainable urban spaces.
BRYAN PUTNAM did his growing up in a rural community at the blurry edge of wilderness at the Cascade Range. His practice is built upon
a continued fascination with wild spaces and the human communities skirting them. He is currently living in the Northwest and will graduate with an MFA from the University of Oregon this spring, 2014.
WENHUI QUI is a master’s student working on environmental education curriculum for an organization in China. He likes nature photography, biking for photography, and hiking for photography.
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ADRIAN ROBINS is an environmental science major, with a minor in biology, in his senior (though not his last) year at UO. He enjoys exploring
the connections between things, whether they are a person and the forest, pollinators and a harvest, or a steady mind and a happy life.
CELINA STILPHEN is a senior pursuing a B.A. in environmental
studies, with minors in geography and French. Outside the classroom,
she can be found surfing, tide-pooling, hiking, and photographing the natural environment.
GAYLA WARDWELL is a poetic and vegan forest-dweller who, for the past 12 years, has been the Environmental Studies Graduate Programs Coordinator.
ALLYSON WOODARD is a master’s student in environmental studies and multimedia journalism. She feels most at home under a sagebrush.
Bryan Putnam | “Lunch Break”
about the contributors
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mahi mahi BY AYLIE BAKER
JUST AFTER SUNRISE one morning, Morice pulls one in. She comes up thrashing, throwing scales and seashine all over the deck.
At the noise, people emerge from their bunks and stagger over to watch. There are nine of us on the sailing canoe. Since we set sail a week ago
from Koror, Palau, we’ve been eating only canned food and rice, and so everyone is hungry.
Rodney pins her tail with his feet while Miano strikes her humped head
with a piece of wood. We work quietly. Yesterday Aru let out a yell when
he hooked a fish only to lose it just as its dorsal fin slipped the surface. And so we hover over the mahi mahi in stillness, watching as she continues to shiver for several minutes, gills opening and closing like shutters.
As she dies, she changes color. Her glossy belly flashes from green to zinging blue to white.
Finally she fades to a tired, green-gray. The seawater sinks into the deck, and one by one each muscle expires but for her skittering eyes.
Surely she must see, as well as feel, her own ending. What if, I wonder, these flashing colors are her final utterances?
Kurt fills a bucket and we carefully rinse away the blood. He scrubs the
scales until only white flesh remains. When he slices open the stomach,
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three tiny shells slip into his hand, glowing, like little moons. Kazuyo
and I pass them back and forth like treasures. Their dimpled shells are paper-thin.
Kazuyo recognizes them. “Baby nautilus,” she says. “Living fossils of the sea.” Hearing their name dredges up images of the regal mollusks standing guard at the foot of my grandparents’ bed. “I know they live very deep down,” Kazuyo says. From what subterranean mountain were they plucked? What depth, where
the sunlight no longer reaches? I can remember my grandfather teaching me about nautilus; I see him sweeping the dust off their backs and turning them over in his giant hands to mime their kicking feet with his fingers.
Sitting now on the deck of the canoe, I wade through this slippery memory, hoping to recover what I once knew about these terribly important and
unique creatures. But all I can gather is my grandfather’s heavy breathing, his eyebrows clenched in concentration as my Granny, standing on a chair behind him, prunes a pink geranium in the window.
For a moment I feel frustrated, knowing that what I have heard, I have
forgotten, that such knowing is floating somewhere out of reach—in a guidebook, or a library, or a moment when my grandfather was still living.
But then Kazuyo pokes the shell in my hand, grabs it, and lifts it up to her eye, so that water drips down her wrist.
After we settle down to eat the soup Rodney has made, after we pass the shells round one by one among the crew, cupping them in our hands to shield the sunlight and better make out the thread-thin lines that wind
round their bellies, after we pull up water to wash the last scales from the deck, Kazuyo and I lean over the leeward side of the canoe.
We let the nautilus shells roll off our hands slowly, quietly watching as
they break the surface, drifting behind us now, until they are twinkles in our wake. l
mahi mahi
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Aylie Baker | “Abu Yamin”
how to imagine tomorrow for
today?
A writing guide to your very own eco-utopia BY SHANE HALL
“Imagine all the people… living life in peace” - John Lennon
“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” - Vladimir Lenin
IMAGINE the end of the world. How does this vast machine stop? Is it with a bang—thermonuclear warfare, asteroid-bombardment, super-volcano—or with a whimper—
featuring global warming, toxic seas, or creeping pandemics? It is not difficult, in this day and age, to foresee End Times. Humans, from 2014
BCE to 2014 CE, have had a tendency to imagine the terminus of all things
in lurid, vivid ways. Judeo-Christian eschatological tradition holds up as a particularly robust archive of apocalyptic predictions and anxieties. What perhaps distinguishes our globalized moment in regards to the End are
the rich assortment of secular apocalypses that seem not only possible, but plausible.
While we are easily able to lean on our sci-fi blockbusters and novels to
render up a ready-made Armageddon, it seems more difficult to imagine— in the same visual way—the kind of world we’d want to live in.
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Timothy Chen
This is a problem. If we can envision no better futures than the likes of
Hollywood dystopias and if we can’t articulate the things we’re willing to work towards in the world, then the much-vaunted ingenuity of humanity
seems a paltry, trivial thing. This problem of imaginative failure is a problem that we can begin to rectify immediately. And by immediately, I
mean right now; by “we,” I mean you the reader, and me, the text before your eyes. How we begin to manifest a sustainable future must begin with how we conceptualize it.
HENCEFORTH, this document is officially an instruction manual: 1. Use your blank page, or boot up a word processing program on a
computer. You’re going to write, and you’re going to have to write fast, so make sure you are comfortable and ready to go.
2. You have 10 minutes to complete the following activity. You don’t have to show your writing to anyone but yourself, so there’s really no excuse for getting the writing jitters or giving up halfway through.
3. Read the following prompt and start your timer. Write for ten minutes
before you continue reading this article. The goal is not to produce a finely honed work of literature; the goal is to write and imagine through writing. So don’t get hung up on sounding serious or silly—keep scribbling!
YOUR WRITING PROMPT: What is sustainability/sustainable development? This begs the questions: What do we want the Earth to be like? What is worth sustaining? Imagine it is the year 2075, and to the joy of environmentalists, “utopia” has become
a reality… and to your eyes this world is good. What does this world look
like? How do people live—where do people live? What characterizes the way society looks? What are the political landscapes, the environment,
social situations, etc. like? Are any of the major problems facing the world today completely alleviated… do any problems remain? Be creative, and consider what will change for the better.
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YOUR 10 MINUTES…
START…
NOW!
how to imagine tomorrow for today?
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Timothy Chen
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WHAT YOU’VE JUST DONE is write a piece of speculative fiction, a
blend of science fiction and fantasy literature. You can read this imaginative text like any other piece of literature or popular media: when we closely read a piece of literature we investigate how the form and narrative
produce meaning. What kind of story does your depiction of an eco-utopia tell?
Ursula K Le Guin, one of America’s most renowned authors of science
fiction (also known for her poetry, children’s literature, and literary criticism), says that “sci-fi” literature is often mistaken as a genre that
predicts the future. For Le Guin, “science fiction is always a metaphor.
We are really talking about right here, right now.” Instead of deviating from reality, most speculative fiction mirrors it. But this mirror-quality is
a bit trickier than it might seem; the reality any piece of speculative fiction mirrors is not really “reality” with a capital “R.” Instead the fun-house
mirror of speculative fiction reflects and refracts particular perspectives
that different people have of their own lived realities. The mirror shows an image of an image of the real.
This means that the piece of fiction you just (speedily) crafted is thrice
removed from the present reality. Your experience of reality is partial, perspectival, and informed by your personally- and culturally-contingent
history (this is your first removal from reality). Under the harsh pressure of being timed, you were only able to articulate certain ideas and issues
in your utopic writing. So even if you could conceive of a utopia in ten minutes, you likely were not able to give full conceptual voice to your
ideas in this particular act of writing (this selective incompleteness is the
second removal from reality). When a reader, even yourself, reads this fun-house mirror of the now concerning the future, that reader will only
pick up on certain ideas encoded in the text of your fiction (the third retreat from reality).
So how does all this help us recover the imaginative ability to conceive of
a sustainable, just planet? Short works of science fiction like the one you
how to imagine tomorrow for today?
19
just wrote can help us investigate our values and our sense of reality while living through the troubling present.
In virtually every environmental studies course I teach here at the University of Oregon I have been asking my students to perform this same
writing exercise that you just completed. After students finish writing their 10-minute utopias I ask them to read these hopeful futures out loud to one another (so in this sense, reader, you have it easy!). Then I give students the two tasks that I now also give to you:
TASK: Read your rendition of utopia and list what central social and environmental problems have been removed or ameliorated in your future world.
TASK: What problems remain in your utopia? Which present-day problems did you leave out or neglect mentioning in your utopia?
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Solveig Noll
In class we critically discuss what problems we sought to eliminate in our utopias and those which seemed to fly under the radar or remain intact by
closely attending to the representations of utopia we find in our writing.
Implicit in our early discussions is the idea that by timing our writing we force ourselves to perform imaginative triage; the problems we wish away match those we feel are both most menacing and most mutable to
human meddling. What’s interesting about these conversations is when a central problem in one story remains firmly entrenched in another. We
tease out what aspects of society remain fundamentally the same, which have changed, and why.
What we tend to find fascinating about these discussions is the remarkable consistency of tropes and figures found throughout the imagined ecoutopias. For example, in some students’ utopias glistening cities powered
by abundant, clean electricity define the hopeful landscape. These techno-wonderlands feature an ever-increasing consumption of sleek and
entertaining goods, without crippling environmental and social costs.
how to imagine tomorrow for today?
21
Other stories see paradise as a return to decentralized societies, either suburban or rural, and rely on images of manual labor and tight-knit communities. The third dominant trope amid the hundreds of utopias I
have received is a violent one, wherein a radical resurgence of non-human
nature enacts apocalypse, “cleansing” humanity and allowing a severelydepleted population to again live harmoniously with each other and the earth. Personally, I am not sure which of the latter two scenarios is more unsettling: large urban populations simply vanishing without comment, or a bloody holocaust of billions.
Nevertheless, my point is not to criticize these utopic visions for their
verisimilitude or political disposition. What I find valuable in writing
and reading these quickly-etched fantasies (and what I hope you find interesting about your own) is how these texts allow us to investigate our current values and perceptions, our insights and blind spots.
To be sure, most people share some values that they desire in their utopia: a utopian world would ensure freedom, prosperity, and have a healthy
and biodiverse environment. But these are abstracted ideals, and it is easy
to agree to a principle of “freedom” if we’re seldom required to agree upon what “freedom” means. In this writing and thinking exercise you
are forced to make manifest these abstract values using the imaginative tools you bring to bear on the task. These tools are largely supplied by your cultural surroundings.
DESPITE THE DIVERSITY of values and aspirations we all have for what a beneficent future might hold, dominant trends within these timed
writing exercises underscore some of the troubling assumptions that govern the imaginations of even those of us committed to progressive
environmental and social change. What mines would furnish the metals
and rock that would go into making those steel towers to the heavens? Who would build those structures and who would live in them? Why
do some utopias begin with the act of redistributing wealth while others assume that poverty (and wealth) will always persist? How is it that some
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the ecotone | 2014
utopias are clearly anti-racist while others avoid topics of race, gender, and
sexuality? Comparing environmental utopias and critically investigating the images of those utopias allows us to ask what kinds of problems—and solutions—we find to be bound up with one another.
Looking at utopias isn’t about inventing the future, but rather about
interrogating our present values, assumptions, and knowledge. And I think this is a valuable task in service of answering our initial question:
how can we begin to re-conceptualize the dead-end apocalypses that
harass our collective imagination without ever moving us past global
environmental crisis? How can we visualize “the good life” for seven billion people that doesn’t overtax the earth’s plenty? Now you have written your own, brief utopia. What can it tell you about yourself? The way you think and approach the difficult task of building a better tomorrow? How can this change the way you envision today?
Even though it may, in the words of Slavoj Zizek, be “easier to imagine
the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” the latter task is a worthy
project. Not for the sake of predicting that end, but rather for reimagining the present. l
Aylie Baker | “Paula, Robinson Crusoe Island”
how to imagine tomorrow for today?
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Adrian Robins | “Morning Chai�
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mountain
agriculture
Resiliant Kumaon agroecosystems in an industrializing world BY ADRIAN ROBINS
I AWOKE ONE MORNING in late October as light was seeping into the starry Indian sky. The first of the birds—red-vented bulbuls, and maybe
a drongo or two—were warming up for the morning chorus. I sat up in my sleeping bag and scanned the camp; nothing was moving except the river nearby and the jungle beyond. We were in Nachani, a small village in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas. The group I was traveling with
had been invited to join the village in the fields that morning for the
beginning of wheat season, and I was the only taker. I rubbed my eyes
and set off toward the village, my legs eager to bring me there. This was the last week of my study abroad term with Wildlands Studies, and I was
doing last-minute research for my cultural project. For the five preceding weeks I had interviewed villagers across the Kumaon region of the Indian
state of Uttarakhand to better understand Indian agricultural systems. By talking to, observing, and working alongside these villagers on their land, I learned how traditional subsistence agriculture is not only more productive than industrialized agriculture, but also ensures the health and survival of both humans and the environment.
mountain agriculture
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In Kumaon 70-80% of the
of these three contributors: forests,
agriculture—the majority of whom
villagers in these agroecosystems is
population makes their living from
grow and raise their food, with little or no surplus. The culture
that arises from this population
structure is very different from our society that has become detached
from the land. A mere 2% of Americans are farmers, according
to the American Farm Bureau. The world of subsistence unveiled
itself to me as I trekked in the rural Himalaya, where hills and
mountains from the Terai to Tibet
are carved into terraces, eating away at dense forest and radiating
out from frequent villages. Each day we would pass at least one moving pile of grass—a woman
carrying fodder for her family’s
livestock—as well as entire families working on the terraces from before
dawn till dusk. Forests around
villages tend to be healthy--unless the Forest Service had converted them to turpentine-producing pine
monocultures. Livestock amble
about roads and trails, eternally searching for the perfect tuft of
grass. The agricultural ecosystems, or agroecosystems, of Kumaon are
productive due to the cooperation
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livestock, and villagers. The role of remarkably productive, and many of them are committed to protecting
the productivity of the localized systems.
The major components of
subsistence agroecosystems in
Kumaon are forests, livestock, and villagers. Forests produce fodder for livestock, wood for fire
and construction, and medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs)
for villagers. Livestock convert fodder into manure for fertilizer
and produce food, meat, income,
wool and power. Villagers, besides directing the agroecosystem itself, produce the harvest, maintain the
forest, and raise the livestock, in addition to saving seed from the previous harvest. These three niches interlock to form a complex and
productive system of agriculture
that has been developed over thousands of years. So too has the
villager's role in the system been established in four fundamental ways: stewarding the forest, caring
for their livestock, producing the
harvest and maintaining the seed bank.
The first role of villagers in Kumaon agroecosystems is harvesting from
and stewarding the forest, the primary producer that creates the
initial biomass for the system. The
relationship between them and the forest goes back as far as subsistence
itself. The forest provides a
by the healthy forests throughout the region that have survived thousands of years of extraction and habitation. It became clear
as I spoke with these people that
their deep respect for the land was
inherent; the reciprocal relationship between them and the land was a
given. It was therefore no surprise to see healthy forests and rivers.
livelihood for the villagers through
The second ecosystem service
and medicine, and in return the
stewardship of the livestock niche.
fodder, fuel, construction materials
villagers keep the forest healthy,
as their livelihoods depend on its survival. Men and women play separate roles in this relationship, though each plays an important
part. The majority of villagers I interviewed were women, while
my translator was a man, so there may be some bias in my findings.
According to my interviewees,
it is the women's role to gather grass to use as fodder for their livestock. Men will occasionally
assist their wives in this task,
though more typically they collect the wood for fuel and construction materials. Most harvesting in the rural villages is done sustainably and respectfully, as demonstrated
that villagers produce is their The relationship between villagers and their livestock is just as critical
to a subsistence lifestyle as the human-forest relationship. Cows, sheep, chickens, goats and various
cow-yak hybrids each provides something valuable to their owner,
including milk, wool, eggs, meat, power and manure. The villagers give fodder collected in the forest to the livestock, which in turn produce manure that is stored until
the beginning of a new crop season, when it is scattered on fields as a
fertilizer. Twice a year, in April for rice season and late October/early
November for wheat, women all over the region carry the manure collected in the past six months
mountain agriculture
27
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the ecotone | 2014
Adrian Robins | “Auntie, of Dantu�
mountain agriculture
29
out to the terraces. On an eight-
of weeds in Himalayan fields
mountains to the foothills, we must
and pesticides. Crops generally
hour jeep ride descending from the
have passed a hundred women in immaculate, multicolored saris
carrying piles of manure in baskets
on their heads. They scatter the
manure on the fields before seed is
sown, and the men follow behind with a plough led by two bulls. The
women follow them once more, breaking up mud clumps with a long, hammer-like tool. These
gendered roles go back generations, and few stray from them. The
result of their cooperation is a sown, ploughed, and fertilized field made possible by livestock
and their owners’ yearlong care of them. In this way, the human-
livestock relationship is a key factor of the Kumaon subsistence agroecosystems.
require substantial thinning, due to a somewhat imprecise method of
sowing seed: a handful of seed and
a flick of the wrist. While women are doing most of the day-to-day tasks—i.e. weeding, thinning, and
harvesting—I would find their
spouses in local shops, gambling
with other men, or simply standing around observing passersby. When
it comes to harvesting the biannual wheat and rice crops, however, men and women do an equal amount of the work because there
is so much to be done. A subsistence agricultural lifestyle requires a
daily input of energy to maintain a healthy system, and much of this energy is shared between men and women.
The third role of villagers in those
In part because of this constant
of doing manual labor in the field.
subsistence agricultural systems of
agroecosystems is their direct role
Aside from ploughing, fertilizing, and sowing seed, Kumaoni farmers do a fair amount of weeding,
thinning, and harvesting. Weeding is a necessary part of any organic
farming operation, and the amount
30
signal a lack of chemical fertilizers
the ecotone | 2014
input of energy and care, the Kumaon are much healthier than the industrialized system of the
West, for both the villagers and the land. The Kumaoni method is a
time-tested sustainable cooperation between the land, animals, and
humans that keeps the soil fertile,
200 varieties of kidney bean in
forests thriving, the livestock
50,000 varieties of rice in India.
the water clean, the air pure, the
strong, and the humans fed. These peoples have been farming the
Himalayas for millennia and are alive today to prove it. In the West,
less than a century after the rise of industrialized agriculture, we are
facing environmental catastrophes
that threaten our very survival, let alone that of the soil, water, air, forest, and livestock. This resiliency of humans and the environment, in combination with genetic diversity and food security, demonstrate
the superiority of the subsistence system.
The last service of villagers in this complex system of agriculture is the
role of seed saving. This practice, along with the country’s ban on
certain genetically modified crops and some villages’ refusal to use
incentivized high-yield rice and
wheat varieties, has resulted in an extraordinary number of crop
varieties. According to Malika Virdi, a member of the women's
rights organization Maati in
Munsiyari, there are 70 varieties of millet in Kumaon’s Johaar Valley,
neighboring region Garhwal, and For two weeks I volunteered at Navdanya's Biodiversity
Conservation Farm, where I helped
sow 190 varieties of wheat to help maintain and diversify their
seed bank. In a single field I saw
more varieties of wheat than all crop varieties sold in the average
American supermarket! Navdanya,
an organization founded by Dr. Vandana Shiva, has helped establish
111 seed banks across India, 17 of which are in Uttarakhand. Their flood tolerant varieties
saved thousands of Indians from
starvation during the 2008 Bihar flood, while their drought tolerant
varieties have saved countless lives during the ever-more-common droughts that have resulted from
a more erratic monsoon season.
The villagers of the region as well as the rest of India thus promote
and protect the productivity of the
agroecosystem while ensuring their own survival by maintaining the diversity and resiliency of seeds.
Kumaoni subsistence farmers are
showing other signs of resiliency
mountain agriculture
31
Adrian Robins | “The Face of Panchachuli�
besides saving seeds, such as
land for the city. While intentions
in favor of traditional agricultural
population resists modernization.
resisting subsidized modernization
techniques. This resilience is particularly evident in Nachani,
where I worked in the fields that early October morning. In Nachani,
as in most Indian agricultural villages, government subsidies and emigration are threats to the
traditional way of life. Recently the village was sold a heavily
discounted tractor by the Indian
government in an effort to increase
agricultural productivity as well as encourage villagers to continue
farming, instead of leaving their
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the ecotone | 2014
may be good, most of the local Even with this technology
available, on that early morning I saw only bull-driven ploughs,
the plastic-covered tractor sitting
unused off to the side. Manoj, a young villager of 24, explained to
me that the beginning of a crop season is a community event,
where the village as a whole will
wake up before dawn and begin work on a particular section of the
terrace. I was fortunate enough to
be in the village at this particular time, when I could take part in
such an event. While working in the
emigration of the younger
jokes, and, despite the hard work,
industrial system replaces the
fields villagers conversed and told
everyone was having a good time. If instead the tractor were to be used,
one person could plough at a given
time, and that person wouldn’t be able to participate in the community
experience. Because of a respect for
the culture and traditions of the
subsistence agricultural lifestyle, the entire agroecosystem becomes stronger and more resilient in the face of industrialization. Though
threats
exist
to
the traditional subsistence agroecosystems of the Kumaon region, much can be said for its
high level of productivity and for the population’s commitment
generation. As this happens the subsistence one, destroying the soil,
water, air, land, and animals along with the health and well being of
humans. So inextricably tied are
humans and the environment, that
if one falls, the other falls with it. However, great effort is being made
in Kumaon to resist these threats, and the villagers there serve as
an example to farmers across the
globe of a highly productive and
passionately resilient part of a
thriving subsistence agroecosystem. Witnessing and participating in this healthy agricultural system gave me hope for a truly sustainable system of agriculture. l
to preserving this productivity. That the systems have survived millennia
of
subsistence
farming and nearly fifty years of increasing industrialization is a testimony to this resiliency. Many agroecosystems of its kind are disappearing in the world as the
productivity of first villagers and
then the other major components begin to slip due to modernization
of farming technology and
mountain agriculture
33
portrait of
a
bryozoa
BY KEATS CONLEY
It’s an animal that could also be spot of moss. Lichen smudged on the underside of rock. Bread mold. A gob of pink gum on your shoe. Your eyes could skip right over it like the flattest stone across calm water. What is a bryozoan? Moss animal that feeds with a crown. 500 million-year old filter feeder, body wall surrounded by exoskeleton. 3-week lifespan. Individual, connected zooids. Sea mats. An animal of animals. Under a microscope, the zooid body looks like a daisy: lophophore growing out of terracotta rim. Hybrid of ladybug and desiccated dandelion seed. The lophophore is retractable, and under a microscope feeding bryozoans become ballerinas in unending pliÊs. They grow bush-like, fan-like, like a head of lettuce. Trunks, branches, and leaves. Kenozooids. Autozooids. Secreting their skeletons in the seclusion of their own phylum, alone in the immense company of animals.
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the ecotone | 2014
35
Keats Conley | “Bryozoa”
Allyson Woodard | “Oligocene Soil”
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the ecotone | 2014
fossils are heating up Can paleontology use climate change to get people excited about bones again? BY SAMUEL MOORE
PALEONTOLOGIST Edward
On May 10th of last year, the
on his desk at the University of
atmospheric carbon dioxide
Byrd Davis keeps a chessboard
Oregon. The pieces are red and
white, classically British. They remind him of Leigh Van Valen’s
famous hypothesis: organisms are forced to constantly adapt
and proliferate only to keep pace with the rest of their environment,
like Alice and the Red Queen
running as fast as they can just to stay in place. That’s kind of what
it’s like to be a paleontologist, too—their environment is one of
scarce resources, where scientists
compete for public attention. Today,
Davis and his colleagues aim to revitalize their image by providing a unique and, they hope, essential, perspective on climate change.
Mauna Loa Observatory detected
concentrations in excess of 400 parts per million, higher than at any time
in at least the last 800,000 years, and probably since the Pliocene. In other words, the last time CO2 was this high, the oceans were between
33 and 131 feet higher than they are
today, and there were wild camels in eastern Oregon.
Scientists who are alarmed by such numbers include climatologists and oceanographers, and also paleontologists like Davis. He
manages the fossil collection
at the University’s Museum of
Natural and Cultural History
(it holds approximately 80,000 curated specimens), and is an
fossils are heating up
37
Assistant Professor in the geology
about the novelty of this field—the
school’s Volcanology building (all
something that people have been
department. I found him in the of the people who actually study volcanos had moved to the newer Cascade Hall).
“A lot of people are really concerned about changing environments and anthropogenic climate change,”
Davis told me, “and there’s been a lot of funding that’s been directed specifically at answering questions related to climate change.”
Davis is tall and stern looking, but his blog gives another impression: “My overall goal here is to educate
about the wonderful world of deep
time biology,” he writes, “so I’ll try to tie it back to that whenever
possible. If I can’t, I’ll tie it back to Batman.”
Lately, paleontologists like him
new catchphrase puts a name on thinking about for a long time.
“I like to make chess analogies a
lot,” Davis admitted. “Chess is
nice because you can pick up any
particular game in progress, and if you know all the rules you can talk about what are good options for
each side to make, and future moves. And sometimes you can reconstruct
what previous moves must have been, from knowing the rule set of
the game.” Reconstructing these previous moves is the domain of paleontology—if they can trace the
movements made by species during climate changes in the past, they
can shed light on how species will
react to the big changes happening now.
are positioning their work toward
conservation. “People started to
FOR MUCH OF ITS HISTORY,
from conservation biology using
glamour that comes when
specifically try to address questions
paleontology carried the eccentric
paleontological methods, and really
mythical creatures are scientifically
in the last five years that effort has been given a name, and that is Conservation Paleobiology,” Davis
told me. But he’s under no illusions
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the ecotone | 2014
validated. From Thomas Jefferson’s
obsession with mammoths to Dr. Joseph Leidy’s assembly of the first complete dinosaur skeleton
( H a d ro s a u r u s f o l k i i ) i n 1 8 5 8 ,
struggles to compete for funding.
again and again in a long golden
never in leadership positions in
sensational new animals turned up
age. Amateur and professional naturalists alike ranged across the continent in search of the next big
find, driven by curiosity and the richness of the American fossil
record. On the West Coast, John Campbell Merriam identified
and categorized countless fossils, including Smilodon, a saber-toothed
cat. Like other paleontologists of his
day he was financed by a famous benefactress, Annie Montague Alexander.
Later, broad thinkers and naturalists unified paleontology with other
f i e l d s . T h e b r i l l i a n t G e o rg e
Gaylord Simpson incorporated
natural selection and genetics into the study of fossils in 1944, and provided an essential foundation
Paleontologists are almost their departments, and when they die or retire they are often
replaced by trendier specialists i n e n v i r o n m e n t a l g e o l o g y,
hydrogeology or geobiology. Donald Prothero, a prominent
researcher, has bemoaned the lack of money and fresh blood.
“It doesn’t matter that paleontology
is cool and popular with the students or that ‘dinosaurs for jocks’ courses are taught to huge
numbers of students in many universities around the country,”
Prothero wrote in a recent book. “Grant dollars call the shots, and
paleontologists are perpetually at a disadvantage.”
for reconciling ancient fossils
IN A FIELD hard pressed to
But the giants of paleontology are
for applied research about recent
with current biological thinking. often dinosaurs in their own right, and later in his career Simpson
dismissed groundbreaking new theories like continental drift.
To d a y, p a l e o n t o l o g y i s a sparsely populated field that
remain relevant, the potential atmospheric trends is compelling.
The story of climate change is often one of displacement and conflict for
organisms across the globe. Friction
occurs when shifting conditions force species to adapt or perish.
fossils are heating up
39
Successful adaptation often means
TO U N D E R S TA N D w h e re
much like pieces on a chessboard.
future environment, biologists
edging into someone else’s turf— Some animals, like the alpine chipmunk, abandon lower regions
and retreat to the uphill portion of their range. Others, like the California vole, actually enlarge their range by advancing uphill.
Vulnerable populations with narrow habitat requirements
bear the highest burden, and not
all species react the same; these
idiosyncrasies make conservation extremely difficult. It’s not always
species might end up in a
use complex computer models that create hypothetical habitat distributions under different scenarios. These predictions don’t
come out of nowhere, though,
which is where paleontologists
come in. Davis explains that “one
of the things that’s being ignored that’s an important tool for helping us figure out how to respond to climate change is all the data that we can get from the fossil record.”
easy to figure out how a species
Studies of fossilized animals can
and the tools to do so are still
because this is not the first time
will respond to altered climates,
being developed. Scientists have come up with outlandish ways to
help different species adjust their
habitats—from special corridors
that guide relocation to actions
as micromanaged as actually trucking animals to new homes. But
anything they do depends on two
predictions: what future conditions will be, and how organisms will respond to them.
help predict future behavior, that the earth’s climate has shifted. Jefferson’s mammoths were vestiges of a much different
world—21,000 years ago, at their maximum, glaciers extended well
into North America. The remaining
species from that period occupy
very different home ranges today than they did when the continent was blanketed in ice.
By repositioning habitat distribution models to look backwards and by plugging in historical climate data, Davis and other researchers can
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the ecotone | 2014
check their accuracy. Comparing
computer-generated species ranges to those found in the fossil record
reveals shortcomings in the ways that the simulation thinks about environmental change.
“We have lots and lots of fossil
material from the last 200,000 years or so, so looking at those systems can give us more information about
how natural systems behave than we
could get from studying any number
of managed wildernesses today,” Davis said.
In a paper published this year, Davis collaborated with Jenny L. McGuire, a postdoc at the
University of Washington, to test
computer predictions using fossils
of West Coast voles. Using a climate simulation, they predicted where the
burrowing mammals should have
lived approximately 21,000 years ago. To ‘ground truth’ their computer model, they compared it to the actual
distribution of fossils from that time. “The key realization from the vole
study is that some of these voles
work well with the kind of systems we’re using to project ranges into the future,” Davis explained. “But some
Allyson Woodard | “Steens Shadow”
fossils are heating up
41
Hannah Fuller | “Neighborhood Dragon�
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the ecotone | 2014
of those species don’t respond to
the new field “also has the potential
the tools expect them to.” In the
foundations,” and has concrete
the environment in the way that species that didn’t respond as expected, the discrepancy between
projections and actual distribution might be explained by any number of factors—one idea is that the
models might not be accurately simulating precipitation. Even if a
certain range seems ideal, the actual area inhabited by voles might be
hemmed in by other factors like interspecies competition, predation, and the distribution of resources.
For the organisms that aren’t predicted well, Davis said, “those
niche models are not going to be of as much use in trying to plan for conservation of those species.”
The executive summary of a 2011 National Science Foundation Workshop on new opportunities in conservation paleobiology reads,
“basic research and applications that emerge from Conservation
Paleobiology will benefit society by
evaluating environmental impacts of the recent past and providing
guidelines for mitigation and restoration.” Not coincidentally,
the same summary observes that
to leverage funding from private
management applications likely to appeal to policymakers.
Davis thinks that paleontologists
like George Gaylord Simpson and John Campbell Merriam, seminal in the early and middle parts of the
20th century, were conceptually in tune with the way his research is going. “They just want to know: what are the biological processes
that have created this diversity
of life? What are the biological processes that control origination and extinction of species? What
are the biological processes that
control the distribution of species on the landscape? And it turns out
that understanding those processes is important, not just from an intellectual perspective, but from a conservation perspective as well.”
I n s u c h a n a u s t e re f u n d i n g
environment, paleontologists (and scientists generally) do not have the luxury of doing science, like
their golden-age predecessors,
just because it’s interesting. “We have to make it clear that the work
that we’re doing has some sort of
fossils are heating up
43
social consequence, that it’s worth
History has shown that so-called
our science,” Davis remarked. The
a waste of time. Although
society’s time to pay for us to do
chess metaphor that he likes to use also applies to grant money—
strategically positioned research has a much higher chance of getting attention. I asked him if the likelihood of receiving funding
affects his research priorities. He responded that “I have to admit
that I’m leaving several things aside right now because I feel like I have
better chances of getting funded if
I’m focusing on a conservation type question.”
Perhaps it’s good to fund high impact research first, but there is
no doubt in anyone’s mind that ‘nonessential’ fields are in crisis.
“Scientists have a real public image
problem right now,” said Davis. He
is taking his own steps to address this, using twitter and his blog, where you can find lay explanations
of his research alongside science fiction references and coverage of
comics conventions. But the squeeze
he feels is present everywhere in the sciences, where work of immediate
relevance is given priority over more fundamental explorations.
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the ecotone | 2014
‘pure’ research is by no means
today’s scientists are frequently
characterized as obscure or selfindulgent, many seemingly abstract
discoveries have had enormous practical implications: Einstein’s
theories led to nuclear technology, and today, quantum physics has
the potential to revolutionize computing. Fossils are no different,
and while it may behoove people like Davis to promote their research, it is up to us to pay attention.
It remains to be seen whether
paleontologists will be able to
capture the public imagination once again, but the question seems ever
more pressing. Can the dizzying perspective brought by deep time help us address the changes we
have wrought on this planet? In the
context of climate change, the Red
Queen metaphor seems doubly
appropriate. If species are already running as fast as they can, what
happens when we speed up the treadmill? l
45
Hannah Fuller | “Pond Shadow”
Bryan Putnam | “Drift”
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the ecotone | 2014
drift
47
hopes
of an
african child BY SIGRIDE JENNISKA ASSEKO
Africa, Land of my ancestors and cradle of humankind Land that once was praised for your resources and great warriors Land of purity and wisdom Land on which I was born a few years ago, what have you become? Every day, I go to the farm with my parents Every day, we face the same painful reality, a drier and barely productive soil Every day, the standing hope of my people is slowly being replaced by a rising despair Every day, our rivers are drier and the remaining waters are mostly undrinkable Every day, polluted water, air, and improper sanitations are making my people sick Every day, I witness strong men and women starving to death Every day, I see scavengers feeding on my people’s bodies
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Why is this happening to us? Why should we bear the consequences of other people’s actions? Why should our lands, waters, and air be polluted while we barely pollute the environment? Why should our lands dry out while we are not responsible for climate change? Why should we be the ones suffering the most from natural disasters when we cannot recover? Why should so many people starve to death while tons of food are wasted in other parts of the world? Why, why, and why so much misery? I hope that one day this torture ends I hope to see crystal clear and clean waters running again in our valleys and mountains, full of fish I hope to see tall, dense and green forests full of wildlife species of all kinds I hope to see our soils become fertile again I hope that one day we will produce enough food to sustain ourselves I hope that my people will not die of infectious diseases anymore I hope that my children will have a better life than mine I hope that one day, Africa, our land, regains its purity
hopes of an african child
49
ice storm BY GAYLA WARDWELL
We spent the night on the loveseat, Ambrose and I, before the Blaze King, feeding its hungry maw as we listened to the agony of the trees trying to shed their cloaks of ice. Snow for 48 hours, ice storm for eight. The Dougs groaned and cracked, gunshots in the night, bodies falling through the dark and rain to land, one prayed, far from possessions held dear. But still, the ache shared of frozen water bending trees to the ground and tearing their limbs from them in screeches and cries, but never without dignity and the steadfastness to stand tall and brave.
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Jordan Grace | “EMU in Snow�
Suddenly, the sound of shattering glass. For what seemed hours, thousands of crystal wineglasses flung to the ground, hitting stones, disintegrating in a fever of suicide. The trees groaned in relief and gratitude then. And Ambrose and I, throwing another log on the miniature inferno of the woodstove, curled together and slept, dreaming of stalwarts reaching to the sky, having passed another Great Northwest test, the ice storm.
ice storm
51
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53
Jordan Grace | “Snowy Tree Tunnel”
pitchpoling BY ALLYSON WOODARD
IDAHO WIND IS FICKLE. Gusts get distracted by the landscape’s ragged, crumpled granite, so they arrive impulsively: they blow at a
whisper, then suddenly turn ferocious, and never from the same direction.
Idaho sailors learn how to chase them, though. They scorn REI guidebooks
and crystal alpine lakes for the scum-laced wind tunnels laymen call reservoirs, and here, elation bellows past at 7 am. You have to search for it, when your state doesn’t meet the ocean. Usually the wind is crummy,
but if you know where to go and you’re willing to wake up for it, you can find little white shark fins—“whitecaps”—popping out of the water’s
surface. You can see the wind coming because it pushes out darker and darker streaks of navy, and even though I don’t sail much anymore I still
watch for these wind lines when I’m at a reservoir. It was here that my father taught me to read them, and never to trust them.
It was also here amid the discarded Budweiser cans and dirty snake grass-
speckled beaches that he fell in love with my mother. They stopped racing before I was born, but I grew up on stories of weekend regattas—rowdy
gatherings before twenty-somethings found kayaks and mountain bikes,
where my father blended margaritas off the battery of his Subaru and my
mother lake-bathed herself each morning between the twin hulls of her glistening catamaran. Hers was the boat they kept after marriage. By the time I was old enough to sail, the sun had disintegrated its white fiberglass
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the ecotone | 2014
body enough to leave milky streaks across our legs whenever we pushed it off the beach and flopped aboard, but I have pictures from when the boat was young—my mother in her red bikini and 5.2 meters of pearly, polished speed.
My parents adopted paranoia in earnest after they had babies. They wouldn’t risk whacking their daughter’s curls with the dolphin striker
(no joke—that’s an actual part of the boat), so I was only allowed on the
lake when anemic winds left us bobbing like a sunburned buoy. It was often Dad who took me out, and at the first whisper of a wind line he
would steer the two of us directly towards shore, roll down the mainsail,
and grope through our cooler’s hot dog-greased ice water for two beers and a Chucklin’ Cherry Squeezit. Then we would sit with Mom, watching
the lake turn dark and ospreys dive through the commotion. At such times
our boat seemed to long for either the future or the past, whichever would return it fastest to the wind. The halyard clanked against the mast like a
bell, beating out a steady rhythm to Mom and Dad’s reminiscences. Dad would talk about how he once had a garishly-colored Hobie catamaran
which flipped forward—or pitchpoled—so eagerly that he would take bets on how close he could land the tip of its mast to shore. Then Mom would
bring up the first race Dad crewed on her boat, (a boat which legend held
couldn’t be pitchpoled), when he was so panicked about flipping that she had to kick his stiff bodyweight forward to pick up speed.
Never in my life have I wanted so badly to grow up, as after these stories.
I lay awake in our tent listening to wind flap through the rain fly, trying to picture the jubilant terror that was surely waiting with adulthood.
Such summer weekends blend together, but with each one I tracked
my maturity by the weather. As I grew into a tall, slouch-backed preadolescent, whitecaps were still off-limits, but they marked the edge
of my experience. I was allowed on the lake even as the waters turned a dangerous, premonitory lazuli, right until hard wind ripped up its distinctive white accents. Ecstasy. Under such conditions the windward
pitchpoling
55
hull of our catamaran could thoughtlessly shrug a girl her full height above the lake surface. I also knew it could capsize her just as easily and
send her face-first down the sail waterslide-style (Mom told a story about this).
Nevertheless, I don’t recall ever thinking “Dad is going to lose control and flip us.” His long legs seemed too secure against the trampoline footholds (which I couldn’t reach), his hands too confident as they tightened the
mainsail (which I was too weak to budge). “Watch and don’t worry,” he told me. “When I pull in the sail we go faster, but when I let it out we slow down.”
It was true. clicklicklicklick whined mainsail ratchets when he wrenched in their sun-baked line, and as I looked down I could see the hull underneath
us levitate out of the water; CLUNK went deflated battens as he flicked his wrist to release them, and we were back horizontal.
“Do it again!” I shrieked, and clickickick we were flying again. Dad pointed
to a dark wind line ambling toward us and I clung my limbs around
whatever taut stays I could find. The wind hit and we flew even higher.
The leeward hull plunged underwater, algae-laden spray thwapping against my face with an adrenaline tinge. We balanced on the edge of
control. But I never lost faith, never once doubted Dad’s ability to mediate between the sails and the violent trickster winds. Nowadays I sometimes
wonder how I would have reacted had he pushed us too recklessly and sent me overboard, just once—would I trust him less? Perhaps I would be more adaptable to change.
I SUPPOSE this is why we turn into teenagers. One summer when I was
sixteen, Dad and I entered a race at Lucky Peak Reservoir. It was my first time captaining for real and Dad was crewing for me. He had his favorite
hat cinched down over his head, a Monaco Grand Prix number from the only international family vacation he ever managed to organize and pay
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the ecotone | 2014
off. I was in control, finally—my arms were strong enough to yank the
mainsail line into position, and I was sailing as high as I could with one
hull slicing deep through the lake surface. That’s when I heard the perfect moment that captains sometimes unearth, when the sails are trimmed well
for the wind and they begin to hum low and sweet like a far-off train: you
can let go of the rudder, and the boat will steer itself. I was curious, so I loosened my grip.
“Watch out for that wind line!” Dad shouted up at me. “Let the sail out NOW!”
Startled, I pulled it in. The leeward hull disappeared into the lake and yanked us forward— quickly, but in a strange slow-motion fashion that allowed me to stand upright and plot my dive.
I hopped in; I don’t think my head even submerged. I remember being surprised at how warm the water felt. When I looked around, Dad was bobbing toward me, waterlogged and uncharacteristically frantic. “I think I lost my hat!” He seemed to be trying to dive after it, but his life jacket
clung defiantly to its task of keeping him upright. “Do you see my hat??” I wasn’t interested. The sailboat lay languorous before me, amid a howling
gale. I hadn’t hit my head against the dolphin striker. “Hey, look,” I bellowed back at him. “I pitchpoled it.” l
pitchpoling
57
biodiversity at
twenty-five
A conversation with Brendan Bohannan, Alan Dickman, Nicolae Morar, and Ted Toadvine The concept of biodiversity has held sway as a core tenet of ecology and conservation for a quarter century. As a companion to this milestone,
an ENVS-sponsored seminar series entitled Biodiversity at Twenty-Five
is examining not only the principle’s scientific value, but its role within conservation ethics. Three ENVS faculty—Brendan Bohannan, Nicolae
Morar and Ted Toadvine—are serving as the series’ key organizers, and with varied expertise in both biology and philosophy, they aim to bring science and the humanities into conversation with one another. In March
of 2014, I sat down with Bohannan, Morar, Toadvine, and ENVS Director Alan Dickman to talk about the seminar series and its goals. —Allyson Woodard
Thank you all for taking the time to meet with me.To start off, can you give a background on the term biodiversity? BOHANNAN. Well first off, for a concept that’s so central to ecology
it’s surprising how little I knew about its history until I started working
with Ted and Nicolae. At this point biodiversity is assumed to have technical, scientific meaning—it’s often translated as the number of
species in a particular place—but from the very beginning, it had a
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the ecotone | 2014
Wenhui Qiu | “Anastoechus barbatus�
biodiversity at twenty-five
59
Allyson Woodard | “Study Skins”
value meaning that was also very
important. The word came out of
How long has the word been in common use?
this impending extinction, this
BOHANNAN. Well, there was
about to happen on Earth. They
the contraction of “biological
discussions among ecologists about environmental catastrophe that was were worried about it, so from the
beginning there was the idea that it
was capturing something valuable that we treasure about nature.
That’s what Ted, Nicolae and I have been focusing on recently, trying to understand the value-laden nature of the word.
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the ecotone | 2014
a particular conference where
diversity” to “biodiversity” was initially proposed, in 1986. And
then there was a book that came out with the proceedings, edited by
E.O. Wilson and somebody else… who I can never remember [all laugh]…because Wilson casts such
a huge shadow! Anyway, I don’t
really remember the book coming
out: to me biodiversity just kind of
contraction could make such a big
TOADVINE. With this conference
MORAR. This is actually something
a lot of preparation and staging to
together. We asked ourselves in
appeared as a concept.
that happened, in 1986, there was put biodiversity forward in the eye
of the media as a term that captured
this crisis that was upon us. Almost immediately, the term took off.
Conservationists grabbed hold of
it, the media started talking about
it, and it became a term that was widespread in the popular mindset within just a few years. Within
ten years it was being written into
international policies at the level of the UN. The scientists who were
involved, especially Wilson, were very clear that part of their intent
was to use this word as something that they could really push with
difference, but it did.
that came out in our discussions our paper: why is it that a word got
so much attention? Interestingly, it parallels different movements
within society. Questions of cultural
diversity were very important at the time [when it gained traction], which got us thinking that it’s not
necessarily the “bio” that’s the force
within the contraction, but more the
question of diversity. We have a UN
citation in our paper, I think from 2001, that actually states something like cultural diversity is important
to society just as biological diversity is important to nature.
politicians and the public as a way
to get people to see what was at stake in terms of species loss. So, it was a very successfully politicized term from the beginning.
BOHANNAN. Yes, actually the
term “biological diversity” had existed for a long time; that didn’t
start in ’86. It was the process of
turning that term into one word that politicized it. It’s weird that a
At this 25th anniversary of the contraction, what do you hope that the seminar series will contribute to the discussion? TOADVINE. What led us to see
this as an area that’s troubling or problematic is that Nicolae and I were familiar with the way this term gets used by philosophers and
biodiversity at twenty-five
61
in normal conservation discourse,
policy, when we can’t really define
way. You can ask environmental
the ecosystems that we want to
and it’s used in a fairly uncritical
studies undergrads why we need biodiversity and they’ll say “it
makes things more stable,” or a host
of other reasons why biodiversity’s
important, but in our conversations with Brendan we started to realize
that the scientific evidence hasn’t really supported these claims. In
our original conversations with him, in fact, he expressed quite a
lot of skepticism over whether that
kind of scientific evidence would ever be forthcoming. That led us to both investigate where the science
is with respect to biodiversity,
what has been shown about its relationship, say, to the stability
or health of ecosystems. What we found is that a lot of grant money and a lot of time has been invested
over the last 25 years in trying to
preserve?
BOHANNAN . Part of the problem with trying to scientifically
make biodiversity relate to things
like function is that the concept has never had a good definition.
It’s hard to operationalize because
the fundamental definition is the variety of life at all these mixed
levels of complexity—from the genetic up to the ecosystem level. That’s an impossible definition
to work with! So, it’s usually
operationalized in ways that we can actually measure: the most
common proxy for biodiversity measurement is species richness— the number of species in some
place. But, that’s really quite different from the overall variety.
demonstrate those relationships,
There’s really good evidence that
quite thin and not particularly
on things like ecosystem function,
and what has been found is actually compelling. So then we started
to wonder: what’s this really all about? Why are we so committed to this term as the basis for so
much international conservation
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it in ways that have traction in
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certain species make a huge impact
and if they go extinct then there’s detrimental change to how those systems work. But, there’s not
great evidence that simply having
more things is good. That’s why
scientifically it’s been challenging
biological ecologist to come and
about trying to link biodiversity
and in the spring quarter we have
and there has been huge debate and function.
give us the scientific perspective,
Kim Sterelny, a famous philosopher who’s published on biodiversity
as well. I’m hoping he’ll talk a bit
Did you target particular speakers to address that issue? BOHANNAN. Yeah. The first speaker we had, in the fall quarter,
was somebody who wrote a book entitled What’s So Good About
Biodiversity? Donald Maier is a
philosopher who started to take on how much we assume in this term, and how much value we place in it.
In a way we started with the most controversial speaker, actually—
to kind of give us a poke. Then this winter term we’ve invited a
about alternatives to the use of this term. I mean, I think that’s part of the reason that biodiversity has
such legs: there’s all the political
momentum, but there’s also no good obvious alternative to communicating the variety of life
and why we’re concerned about it.
Really it’s a crappy term. But we need an alternative, and hopefully
Kim will offer some insight. Maier addressed some of that last quarter, but I think it left most of us dissatisfied.
Hannah Fuller | “Camouflage”
biodiversity at twenty-five
63
TOADVINE. Yes, I think it was the
actually manage to get the book
think that diversity is really the
originally sent it to, for similar sorts
deflationary view. He just doesn’t
issue, at all. We first encountered Maier a couple of years ago, before this book was published. At the
time Brendan and I were teaching a
class together on the philosophy of ecology and we started having these
conversations about biodiversity
(this was before Nicolae joined us), and I just sent an email to an
environmental philosophy list and
asked if there were any people
who were critical of biodiversity. I immediately got back a lot of hate mail—“what do you mean? You can’t criticize biodiversity! Just
what do you think you’re doing?”— B O H A N NA N . —which was fascinating!—
TOADVINE. It was a knee-jerk reaction, for sure. But then I got this
one email from Don Maier, whom I
published with the press he had of reasons: he said he got a lot of
push-back from people who didn’t
buy his story. Finally he sent it to another press, and we discovered
it when it was published. We went, “wait a minute…that’s that
one guy!” and picked up the book and actually started reading it. It’s interesting: he lays out dozens of
arguments for why biodiversity is valuable, and then just sits down and takes every one of them apart in
a very fine-tuned, systematic way. It ends up being a very deflationary account—I mean, he has his own
view of why nature’s valuable, but it doesn’t have anything to do with diversity. So…he’s very
provocative. And this book is just
starting to get some reviews and attention.
had never heard of, who said, “you know, I have this manuscript but it’s under review.” It was around
What kind of response did you get on campus after the talk?
don’t have time to read that.” We
TOADVINE. A lot of people
set it aside. We kind of forgot
quite challenged by what he had to
400 pages long and I thought, “I glanced at it a little bit and then
about him, actually. Then he didn’t
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showed up, and I think they were say.
DICKMAN. Well, and not only
BOHANNAN. Well I feel like
term, he said that it wasn’t a positive
is the something that Ted has been
did he say that it wasn’t a helpful
term, and that scientists were
doing damage by basing things like restoration off of it. I think
that’s where a few people got their feathers up.
BOHANNAN. Yeah he pissed
people off on many different levels.
I mean, the paper we read for the noon-time discussion with him was titled “Why scientists need to
get out of nature conservation.” It argued basically that conservation
was about preserving what is
valuable to us and the sciences have nothing to offer to that. I thought it
was an interesting discussion. There were some people who started out
saying “I disagree with you,” but by the end they had moved to a
position of “I disagree with you… but I don’t know why.”
there are a few possibilities. One
working on...are you ready to talk about that?
TOADVINE. No, not really, but
I will say that coming at this as a philosopher, it’s interesting for me
to see the work that the scientists
have done over how to make the concept of biodiversity tractable,
operationalizable in a way that will
lead to real management decisions
in real conservation situations. But Brendan has convinced me that we’re probably not going to be able
to make that work without some tweaking. That’s led me to think
as a philosopher about certain questions: for example, what is it that we really value? People do feel that there’s something
valuable at stake, and if it isn’t
what the scientists are measuring, then what is it? What is it about
our imaginings of the diversity of
Do you have any alternatives to the term floating around in your own heads, even if they’re not supported by research?
life that we feel so attached to, and
that we feel would diminish us all if we lost? It seems to me that
a scientifically viable term which captures the diversity of life at all its levels doesn’t really get at
biodiversity at twenty-five
65
Wenhui Qiu | “Egretta garzetta”
whatever it is that we’re so invested
There are a number of languages
are just misplaced—maybe we
they’re only spoken by a few people
in. Now, maybe our investments
should learn that they aren’t really
tracking something in nature and that we should give them up. But, right now I’m inclined to believe
that there’s an insight there in our intuitions about the value of
diversity, and I’m hoping that we can find a better way to articulate it.
One of the things that I’ve been thinking about, that Brendan was
and are not being passed along for
various reasons. Well, why do we
care? What’s lost with the loss of a language? It’s just diversity; it’s
just a bunch of differences. But still there seems to be something about
it that is important, that we want to keep. That seems to me to parallel
our concern over the loss of species diversity.
alluding to, was I’ve been asking
Then there are other biological
care about the loss of languages?”
working on.
myself the question “why do we
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that die off every year because
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ways, too, that Brendan’s been
to get at it scientifically than the
number of species. Within ecology
right now is a big movement to look at trait, from the perspective
of the characteristics of organisms and not necessarily their taxonomic groups. That seems to more directly
link nature to things we value in terms of usefulness.
I think of conservation as really
all about what we’re willing to let go extinct, not about what we’re
preserving. One way that people
have tried to deal with that question is through this trait perspective— BOHANNAN. Yeah, well, one of the things I’ve learned from hanging out with philosophers
that is, with things that share a lot
of traits in common, we may not need all of them to persist.
is there are very simplistic ways of thinking about value—you
can think about values that are value, regardless of whether it’s
Do you find interdisciplinary thought valuable in discussions of environmental ethics?
used to capture some of that. And
TOADVINE. I think we have to
whatever usefulness biodiversity
interesting about our discussions
inherent in something, an intrinsic useful to us or not. Biodiversity’s
then there’s instrumental value, or holds for us: for example,
ecosystem function, or unknown
resources waiting for us like new cancer drugs. And for that second value, there may be better ways
collaborate. Part of what’s been
a ro u n d b i o d i v e r s i t y i s t h a t environmental philosophers using this term are still for the most part unaware of the debates among
biologists concerning how to
biodiversity at twenty-five
67
Celina Stilphen | “Sahalie Falls, OR”
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measure and define it. Biologists,
a lot from the discussions that
Alan, does this support the mission of the Environmental Studies Program?
millennia regarding value and how
DICKMAN. Oh absolutely. I think
on the other hand, could benefit
philosophers have had over many to understand it.
MORAR. Plus, I do think that
discussions like ours are very much a function of the place we
are in: we come from philosophy and biology, but we all have appointments in environmental
that is what we try to do, to bring
people together from different departments to work on common
projects. This is why we’re not a
department: we want to retain that
ability to bring in people from very different backgrounds.
studies. I think that academia
BOHANNAN. This would never
boxes (we call them departments),
never have had any reasonable
generally functions very much in
and environmental studies is this place where different boxes can
come and have discussions about things that we are all interested in.
We also had Alan’s support on this project, and we felt very much that
within this process, there is a very important educational component.
We do want our students to be confronted with critical thinking
around topics that serve as the foundation of their studies. I think
this has been very fruitful: we have
seen ways that students in biology have been challenged by Don Maier—seriously challenged—but
equally we will see philosophers learn more about the sciences.
happen without ENVS. I would excuse to talk to a philosopher had I not been stuck next to one at this table during an ENVS meeting. I
mean, I would never have known Ted was here, never had sought him out, but because we were
physically in the same place and clearly shared some of the same
values because we were both in ENVS, that opened the door to us
working together. And then as I started talking to Ted about what
philosophers do, one of the things
I’ve noticed is that philosophy makes me uncomfortable.
TOADVINE. [laughing] That might just be me.
biodiversity at twenty-five
69
BOHANNAN. No! No, they all
Wa s h i n g t o n U n i v e r s i t y w h o
that’s a good thing. Part, for me, of
year ago, which is when we got
make me uncomfortable. And what brought us together over this topic of biodiversity is I came back
from a field experiment, generating some new data, and the data made
me uncomfortable. I’d never been uncomfortable before by what seemed to me to be a dispassionate,
scientific observation. But here I was: I got to study in the Amazon, and found that if you burn down
the trees, biodiversity increases.
I mean: take this beautiful forest, burn it down, turn it into a cattle
pasture, and the diversity of things living in the soil goes up. It
was a perfectly clear, statistically significant observation, and it made me incredibly uneasy.
So I thought: if I want to understand why I’m uncomfortable I should
go to philosophers, because they seem to specialize in that. This got
me thinking about the value-laden nature of that term “biodiversity.”
Can you give some background on your two other speakers? B O H A N N A N . We l l , D a v i d Hooper is a professor at Western
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did a sabbatical here about a
the chance to meet him. He’s a
biological ecologist and he’s most
famous for the research he’s done asking the question: “what’s the
relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function?” He had
a very influential paper published in Nature where they did this
big analysis and argued that biodiversity loss has an effect on
ecosystems that’s comparable to big environmental impacts like climate change.
I would also say, too, that of
the people asking these sorts of questions, he’s one of the most
open-minded about the question. Most scientists, I think—even if
they don’t realize it—go in with a
pre-conceived notion that there is a relationship, and that they’re just
quantifying what that relationship
is. David really is investigating
whether there’s a relationship between biodiversity and these
things we value like ecosystem function. Basically, I think he’s
going to give us a state of the art
analysis of the relationship between
biodiversity and ecosystem processes.
…and he’s a very nice guy, which is a relief in this debate.
TOADVINE. Then next quarter
we have Kim Sterelny, a very wellregarded philosopher of science,
who co-authored a book called What
is Biodiversity? It’s well-informed in terms of the science, and is also
well-aware of what has come out
in terms of the science. He and his co-author have tried to come
up with a reconstructive account
His position was critiqued by Maeir at the beginning of the term (they
don’t get along), and so it’s still a discussion: we started with a very dismissive, critical view, and now
we’re going to get the latest state
of the science, and then we’ll get a philosopher who’s been thinking
about these things for a while and has his own ideas on how
we should move forward. We’ll evaluate and see how it relates to our thinking, too. l
of why biodiversity matters to us,
For more information on Biodiversity
up is an argument that what we
recordings of each of the talks, please
and should matter. Where they end should really be conserving is the
phylogenetic difference of things. So, if we have to decide between
two species over which to let go
at Twenty-Five, as well as video visit:
http://pages.uoregon.edu/nmorar/ Biodiversity/Welcome.html
extinct, we should choose the one
that gives us the most diversity in terms of how it has evolved, because that will somehow capture more of the richness and the history
of that creature’s development, plus the genetic possibilities that it may carry into the evolutionary future.
So he’s giving us something that’s a bit of a reconstruction of what we should value in biodiversity.
biodiversity at twenty-five
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73
Solveig Noll
eatingin
“urban frontiers”
Alternative food and gentrification in Chicago BY BROOKE HAVLIK
ON A SCORCHING summer afternoon in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, several hundred friends, families and individuals gather
on Logan Boulevard to purchase their weekly groceries from farmstands filled with local tomatoes, peaches, grass-fed beef and freshly baked bread.
Young, trendy market-goers sit under maple trees, eating tacos from a nearby stand and drinking horchata while Instagramming their market purchases. The neighborhood is known for its “Slow Food culture,” or
the marked opposition to the loss of pleasure within food production
and consumption. The Slow Food movement represents people with an
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appreciation for alternative food culture, and a reverence for farming and production methods that are less harmful to the environment
(Pietrykowski 2004). In Logan Square, Sundays at the farmers market are the best day to observe this shared representation of culture.
Logan Square and its neighbor to the south, Humboldt Park, are located northwest of Chicago’s central business district (CBD) and are
actively experiencing the process of gentrification, the cultural and
economic displacement of lower-income residents by an influx of higher socioeconomic residents. The gentrifiers are most often young and white,
seeking affordable housing and middle- to upper-class lifestyles (Rose 2010). Long known for its affordability and diversity, Logan Square was
named one of the US’s “hottest neighborhoods” in 2013 (Ellis 2013), and
Bon Appetit called it “Chicago’s new restaurant row.” It is also home to the “best farmers market in the city” and the “best local grocer” (Best
of Chicago 2013: Food & Drink). In Humboldt Park, the lively and colorful Puerto Rican corridor called Paseo Boricua is witnessing growth in white residents, alternative restaurants and a resurgence of interest in
community gardens. An active resistance to gentrification is also present
in the neighborhood, evidenced through physical signage, voices of leadership and community-based organizations.
These demographic shifts in Logan Square and Humboldt Park, coupled with the growing acceptance of the sustainable food movement, have allocated alternative food culture the power to stake claim in urban
spaces. And although any definition of sustainability should include
social justice (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Curran 2012), the booming alternative food movement has been slow to
address issues of race, class, power and privilege. Food, therefore, is one of the most distinct and under-examined vehicles for urban gentrification.
During the summer of 2013, I lived on the border of Humboldt Park and Logan Square and engaged in an ethnographic research study that
analyzed the role food plays within the gentrification process, and how
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the daily acts of alternative food production and consumption create contested spaces in the neighborhoods. My goal was to take a ‘peoplecentered’ empirical approach to demonstrate that gentrification is not
only driven by the larger capitalist political economy, but also constructed through everyday experiences of producing, shopping and consuming food. My research questions included:
• What role does food play in the gentrification process? • How might food serve as a powerful lens into the racial and classbased experiences in gentrifying neighborhoods?
• What insights can be gained from these diverse daily experiences
to provide feedback for a more just and inclusive sustainability movement?
The primary data instruments included 18 in-depth qualitative interviews
and participant observations at three locations: 1) commercial spaces such as farmers markets, grocery stores and restaurants 2) community gardens and 3) non-profit organizations in order to gain understanding of the
context in which interactions lie. Participants ranged in years of residency (>1 – 40 years), age (35-70 years) and racial or ethnic background.
Food is perhaps unique and more powerful than other initiators of gentrification such as art or music due to its mundane, everyday qualities, which intersect with its ability to uphold social class distinctions. Given
the lived experiences of the Logan Square and Humboldt Park residents I interviewed, it is my intention to push the alternative food movement
and community to consider if alternative food spaces, such as community
gardens, farmers markets and alternative restaurants create inclusive spaces that alleviate some of these spatial conflicts, or whether they create
exclusive spaces that further contribute to gentrification. I will do this by briefly highlighting each neighborhood’s background and summarizing major themes from my final thesis.
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logan square and humboldt park LOGAN SQUARE was constructed by European immigrants in the late 19th century and was once heavily concentrated with small farms,
indicating that food production was central to the neighborhood’s origins. Post WWII, many white families received Federal Housing Authority (FHA) mortgage loans and left the city for the suburban dwellings,
a lending system that was only made available to white families. This systematic and racist policy became popularly known as ‘white flight’
as European-Americans left urban centers en masse for suburbia living (Fernandez 2012). The majority of Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and other
Latino/a groups resided in the Near North Side and Near West Side until
Logan Square and Humboldt Park’s neighborhood boundaries (2013)
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the 1960’s and 1970’s, when urban renewal projects were implemented in high concentrations (Fernandez 2012). Urban renewal was a public
project to reinvest into old and decaying inner city buildings and to fight
the decentralization of cities. Supported by millions of dollars in city, state and federal funding, massive demolitions and the use of eminent
domain forced most Latino residents to move to the west side, where Humboldt Park and Logan Square are located. They were met with
housing discrimination and verbal assaults by white residents, which were reinforced by police and civil institutions (Fernandez 2004). Chicago, like many other cities, followed a pattern of “uneven development,” which
meant the “unequal distribution of both public and private resources and capital along racial and class lines” (Fernandez 2012:141).
The losses of community and economic development have perpetuated
the struggle of Chicago Latinos/as for decades. For Chicago’s Puerto
Rican communities who have been oppressed through a history of spatial marginalization and gentrification in other Chicago neighborhoods, the
memory of forced displacement is fresh (Personal interviews 2013). The
most public organization opposed to contemporary gentrification on the
West Side is the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC), and it is a force within Humboldt Park thanks to its integrative programming and production
of cultural festivals. The PRCC recognizes that impending gentrification in Humboldt Park is connected to a history of colonization and forced
displacement for the Puerto Rican, Latino/a and black communities. While
being thoughtful not to generalize the experiences of residents and people of color in Humboldt Park who have diverse backgrounds, much of my research focused on the PRCC and Paseo Boricua because they continue to represent a space for resistance against oppression and a platform for
the voices of Puerto Rican politics and activists (Personal interviews 2013, Rinaldo 2004).
Humboldt Park is classified as a food desert in several areas, has the
2nd highest rate of childhood obesity in Chicago and maintains an adult diabetes rate three times the national average, at 48% and 21% respectively
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(Margellos-Anast et al. 2008, Diabetes in Humboldt Park 2006). The PRCC, residents and activists are working to address issues of food security,
economic development, anti-colonialism, self-determination and the environment through rooftop and community gardens, local business, food trucks and a youth-run farmers market. Large disruptions from
gentrification will be detrimental to these efforts at reducing long-term health disparities.
urban frontier ideology MANY NEW, young residents I interviewed spoke of being on the front
line of an “up and coming neighborhood” and expressed a steady unease about it becoming less gritty and more mainstream. The “grit” marks a
space as authentic and distinct from white, suburban and cookie-cutter
lifestyles (Personal interviews 2013, Brown-Saracino 2010). Living on the urban “frontier” has become a style of living perpetuated by a culture that increasingly values alternative and often environmentally-friendly
A mural, which reads “We resist displacement and uprooting” on Paseo Boricua, the economic and cultural capital of Puerto Rican culture in the Midwest
eating in urban frontiers
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lifestyles in urban areas. Neil Smith notes that the impetus behind
gentrification and the normalization of those cultural meanings are constructed through the Western frontier myth. For example, discourse on “urban homesteading” and growing your own food in the city is part of
popular culture. Smith notes that at first glance these aspects of culture may seem playful or innocent. However, the discourse surrounding urban grit
and homesteading in “up and coming neighborhoods” replicates historical images of adventurous spirits and the rugged individualism of settlers on the American frontier of the West (Smith 113). And while European settlers forcefully removed Natives from their traditional grounds, the
subtler, yet still violent experience of clearing neighborhoods of existing
populations block-by-block is occurring in Chicago and throughout the United States.
struggle and resistance STRUGGLE associated with food security and health was quite evident
through conversations with local residents and community organizations
in Humboldt Park. Julian spoke about the special relationship between Humboldt Park’s food insecurity and Puerto Rico’s colonial history:
Food security is a threat that runs to the heart of colonialism. Since 1898, Puerto Rico turned from a country that grew what it
ate, to a country that exported what it ate and imports what it eats.
Resulting in some of the worst social indecencies—not only of food, but diabetes, childhood obesity, blood pressure, mental illness, drug
addiction, suicide…Chicago is actually an example for Puerto Rico. Julian illuminates how the loss of food security, increasing health inequality and contemporary food deserts are not just about access to nutritious
foods in Humboldt Park, but rather are part of a trajectory of oppression
and a consequence of colonization that is compounded by gentrification and the loss of affordable housing. Further, the local community projects that enable healthier and more robust communities in Humboldt Park are
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One of Logan Square’s new corridors of restaurants and bars
not just local advocacy projects, but are considered transnational and an example for those on the island of Puerto Rico.
One of the ways the PRCC has sought to counter food insecurity and build
a strong community to resist gentrification has been through the Greater
Humboldt Park Urban Agriculture Initiative (GHPUAI) that attempts to make alternative food accessible and inclusive by offering nutritious and
culturally appropriate foods grown, processed and sold primarily by the community for the community. The GHPUAI represents a do-it-yourself stance. Although not a phrase I heard used by the PRCC, food sovereignty
is clearly a goal for community activists. Further, it was acknowledged by
interviewees that impending gentrification is a threat to the potential of that sovereignty and the right to nutritious foodways.
One of the largest projects the PRCC and high school have taken on is
fundraising and building an educational greenhouse at Pedro Albizu Campos High School to help instructors integrate science, technology
and urban agriculture. Youth grow food in the greenhouse and at several
neighborhood gardens and run the Humboldt Park Farmer’s Market.
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They sell products both familiar
and unfamiliar to Puerto Rican cuisine. Recao, also known as
Mexican coriander, is an essential ingredient for sofrito and is sold
alongside Swiss chard and kale,
which are less common in Puerto Rican foodways. The goal of the
high school and urban agriculture programs is to produce leaders
for the next generation who continue to see the community as a place to invest in and to
help the PRCC advance the The Greenhouse at Pedro Albizu Campos High School
mission of self-determination and
self-actualization.
contested spaces COMMUNITY GARDENS have been praised for their capacity to restore
urban streetscapes, reduce food expenses and food deserts, improve public health, reflect new senses of pride in the neighborhood, connect people to the environment, relieve stress, be a catalyst for community improvement and safety, as well as bring together a new social network of neighbors.
However, it was evident throughout my research that community gardens, just like early urban parks, were not neutral spaces as advocates suggest,
but rather, highly politicized spaces. Catherine, a 29-year-old white,
middle-class woman involved in a community garden in Humboldt Park,
noted the positive role gardening may play in creating inclusive space within a gentrifying neighborhood:
There is the language barrier – you have all these English and
Spanish people and these people whose lives wouldn’t intermingle
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and they are all living in the same area. I feel like the garden is trying to get them to intermingle because they live in the same area.
However, most garden admission policies occurred through word of mouth. In Catherine’s garden, approximately 20% of the gardeners were
people of color while the other 80% were white and middle-to-upper class (Personal Interview, 2013). This admissions method proved to build social capital and networks among newer white residents, as well as normalize
the garden as a white space rather than a space that was open to everyone.
While some white garden members recognized racial imbalance as a
problem, many others simply stated they were there to grow healthy food
and did not mention how these spaces may create tension between the community’s largely Latino population and the garden’s overall whiteness.
The vast majority of gardens I encountered were either owned by a private institution (such as a hospital), private owners or by community
A community garden juxtaposed against new and old housing developments in Humboldt Park
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land trusts. In no case, however, did the gardeners themselves own the property. However, ideology surrounding private property rights
manifested quite often through garden politics and everyday interactions. Some gardeners spoke about misunderstandings regarding community garden rules and private property. Gabriella mentioned a situation where theft had occurred at a garden called El Coqui, which has been in the Humboldt Park community for over thirty years.
When the high school used to oversee it, we would always have
stuff stolen, you know. I don’t know, we never made such a big deal about it. Now, there are all these people coming into our garden. First of all, that garden has been there for decades, people,
you don’t know. You came in and created your own organization
without considering who have
been used to gardening in this place…Well it was a mom and
a teenage daughter and some other kids, I am sure that lady
has been used to going into the garden and not that it’s right or wrong, ethical or not, but she
has been used to going in there
and getting her peppers or whatever it is. But we used to have people who used to take, well not everything, and its just
like hey, we are in a community A private property sign hangs outside a community garden in Logan Square
and there is a necessity for it.
No one is going to go and steal
vegetables if they don’t need it. Not to say that it is right, but you don’t know if that was a former gardener there and they have been excluded from this process.
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Here, Gabriella demonstrates that her understanding of “community� within a community garden is much different than the lock and key
mentality. For Gabriella, it is not just about the community within the garden; rather it’s about the garden being set within a larger community of Puerto Ricans or fellow neighbors. This demonstrates
that without understanding of context, history and memory, conflict between newcomers and existing residents will be heightened.
just and sustainable food communities DESPITE A SENSE of inevitability of gentrification from a politicaleconomic view, it is not a naturally occurring process. It is reproduced
on a daily basis through the lived experiences of those within the
neighborhood and the discourse about the neighborhood. If the alternative food movement is collectively opposed to the capital and corporate production of food, so too should they be opposed to the
capitalist orderings of power within urban spaces that continue to violently remove and displace communities. The commodification
of housing and neoliberal urban markets is closely tied to the
commodification of food in alternative restaurants, grocery stores and farmers markets.
Gentrification is just one lens to interpret how land has been used and misused in the United States to benefit some and oppress others. Displacement risks disrupting existing networks of people
and their foodways. It also disrupts food justice-related work, such
as community gardens or farmers markets. Therefore, affordable housing and food justice are tightly linked together.
This research showed that there is room at the local level to disrupt, reduce, or altogether stop the process of displacement. This
slowdown of movement can be coupled with measures taken to
reduce gentrification such as more affordable housing, participatory
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85
democracy, cultural affirmation, coalition building and anti-racist food justice trainings to reflect on the normalization of white culture and its
claim to space in gentrifying neighborhoods. Further, those involved in
the food movement in gentrifying neighborhoods must participate actively in community work and build multi-racial, multi-class and multi-ethnic
alliances to advocate for a variety of experiences and representations (Kobayashi and Peake 2000). The concept of an inclusive and intercultural
space must be centrally designed into alternative food practices such as community gardens and farmers markets rather than added as an afterthought or tacked on to the existing project.
In the end, food remains a highly political yet intimate topic, and is also a tool that can be used to build solidarity and resistance to gentrification.
Food should be seen as the lowest common denominator among people who seek institutional and social change. l
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Wenhui Qiu | “Ladybird”
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editor-in-chief
special thanks
Allyson Woodard
Peg Boulay Alan Dickman Matthew Dennis RaDonna Aymong Gayla WardWell Alison Rajek ENVS Student Advisors Brendan Bohannan Nicolae Morar Ted Toadvine UO Printing & Mailing Services Environmental Studies Donors
editing team Aylie Baker Timothy Chen Shane Hall Samuel Moore Wenhui Qui
FREE INQUIRY and free speech are the cornerstones of an academic institution committed to the creation and transfer of knowledge. The views and opinions expressed in this journal are solely those of the original authors, artists, and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Environmental Studies Program at large, including its faculty, staff, and students, nor those of its generous donors.
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Bryan Putnam | “Turtle Log”
the
ecotone
University of Oregon Environmental Studies Program 5223 University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-5223
ECOTONE: A transition zone between two adjacent communities or ecosystems. An ecotonal area often has a higher density of organisms and a greater number of species than are found in either flanking community.