Unsettling Spring Health

Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Crew Member
Funder
Rehearsal Director
Concert Coordinator
Moderator
Panelist
Alternative Title
Department
Haverford College. Department of Anthropology
Type
Thesis
Original Format
Running Time
File Format
Place of Publication
Date Span
Copyright Date
Award
The Wyatt MacGaffey Thesis Award in Anthropology
Language
eng
Note
Table of Contents
Terms of Use
Rights Holder
Access Restrictions
Haverford users only
Tripod URL
Identifier
Abstract
Studying the work of the Springs Stewardship Institute in Northern Arizona, this project considers how springs ecologists work within and against settler colonialism. First, I consider Flagstaff as a settler society, arguing that early settler military expeditions were formative in producing knowledge about and settler dispositions towards springs. Putting Aldo Leopold’s writings on land health in conversation with feminist and Indigenous scholarship, a relational definition of health can be found in springs’ scientific study. Boundaries between discourses on health are blurrier than one might think. Spring health is also political in its knowledge production and research practice. The frame of woven ecosystem, human, and more-than-human health posed by springs scientists is one that understands the world in place-based particularity and communication, implicating settler colonial manifestations and structural paradigms as drivers of springs’ degradation. Making kin, which requires personal and structural work of unsettling, can challenge settlers and scientists alike to recognize relational communicative reality and fulfill ethical obligations with the land, humans, and more-than-human others. Health, for springs and humans, is a vital concept that presents scientists, land managers, and residents with unsettling realities while offering possibilities for flourishing.
Description
Subjects
Citation
Collections