Futures on Dry Ground: Anthropology and Coastal Planning

Authors

Theodore Hilton, Tulane University
Sheehan Moore, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

Abstract

Around the world, governments, industry, and other actors are creating plans to save coasts from environmental crisis. Louisiana is one prominent example: levees and other measures protect oil and gas infrastructure from inundation as the wetlands buffer rapidly erodes—in large part due to that same industry. The state’s primary answer to land loss is a $50 billion Coastal Master Plan. To illuminate such responses in Louisiana and globally, this article reviews emerging literature and frames an anthropology of coastal planning around three themes: (1) novel orientations toward time and space, (2) the reproduction of power and capital in the name of protection and restoration, and (3) the elision of other forms of land loss and defense by reductive above-ground/underwater planning paradigms.

Comments

This article was originally published in Environment and Society, available at https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2023.140104

This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.