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1. When the archive sings to you: SNCC and the atmospheric politics of race

   https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474017739023  

   Inwood, Joshua FJ ; Alderman, Derek H ( April 2018 , cultural geographies)

   Through our engagement with the ‘Freedom Singers’, we advocate for approaching the archive through the racial politics of atmosphere to understand both the affective, emotion-laden practices of the past and the affective work carried out by contemporary researchers within the archive. This atmosphere provides an important pathway for identifying and analyzing the relationality and encounters that advance a fuller study of the black experience and define what (and who) constitutes critical actors in that story. The Freedom Singers and their politico-musical legacy, while lost to many members of the public and even many scholars, offer an important lesson in broadening our appreciation of civil rights practice, as well as the practice of archival research itself. This piece contributes to broader understandings of the archive as an affective space and the role of affect in analyzing archive materials.
2. Prosecutors, court communities, and policy change: The impact of internal DOJ reforms on federal prosecutorial practices*

   https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12275  

   Lynch, Mona ; Barno, Matt ; Omori, Marisa ( January 2021 , Criminology)

   The current study examines how key internal U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) policy changes have been translated into front-line prosecutorial practices. Extending courts-as-communities scholarship and research on policy implementation practices, we use U.S. Sentencing Commission data from 2004 to 2019 to model outcomes for several measures of prose- cutorial discretion in federal drug trafficking cases, including the use of mandatory minimum charges and prosecutor-endorsed departures, to test the impact of the policy changes on case processing outcomes. We contrast prosecutorial measures with measures that are more impervious to discretionary manipulation, such as criminal history, and those that represent judicial and blended discretion, including judicial departures and final sentence lengths. We find a significant effect of the policy reforms on how prosecutorial tools are used across DOJ policy periods, and we find variation across districts as a function of contextual conditions, consistent with the court communities literature. We also find that a powerful driver of changes in pros- ecutorial practices during our most recent period is the confirmation of individual Trump-appointed U.S. Attorneys at the district level, suggesting an important theoretical place for midlevel actors in policy translation and implementation.
3. Towards a feminist political ecology of health: Mystery kidney disease and the co-production of social, environmental, and bodily difference

   https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221113963  

   Senanayake, Nari ( July 2022 , Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space)

   This article argues for a more rigorous engagement with intersectionality within political ecologies of health. Building on the work of feminist scholars who explore the co-production of social and ecological differences, I examine how health improvement schemes that target practices of natural resource use concentrate value (economic and ecological) and health dividends in particular bodies at the expense of others. As part of this intervention, I draw on long-term and ongoing ethnographic research in north-central Sri Lanka. This region is an endemic zone for a mysterious and deadly form of kidney disease (CKDu) as well as the site of frenzied health improvement intervention. Specifically, and in response to scientific studies that link kidney disease to agrochemical use and drinking water, an increasingly diverse range of actors, from different branches of the state apparatus to private industries and civil society organizations, have invested heavily in reconfiguring the region’s water supply infrastructure and agrarian landscapes. Through an analysis of resident testimonies, I demonstrate that the burden of subsidizing these new “healthful” practices of water provision and agricultural production is unevenly experienced, as are residents’ abilities to adopt and maintain them over time and space. More crucially, I illustrate how schemes designed tomore »heal turn on the production of differentiated harms, including new gendered labor burdens for poor women, and intensified agrochemical use for ecologically and economically resource-poor farmers. Developing these narratives toward a feminist political ecology of health, I demonstrate how social, ecological, and bodily differences intersect to constitute new patterns of health and harm in the dry zone. I conclude by reflecting on how this approach can explain the paradoxical effects of well-intentioned disease mitigation strategies.

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4. Leveling up net zero climate leadership in the United States:

   Cullen, Kate ; Axelsson, Kaya ; Lezak, Stephen ; Hale, Thomas ; Lang, John ; Smith, Stephen ( January 2021 , Smith School working paper series)

   Executive Summary ● As the Biden-Harris administration recommits the US to the Paris Agreement, a robust national net zero emissions strategy, integrated with local and corporate decarbonization targets, will ensure the nation achieves its climate goals. A new nationwide survey of current net zero climate commitments reveals the following: ● The US has a broad foundation of local net zero ambition on which to build a robust national decarbonization pathway. At least 53% of Americans live in a jurisdiction with a subnational net zero target. Furthermore, US companies accounting for at least $5.2 trillion in yearly sales have committed to net zero. ● Discrepancies in the quality of these targets highlight the need for strong federal leadership to raise the bar for existing subnational and corporate targets and spur further ambition to meet the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement.1 ● Existing state, local and private sector targets require improved alignment in governance mechanisms, consideration of equity and use of offsets. ● To achieve net zero emissions in the US by 2050 in an equitable, just, and leastcost manner, the White House Climate Task Force and Congress should enact policies to strategically strengthen and grow subnational and corporate ambition.more »In conjunction, subnational and corporate actors must continue to set and improve upon existing targets. ● Our empirical findings indicate a strong basis of support for federal policymakers to implement a robust national net zero strategy. Four key policies will enable government leaders to connect ambition to action: ○ Pledge: Include a robust net zero pledge in the US’ Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) submission that exceeds the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Race to Zero minimum criteria and adopts key leadership practices. These practices include creating a pledge that is codified in law, covers all greenhouse gases across operations and supply chains and includes an interim target of 50% emissions reductions by 2030. ○ Plan: Publish a national net zero roadmap that includes considerations of equity and justice and places constraints on the role of offsets. ○ Proceed: Align economic recovery spending with the aims of the net zero target, develop sector-specific net zero benchmarks and template strategies and mandate net zero alignment as a condition for federal bailouts. ○ Publish: Publish an annual national progress report that includes the progress of subnational commitments.« less
5. The Small World of the Alternative Food Network

   https://doi.org/10.3390/su10082921  

   Brinkley, Catherine ( August 2018 , Sustainability)

   This research offers the first use of graph theory mathematics in social network analysis to explore relationships built through an alternative food network. The local food system is visualized using geo-social data from 110 farms and 224 markets around Baltimore County, Maryland, with 699 connections between them. Network behavior is explored through policy document review and interviews. The findings revealed a small-world architecture, with system resiliency built-in by diversified marketing practices at central nodes. This robust network design helps to explain the long-term survival of local food systems despite the meteoric rise of global industrial food supply chains. Modern alternative food networks are an example of a movement that seeks to reorient economic power structures in response to a variety of food system-related issues not limited to consumer health but including environmental impacts. Uncovering the underlying network architecture of this sustainability-oriented social movement helps reveal how it weaves systemic change more broadly. The methods used in this study demonstrate how social values, social networks, markets, and governance systems embed to transform both physical landscapes and human bodies. Network actors crafted informal policy reports, which were directly incorporated in state and local official land-use and economic planning documents. Community governance overmore »land-use policy suggests a powerful mechanism for further localizing food systems.« less