Justice Studies

Noah Trombly received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he majored in Psychology. He is currently a 2L at William & Mary Law School and is pursuing a career in civil litigation. In his free time, Noah enjoys exploring Virginia's rivers by kayak. Derek Van De Walle attended the University of Michigan where he studied political science and classical civilizations. Derek is currently a 3L at William & Mary Law School and plans to focus on environmental law following graduation.

Alison Dundes Renteln adds complexity to legal issues by introducing both explicit and subtle ways in which trans-global dynamics of cultural contact and diffusion interacts with and often confronts more traditional conceptions of the nation-state as the defining legal framework. The Cultural Defense advocates, though implicitly, a nonfoundational approach to legal studies, especially when addressing matters of justice by examining the nature of the debate surrounding the admissibility of cultural evidence in the courtroom (5). Should the concerns of ethnic minorities not be considered in the legal system? space. The cultural defense is not a panacea for settling legal disputes; rather, it further justifies the need for sophisticated deliberation in a liberal democratic polity. In this way, The Cultural Defense is a tangible way to clarify and sharpen more abstract discussions of justice and human rights. Dundes Renteln offers convincing evidence that anthropology can inform legal studies in important ways.

including a course on Disability and Justice. In addition, she co-coordinates the Disability Studies minor, and serves as a Faculty Associate with the Center for Faculty Innovation. Her professional interests include disability studies, pop culture, storytelling, and justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

including a course on Disability and Justice. In addition, she co-coordinates the Disability Studies minor, and serves as a Faculty Associate with the Center for Faculty Innovation. Her professional interests include disability studies, pop culture, storytelling, and justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Often overlooked in historical studies of New Orleans, the city’s Hispanic and Latino populations have contributed significantly to its development. Hispanic and Latino New Orleans offers the first scholarly study of these communities in the Crescent City. This trailblazing volume not only explores the evolving role of Hispanics and Latinos in shaping the city’s unique cultural identity but also reveals how their history informs the ongoing national debate about immigration.

As early as the eighteenth century, the Spanish government used incentives of land and money to encourage Spaniards from other regions of the empire—particularly the Canary Islands—to settle in and around New Orleans. Though immigration from Spain declined markedly in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase, the city quickly became the gateway between the United States and the emerging independent republics of Latin America. The burgeoning trade in coffee, sugar, and bananas attracted Cuban and Honduran immigrants to New Orleans, while smaller communities of Hispanics and Latinos from countries such as Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Brazil also made their marks on the landscapes and neighborhoods of the city, particularly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Combining accessible historical narrative, interviews, and maps that illustrate changing residential geographies, Hispanic and Latino New Orleans is a landmark study of the political, economic, and cultural networks that produced these diverse communities in one of the country’s most distinctive cities.

Winner of the 2015 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize, awarded by the American Association of Geographers.

http://lsupress.org/books/detail/hispanic-and-latino-new-orleans/

See the companion websites at: https://sites.google.com/site/nolalatinobook/
y la version española: https://sites.google.com/site/nolalatinobookespanol/

Environmental histories of the African diaspora challenge Eurocentric interpretations of the Columbian Exchange by identifying African antecedents in New World landscapes and cultures. This paper joins that effort by tracing the formation of African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) landscapes in Bahia, Brazil. Long essential in many West African societies, the African oil palm and its products diffused to Bahia early in the colonial period. Palm oil became an integral component of Afro-Brazilian culture and cuisine, and the palm groves that yield the oil represent an Afro-Brazilian landscape. Although the palm's West African origins are well known, and despite its importance in local cultures and global economies, studies of Bahia's African oil palm landscapes remain rare and generally ahistorical. This paper marshals evidence from colonial archives, traveller's accounts, ethnographies, fieldwork and digital geographic data to analyse the formation of Bahia's Dendê Coast (Costa do Dendê, or Palm Oil Coast). While Africans and Afro-Brazilians emerge as principal actors, the analysis places humans within a broader socioecological framework to demonstrate how historical processes, geographies, agroecologies and human agency all coalesced to establish and sustain Bahia's Afro-Brazilian landscape.

Please email me at casewatkins [@] gmail.com for a copy.

Front matter and introduction available here. Please email me at casewatkins [@] gmail.com for a complete copy.

Palm oil extracted from the African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is the world’s most produced vegetable oil, commanding a roughly 50 billion dollar global industry. In contrast to the agroindustrial firms and monocultures that dominate global production, a biodiverse cultural landscape of African oil palms in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia has for centuries supplied local alimentary and spiritual demands for palm oil—an essential resource in Afro-Brazilian cultures. Drawing on fieldwork, ethnography, archives, GIScience, quantitative analysis, and travelers’, rare, and secondary accounts, this dissertation provides the first comprehensive study of Bahia’s palm oil landscapes, cultures, and economies. Analyzing seven centuries of social and ecological change, the study contributes to environmental histories of colonialism and the African diaspora, and advances theories and practices of agricultural development, environmental governance, and the politics of knowledge.

Native to West Africa, African oil palms have supported cultures and economies on that continent for millennia. During colonial overseas expansion, Elaeis guineensis and its products traversed the Atlantic as early African contributions to the Columbian Exchange of beings, biota, and ideas. The palm’s subsequent diffusion in Bahia combined African traditions of palm oil production and consumption with European and Indigenous knowledges in the Americas to found and sustain diasporic Afro-Brazilian cultures and economies. This study examines the early and ongoing development of Bahia’s African oil palm cultures and landscapes, connecting transatlantic cultural, ecological, and economic circulations to reconstruct the emergence of an Afro-Brazilian landscape. Building on its historical analyses, the study culminates with an ethnography of Bahia’s contemporary palm oil economy. Integrating theories of resistance, development, and complexity, the final chapter maps the constituents of, and flows of power through, Bahia’s palm oil economy to scrutinize the modern policies and interventions that seek to redirect and control the network.

The dissertation concludes by juxtaposing Bahia’s Afro-Brazilian landscape with the epistemological constraints of modern development. It argues that diasporic knowledges, such as those underpinning Bahia’s palm oil economy, represent potent but generally untapped fonts of place-based development practice with potential to transform global palm oil production and enact more viable and abundant forms of development.

RESUMO:

O azeite-de-dendê (ou óleo de palma) extraído do dendezeiro (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) é o óleo vegetal mais produzido no mundo, em torno do qual se estrutura uma indústria global que movimenta cerca de 50 bilhões de dólares. Ao contrário do que ocorre na maioria dos empreendimentos agroindustriais baseados na monocultura, que dominam a produção global, a paisagem cultural de dendezeiros localizados no estado da Bahia, na região Nordeste do Brasil, é marcada pela biodiversidade. Por séculos dendezeiros na Bahia têm suprido a demanda por este óleo, tanto para uso alimentar, como também religiosos e cultural. Tais demandas evidenciam também o papel do azeite-de-dendê como um recurso fundante de tradições culturais afro-brasileiras. Pesquisas de campo diversas, estudos etnográficos, pesquisas em arquivos, análise georeferenciada, estudos quantitativos, registros históricos e antropológicos dos primeiros exploradores, documentos raros e diversas outras fontes secundárias foram insumos para esta pesquisa, a qual resulta em um estudo abrangente das paisagens culturais e economias do azeite-de-dendê no estado da Bahia.

A análise de sete séculos de mudanças sociais e ecológicas, auxilia este estudo no estabelecimento de conexões entre histórias coloniais, ambientais e a diaspóricas com políticas contemporâneas de desenvolvimento agrícola, produção de biocombustíveis e governança ambiental. O intuito de tal esforço é ampliar e diversificar o conhecimento sobre a história e economia do dendê na Bahia e detalhar sua ligação empírica com iniciativas de promoção do desenvolvimento em sentido mais amplo.

Nativo da África Ocidental, o dendezeiro tem apoiado o desenvolvimento cultural e econômico do continente africano por milênios. Durante a expansão colonial ultramarina, o dendezeiro e seus produtos derivados atravessaram o Atlântico, no intercâmbio colombiano de seres, biota e idéias. A difusão subsequente da palma pela Bahia acabou por promover a combinação de tradições africanas de produção e consumo do azeite-de-dendê, com conhecimentos europeus e indígenas, que serviram para ajudar a fundar e sustentar culturas e economias afro-brasileiras em diáspora. Este estudo examina o desenvolvimento inicial e contínuo de paisagens de dendezeiros da Bahia, conectando circulações transatlânticas culturais, ecológicas e econômicas para reconstruir analiticamente o processo de desenvolvimento de uma paisagem afro-brasileira. Com base em suas análises históricas, o estudo culmina com uma etnografia da economia contemporânea do dendê na Bahia. Integrando teorias de resistência, complexidade e desenvolvimento, este estudo mapeia os fatores fundantes e fluxos de poder que orientam a economia de dendê na Bahia para assim examinar criticamente a produção do azeite-de-dendê como uma iniciativa moderna de desenvolvimento.

Esta tese justapõe a paisagem afro-brasileira da Bahia com as limitações epistemológicas típicas de processos modernos de desenvolvimento. Assim sendo, conhecimentos diaspóricos, como os que se materializaram na economia do dendê na Bahia, representam potenciais oportunidades de desenvolvimento de base local, geralmente inexploradas, que poderiam transformar a produção global de óleo de palma e ao mesmo tempo disseminar formas mais justas e efetivas de desenvolvimento socioecológico.

Please see the version of record here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.04.009

This paper examines the long-term development of palm oil landscapes in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. In contrast to the agroindustrial monocultures that dominate global production, palm oil in Bahia emerges from a biodiverse cultural landscape constructed through five centuries of transatlantic socioecological exchange. Native to West Africa, African oil palms (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) diffused to the New World during colonial overseas expansion, becoming established in Bahia by the seventeenth century. There the palms helped form a complex cultural landscape that continues to supply local alimentary and spiritual demands for palm oil—an essential resource in many Afro-Brazilian cultural expressions. Extending approximately 70 km south of the capital Salvador, Bahia's traditional palm oil landscapes are now officially dubbed the Dendê Coast (Costa do Dendê), following the Kimbundu Bantu-inspired Afro-Brazilian term for palm oil. Historically colonial officials and elite Brazilians showed little interest in Bahia's palm oil economy, effectively conceding it to Afro-descendants until the mid-twentieth century. Since then, a series of modern development interventions have sought to transform the complex, biodiverse landscapes of the Dendê Coast into a legible oil palm monoculture based on an improved hybrid variety. Yet despite recurrent top-down efforts, emergent or " subspontaneous " groves and traditional polycultural landscapes continue to dominate land use in the region. Drawing on ethnography, landscape interpretations, archives, and geospatial analysis, this paper analyzes the historical development of Bahia's palm oil economy, recounting five centuries of socioecological changes on the Dendê Coast. The study integrates recent geographical treatments of the African diaspora with theories of complexity to comprehend the ongoing proliferation of Bahia's traditional palm oil landscapes despite top-down promotion of modern monocultures.