Extractive industries have long been a topic of study in environmental social science. These stud... more Extractive industries have long been a topic of study in environmental social science. These studies have focused on how extractive industries, as linked to global capitalism, degrade local communities and their environments, but have failed to consider their racialized effects. At the same time, when scholars have examined the intersection of race and the environment, their analyses tend towards the quantification and mapping of the disproportionate environmental burdens that weigh upon communities of color. Both literatures neglect to examine the intersection of race and the environment from a phenomenological perspective. Our research intervenes in the literature by asking: (1) How is the environment implicated in conditioning racialized subjectivities? and (2) How do landscapes and environment impact the formation of collective identity and sense of belonging for African Americans? In this article, we focus on the lived experience of a generation of black coal miners, and their families, who migrated throughout the central Appalachian region during the 20th century Great Migration. This study offers an empirical investigation into the “landscapes of meaning” that can emerge from the experience of racialized displacement from land and environment. Further, in documenting the lived experience of this group of African Americans, this study also counters the otherwise dominant narrative that portrays Appalachian people as hopeless, helpless, and homeless; and White. Data for this study is drawn from the Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project (EKAAMP), a community-driven participatory archive aimed at documenting the lives of African American coal miners and their families. This work offers three contributions: (1) reinserts agency into the analysis of communities affected by extractive economies; (2) invigorates the productive tensions that underlie considerations of the inextricable linkages between environment and the phenomenological experience of racialization; and (3) reconsiders the long-standing historical intersections between environment, community, and race.
In this paper we emphasize W.E.B. Du Bois’ relevance as a sociological theorist, an aspect of his... more In this paper we emphasize W.E.B. Du Bois’ relevance as a sociological theorist, an aspect of his work that has not received the attention it deserves. We focus specifically on the significance of Du Bois’ theory of Double Consciousness. This theory argues that in a racialized society there is no true communication or recognition between the racializing and the racialized. Furthermore, Du Bois’ theory of Double Consciousness puts racialization at the center of the analysis of self-formation, linking the macro structure of the racialized world with the lived experiences of racialized subjects. We develop our argument in two stages: The first section locates the theory of Double Consciousness within the field of classical sociological theories of the self. We show how the theory addresses gaps in the theorizing of self-formation of James, Mead, and Cooley. The second section presents an analysis of how Du Bois deploys this theory in his phenomenological analysis of the African American experience. The conclusions point out how the theory of Double Consciousness is relevant to contemporary debates in sociological theory.
The 1954 Supreme Court ruling against the applicability of the "separate but equal" doctrine in t... more The 1954 Supreme Court ruling against the applicability of the "separate but equal" doctrine in the public school system in Brown v.s. Board of Education of Topeka augured the dawning of the Civil Rights Movement in 20 th century America. This decision sparked a major transformation in the nation's educational system-school desegregation-a process that in some cases took decades to come to fruition. Much has been written about the social and economic outcomes that have resulted from this landmark decision, however, research on the psychosocial consequences of school desegregation on the generation of African Americans who experienced this process is sparse. Employing a cultural trauma theoretical framework, this study takes up the latter issue by analyzing the ways in which the dislocation of the "colored school" system affected the social structures of the African American community and the collective identity of the children of integration. I analyzes this phenomenon in a local context by using oral history interview data collected on a cohort of African Americans who matriculated through the "colored school" system in Harlan County, Kentucky. The school systems in these communities desegregated between 1960 and 1963, and share similar cultural, regional, and political contexts. The primary questions guiding this research are (1) How did this generation of African Americans understand their racialized subjectivity prior to school desegregation? (2) What was the localized experience with school desegregation for this cohort of African Americans? and (3) What impact did school desegregation have on the collective identity of the children who experienced integration?
It is thus, in this domiciliation, in this house arrest, that archives take place. The dwelling, ... more It is thus, in this domiciliation, in this house arrest, that archives take place. The dwelling, this place where they dwell permanently, marks this institutional passage from the private to the public, which does not always mean from the secret to the non-secret. (It is what is happening, right here, when a house, the Freuds' last house, becomes a museum: the passage from one institution to another.) With such a status, the documents, which are not always discursive writings, are only kept and classified under the title of the archive by virtue of a privileged topology. They inhabit this unusual place, this place of election where law and singularity intersect in privilege. At the intersection of the topological and nomological, of the place and the law, of the substrate and the authority, a scene of domiciliation becomes at once visible and invisible.
Extractive industries have long been a topic of study in environmental social science. These stud... more Extractive industries have long been a topic of study in environmental social science. These studies have focused on how extractive industries, as linked to global capitalism, degrade local communities and their environments, but have failed to consider their racialized effects. At the same time, when scholars have examined the intersection of race and the environment, their analyses tend towards the quantification and mapping of the disproportionate environmental burdens that weigh upon communities of color. Both literatures neglect to examine the intersection of race and the environment from a phenomenological perspective. Our research intervenes in the literature by asking: (1) How is the environment implicated in conditioning racialized subjectivities? and (2) How do landscapes and environment impact the formation of collective identity and sense of belonging for African Americans? In this article, we focus on the lived experience of a generation of black coal miners, and their families, who migrated throughout the central Appalachian region during the 20th century Great Migration. This study offers an empirical investigation into the “landscapes of meaning” that can emerge from the experience of racialized displacement from land and environment. Further, in documenting the lived experience of this group of African Americans, this study also counters the otherwise dominant narrative that portrays Appalachian people as hopeless, helpless, and homeless; and White. Data for this study is drawn from the Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project (EKAAMP), a community-driven participatory archive aimed at documenting the lives of African American coal miners and their families. This work offers three contributions: (1) reinserts agency into the analysis of communities affected by extractive economies; (2) invigorates the productive tensions that underlie considerations of the inextricable linkages between environment and the phenomenological experience of racialization; and (3) reconsiders the long-standing historical intersections between environment, community, and race.
In this paper we emphasize W.E.B. Du Bois’ relevance as a sociological theorist, an aspect of his... more In this paper we emphasize W.E.B. Du Bois’ relevance as a sociological theorist, an aspect of his work that has not received the attention it deserves. We focus specifically on the significance of Du Bois’ theory of Double Consciousness. This theory argues that in a racialized society there is no true communication or recognition between the racializing and the racialized. Furthermore, Du Bois’ theory of Double Consciousness puts racialization at the center of the analysis of self-formation, linking the macro structure of the racialized world with the lived experiences of racialized subjects. We develop our argument in two stages: The first section locates the theory of Double Consciousness within the field of classical sociological theories of the self. We show how the theory addresses gaps in the theorizing of self-formation of James, Mead, and Cooley. The second section presents an analysis of how Du Bois deploys this theory in his phenomenological analysis of the African American experience. The conclusions point out how the theory of Double Consciousness is relevant to contemporary debates in sociological theory.
The 1954 Supreme Court ruling against the applicability of the "separate but equal" doctrine in t... more The 1954 Supreme Court ruling against the applicability of the "separate but equal" doctrine in the public school system in Brown v.s. Board of Education of Topeka augured the dawning of the Civil Rights Movement in 20 th century America. This decision sparked a major transformation in the nation's educational system-school desegregation-a process that in some cases took decades to come to fruition. Much has been written about the social and economic outcomes that have resulted from this landmark decision, however, research on the psychosocial consequences of school desegregation on the generation of African Americans who experienced this process is sparse. Employing a cultural trauma theoretical framework, this study takes up the latter issue by analyzing the ways in which the dislocation of the "colored school" system affected the social structures of the African American community and the collective identity of the children of integration. I analyzes this phenomenon in a local context by using oral history interview data collected on a cohort of African Americans who matriculated through the "colored school" system in Harlan County, Kentucky. The school systems in these communities desegregated between 1960 and 1963, and share similar cultural, regional, and political contexts. The primary questions guiding this research are (1) How did this generation of African Americans understand their racialized subjectivity prior to school desegregation? (2) What was the localized experience with school desegregation for this cohort of African Americans? and (3) What impact did school desegregation have on the collective identity of the children who experienced integration?
It is thus, in this domiciliation, in this house arrest, that archives take place. The dwelling, ... more It is thus, in this domiciliation, in this house arrest, that archives take place. The dwelling, this place where they dwell permanently, marks this institutional passage from the private to the public, which does not always mean from the secret to the non-secret. (It is what is happening, right here, when a house, the Freuds' last house, becomes a museum: the passage from one institution to another.) With such a status, the documents, which are not always discursive writings, are only kept and classified under the title of the archive by virtue of a privileged topology. They inhabit this unusual place, this place of election where law and singularity intersect in privilege. At the intersection of the topological and nomological, of the place and the law, of the substrate and the authority, a scene of domiciliation becomes at once visible and invisible.
Uploads
Papers by Karida Brown