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1. “We'll make it work”: Navigating surveilled living arrangements after romantic partner incarceration

   https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12962  

   Schmidt, Steven; Turney, Kristin; Monreal, Angie Belén (April 2024, Journal of Marriage and Family)

   Abstract ObjectiveWe use the case of housing insecurity to examine how romantic partner incarceration results in increased and prolonged surveillance of women at home. BackgroundRomantic partner incarceration prompts surveillance from the criminal legal system while simultaneously eroding women's finances, health, and family relationships. Less is known about how these symbiotic harms of romantic partner incarceration enable surveillance beyond the criminal legal system. MethodWe use longitudinal interviews with 35 (previously coresident) romantic partners of incarcerated men, showing how incarceration prompts unwanted moves for partners, how women manage housing insecurity following partner incarceration, and how they become embedded into living arrangements where they are monitored, evaluated, and controlled. ResultsWe identify three primary findings. First, women experiencing housing insecurity after romantic partner incarceration relied heavily on their social ties (and, to a lesser extent, institutional housing providers) while enduring stressful and prolonged housing searches. Second, the homes that women move into expose them to increased surveillance. Women encounter domestic, caregiving, romantic, and financial surveillance. Romantic partner incarceration prompts large changes in surveillance among women who left independent homes, moderate changes in surveillance among women who left comparatively desirable doubled‐up homes, and prolonged surveillance among nonmovers. Finally, women respond to surveillance by monitoring burdens on hosts and reframing stays in shared homes as temporary. ConclusionTaken together, these findings extend prior research on the symbiotic harms of romantic partner incarceration, how women attached to incarcerated men experience surveillance, and how doubled‐up families sustain shared homes. 

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2. (2023, June). Moralizing Design Differences in the North: An Ethnographic Analysis. In 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.

   Nicewonger, T. E.; Fritz, S. A.; McNair, L. D. (June 2023, 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.)

   Addressing the 2023 theme of Global Responsibilities of Engineers, in particular the disproportionate impacts of climate change on communities in remote regions of Alaska, this paper tracks the “social life” of a prefabricated frame assembly system designed for constructing homes in emergency contexts in northern Alaska (Appadurai 1986). An Alaskan housing research center began using this prefabricated system over a decade ago, in a time of crisis caused by major spring flooding in an Alaskan riverine community that has long grappled with housing shortages. The destruction of these homes, along with the possessions of the people living in them, was a tremendous loss to this community. The region’s short building season and dependency on barge and aerial transportation services for shipping in building supplies further compounded these challenges. In response, local and federal agencies came together and decided on a housing design that uses an integrated wall and truss system that could be prefabricated off-site, shipped out, rapidly assembled by volunteer building crews in the affected site, and that facilitated a highly insulated energy efficient home. As a result, this design played a critical role in mediating further disaster. Fast-forward to the present, the housing research center continues to opt for this system for most remote designs, but builders and engineers have begun to debate whether its advantages outweigh some of its logistical challenges. Some argue that its value has been overstated, while others describe it as a practical and affordable method for building energy efficient homes in remote Alaskan communities. Still others have adapted its design to fit their needs, thus producing new variations of the design, while also showing how the design of this building system might be reimagined. A deep dive into this debate provides an opportunity to analyze how both knowledge building and moral stances inform the ways that engineers assume global responsibilities related to communities affected by climate change. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research among Alaskan engineers, builders, housing advocates, and community stakeholders, this case study reflects what design scholars describe) as the “moralization of technology” through engineering practices (Verbeek 2006: 269). From this perspective, engineering systems may take on multiple meanings and applications, including marking differences in thought, creativity, and moral affinity among experts who are working to addressing affordable housing needs in Alaska. Reflecting on these differences in perspective, this paper tracks the “cultural biography” of this engineered system across time, place, and institutional, cultural, and geographic settings to probe how debates about the efficacy of this prefabricated system come to index varying moral stances and value systems that are deeply qualitative but also very much a part of the technical and materializing processes of the building design (Kopytoff 1986). As a case study, this analysis also can serve as a teaching tool in engineering and interdisciplinary classrooms for examining the integrative nature of ethics and technology as related to a range of human impacts on the environment and marginalized communities. 

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3. Complexities in Alaskan Housing: Critical reflections on social forces shaping cold climate building projects

   Nicewonger, Todd; Fritz, Stacey; McNair, Lisa (January 2022, Proceedings of the American Society of Engineering Education 2022 Annual Conference & Exposition)

   This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Alaskan engineers, builders, and housing experts on cold climate housing design in Native Alaskan communities and explores multiple levels of challenges to designing and building in remote areas. It examines how the history of land ownership and governance in Alaska shapes the imaginaries of engineers and builders working to address housing equity in the state. Specifically, we study cold climate housing projects being carried out in Alaska and compare the design of these projects to wider colonial legacies and failed housing policies. This includes examining both considerations that need to be made at the start of design and engineering projects, as well as how complexity figures into the culture of cold climate engineers and builders in Alaska. Theoretically, this paper draws on Annemarie Mol and John Law’s conceptualization of complexity as a social practice (2002), in which they argue against reductionism by calling attention to the “multiplicity” of ways in which actions and knowledge come into being. In drawing on this work, we seek to engage with multiple histories and worldviews, including dominant notions of “home” that contribute to reproducing housing insecurity and colonial legacies in rural communities (Christensen 2017). Building on this theoretical framework, we thread together a critical description of the social terrain in which engineering and building projects in remote Alaska Native communities are situated. Such situated understandings necessitate engineers and builders working on these projects to think locally while recognizing the broader contributions of home designs developed thousands of miles from the Arctic. The implications of this complexity, we argue, are important for engineering educators and students to incorporate in their approaches to design and engineering learning opportunities across multiple contexts, including engineering programs, construction, architecture, industrial design, environmental and sustainability science, and the social sciences. To address complex challenges in which these disciplines must all take part, engineers and others who make up these teams of diverse expertise must navigate layers of complexity and understand and value how social forces shape building projects. Cold climate contexts like the ones we describe here provide examples that can engage educators, learners, and practitioners. 

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4. Using Community Science to Better Understand Lead Exposure Risks

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GH000525  

   Dietrich, Matthew; Shukle, John T.; Krekeler, Mark P. S.; Wood, Leah R.; Filippelli, Gabriel M. (February 2022, GeoHealth)

   Abstract Lead (Pb) is a neurotoxicant that particularly harms young children. Urban environments are often plagued with elevated Pb in soils and dusts, posing a health exposure risk from inhalation and ingestion of these contaminated media. Thus, a better understanding of where to prioritize risk screening and intervention is paramount from a public health perspective. We have synthesized a large national data set of Pb concentrations in household dusts from across the United States (U.S.), part of a community science initiative called “DustSafe.” Using these results, we have developed a straightforward logistic regression model that correctly predicts whether Pb is elevated (>80 ppm) or low (<80 ppm) in household dusts 75% of the time. Additionally, our model estimated 18% false negatives for elevated Pb, displaying that there was a low probability of elevated Pb in homes being misclassified. Our model uses only variables of approximate housing age and whether there is peeling paint in the interior of the home, illustrating how a simple and successful Pb predictive model can be generated if researchers ask the right screening questions. Scanning electron microscopy supports a common presence of Pb paint in several dust samples with elevated bulk Pb concentrations, which explains the predictive power of housing age and peeling paint in the model. This model was also implemented into an interactive mobile app that aims to increase community‐wide participation with Pb household screening. The app will hopefully provide greater awareness of Pb risks and a highly efficient way to begin mitigation. 

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5. Grappling with real property supremacy in US urban climate finance

   https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2024.2367922  

   Wagner, Julia; Kear, Mark; Knuth, Sarah; Zavareh_Hofmann, Sahar; Taylor, Zac J (July 2024, City)

   In US cities, drives to secure property value against climate risks have become a preoccupation for mainstream climate finance. This real property bias sidelines non-owners and inhabitants of historically marginalized housing types, limiting their capacity to prepare for and recover from climate change events. In this intervention, we survey major pathways of existing climate finance, before turning to emerging trends for residential ‘climate-proofing,’ retrofitting efforts that bring climate finance ‘home’ to the building level. Building on the concept of ‘real property supremacy,’ we demonstrate how resourcing climate response is limited by the privileging of real property in the structure and distribution of low-carbon financial tools and incentives. We argue that this privileging reproduces hierarchies of protection for some, while exacerbating existing social inequalities, exclusions, and predations for others—ultimately, yielding greater control over climate futures to those with asymmetrical power over real property. This structurally unequal treatment risks locking-in extant social hierarchies embedded in US real property relationships instead of seizing opportunities to transform them via the historic urban investments required for climate change. 

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