Description
Book SynopsisSarah E. Vaughn examines climate adaptation against the backdrop of ongoing processes of settler colonialism and the global climate change initiatives that seek to intervene on the lives of the world's most vulnerable.
Trade Review“With deep erudition and empathy, Sarah E. Vaughn illuminates the visions of society inherent to climate adaptation policy. She skillfully uncovers the stakes of this new world for us with a meticulous case study of the politics and technoscience of climate change in Guyana. Dynamic ways of living and being—the social infrastructure of climate adaptation—are revealed to be as critical as the structural projects and economic plans that undergird them. A highly original and major contribution that compels a reconsideration of environmental justice frameworks and that manifests the bold green shoots of renewed social theory.” -- Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor, Institute for Advanced Study
"The environmental ethics that builds from Vaughn’s counter-racial thinking makes accountability imaginable across racial divides. This is a book that helps us to create alliances that are not anchored solely in racial differences. Instead, it moves its audience to question what this difference entails, how this difference reconfigures our sense of belonging, and what this means for, and how it is inflected by, a more-than-human history and historiography under the pressing realities of climate change."
-- Cindy Kaiying Lin * Public Books *
Table of ContentsAbbreviations vii
Technical Notes ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: “Where Would I Go? There Was No Place with No Water” 1
1. Disaster Evidence 29
2. The Racial Politics of Settlers 47
3. Engineering, Archives, and Experts 69
4. Compensation and Resettlement 97
5. Love Stories 127
6. Accountability and the Militarization of Technoscience 153
7. The Ordinary 177
Conclusion: Materializing Race and Climate Change 197
Notes 205
References 221
Index 247
