Doctoral Dissertation Research: Race, Plantation Agriculture and the Environmental Politics of Pesticide Use and Regulation

该项目调查了种植农业和农药密集型农业发展的历史如何影响当代农药使用和监管的做法。该项目在种植农业的种族遗产的背景下，将农药的替代框架- -作为农业生产必不可少的或作为不可接受的环境污染物。通过将种族作为农业和环境政治的一个因素，该项目旨在促进对农村不平等与环境变化之间关系的理解。它询问种植园的种族政治如何影响杀虫剂作为一种农业技术的早期发展；农业生产力和种族平等之间的历史紧张关系如何促成了当前的农业环境监管结构；以及与种族关系有关的农业变化的不同叙述如何影响当代关于农药使用和监管的辩论。该项目将种族平等和农业生产力的双重目标置于研究的中心，对通过农业实践提高环境和社会可持续性的障碍和机会进行了与政策相关的分析。通过这项研究产生的口述历史将被存档并向公众开放，以扩大公众知识并为未来的研究提供信息。这项研究的结果将通过学术文章和出版物向更广泛的读者广泛分享，以便加深对环境正义与当代农业生产之间关系的理解。该研究定位于政治生态学，环境正义和农业研究的交叉点。亚祖河-密西西比三角洲是20世纪中叶世界上农药最密集的地区之一，也是当今农业高产地区，通过对该地区的案例研究，该研究将探讨农业生产和环境监管中农药使用的政治是如何再现或挑战种植园历史上的种族政治的。为了提供农药在种族不平等空间生产中的作用的有质感的历史，该项目借鉴了口述历史方法和档案研究。通过半结构化访谈和参与者观察，该研究还考察了这段历史如何影响当今农药的当代使用和理解。通过将历史调查与当代研究联系起来，该项目将丰富对当代农业环境实践的历史决定因素的理解，同时将种族作为环境变化的关键因素。

This project investigates how the history of plantation agriculture and pesticide-intensive agricultural development shape contemporary practices of pesticide use and regulation. The project places alternate framings of pesticides - as indispensable to agricultural production or as unacceptable environmental pollutants - within the context of the racial legacy of plantation agriculture. By centering race as a factor agricultural and environmental politics, this project seeks to advance understanding of the relationship between rural inequality and environmental change. It asks how the racial politics of the plantation impacted early development of pesticides as an agricultural technology; how historic tensions between agricultural productivity and racial equity contributed to current structures of agro-environmental regulation; and how different narratives of agricultural change connected to race relations inform contemporary debates over the use and regulation of pesticides. Placing the dual objectives of racial equity and agricultural productivity at the center of inquiry, the project provides a policy-relevant analysis of the obstacles to and opportunities for greater environmental and social sustainability through agricultural practices. Oral histories produced through this study will be archived, and made publically available, in order to expand public knowledge and inform future research. The findings of the study will be shared widely through both scholarly articles and publications for broader audiences in order to deepen understanding of the relationship between environmental justice and contemporary agricultural production.The study is positioned at the intersection of scholarship on political ecology, environmental justice, and agrarian studies. Through a case study in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, one of the world's most pesticide-intensive regions during the mid-20th century and a highly productive agricultural region in the present day, the research will ask how the politics of pesticide usage in agricultural production and environmental regulation reproduce, or challenge, the historical racial politics of the plantation. In order to provide a textured history of the role of pesticides in the production of racially unequal spaces, the project draws upon oral history methodologies and archival research. Through semi-structured interviews and participant observation, the study also examines how this history informs contemporary uses and understandings of pesticides in the present day. By connecting historical inquiry with contemporary research, this project will enrich understandings of the historical determinants of contemporary agro-environmental practices, while centering race as a key factor in environmental change.