Papers by Christopher M Neubert
The Immigrant-Food Nexus, 2020
Most evenings in northcentral Iowa, between segments on the local news, the familiar face of Laur... more Most evenings in northcentral Iowa, between segments on the local news, the familiar face of Laurie Johns fills the screen. A former news broadcaster herself, she introduces the “Iowa Minute,” a short piece of advertorial produced by the Iowa Farm Bureau. In 2017, many viewers heard the story of Eagle Grove, Iowa (population 3,500), and how a new livestock processing facility would help revitalize the region. Like many small towns in the rural Midwest, Eagle Grove has struggled with a stagnant economy since the farm crisis of the 1980s transformed agriculture in the United States (Foley 2015). The announcement that one of the largest pork producers in the country would soon be building a large processing facility was thus welcomed by many in the area. The Eagle Grove residents featured in the “Iowa Minute” reflected a sense of optimism as they described the potential “growth opportunities” that would herald “a really exciting time.” One retailer told viewers that “it’s never been a better time to be a resident of Eagle Grove” and invited all Iowans to come to Eagle Grove, while the mayor described the relationship between locals and livestock as “one big happy family.” The optimism expressed here obscures a larger story: the story of how one town’s fortunes became bound to the promise of a massive slaughterhouse. Eagle Grove was not the first choice for Prestage Farms, the large agribusiness building the plant. When plans for the plant were first revealed in early 2016, Prestage had selected Mason City (population 28,000), about 60 miles northeast of Eagle Grove, as the site for what they described as a modern and technologically innovative pork processing facility. Initially, 2 Slaughterhouse Politics: Struggling for the Future in the Age of Trump
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2020
Recent interventions in geography regarding the Anthropocene have demonstrated how Western logics... more Recent interventions in geography regarding the Anthropocene have demonstrated how Western logics of order and containment have produced massive geologic transformations. This paper focuses on odor as a sense that, when engaged critically, disrupts those logics by exposing the porousness of the body to other bodies and spaces. Visceral reactions to smell produce affective responses in the body which are informed by circulating political discourses. Thus, this paper explores how research focused on odor can reveal the complicated dynamics through which bodies are enrolled into subject formation and become a terrain of political struggle. Research on the everyday experience of hog manure in a rural Iowa watershed forms the case study through which these questions are raised. Since the transition to concentrated livestock agriculture at the end of the twentieth century, the disposal of animal waste has caused serious concern. This waste is often collected and later spread on fields acr...
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2019
I n a 2015 photograph, Vijaykant Chauhan poses casually on a motorcycle decorated with an Indian ... more I n a 2015 photograph, Vijaykant Chauhan poses casually on a motorcycle decorated with an Indian flag, answering a phone while a man out of the frame hands him a sword (Sethi 2015). Chauhan has pledged to defend Hindu women from "love jihad," an elaborate conspiracy for Muslim men to marry Hindu women and change India's demographic composition through conversion and then through their production of Muslim babies (Sethi 2015). In August of 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the US South, white nationalists in khaki pants and white shirts took over the University of Virginia campus. Tiki torches in hand, the crowd chanted Nazi slogans: "You will not replace us!" and "Jews will not replace us!" These violent messages materialized in the death of Heather Heyer and injuries of at least nineteen other counterprotestors. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rose to power by enacting a strongman leadership that mobilized a religious-conservative populism, promised to empower the oppressed (mazlum) and victimized (mağdur) masses against the (secular urban) elites and to defend the nation against the supposed threats embodied by a range of others (Ateş 2017, 112; Yilmaz and Bashirov 2018). Erdoğan locates Turkey's future strength in a young and large population, stoking fears of population decline and of immanent betrayal by suspect others who might escape the government's attempts to raise a "pious generation" (Ateş 2017, 112-13). These cases are situated across oceans yet tied together by global flows and histories of colonialism, nationalism, and patriarchy into a constellation of ideas that center future threat as a justification for political action and violence. In the fears of "love jihad," in the rallying cry against replacement, We would like to thank participants and the audience who participated in our "Demographic Fever Dreams" panel at the 2017 American Association of Geographers Conference in Boston. We are also grateful for conversations with
Contemporary South Asia, 2015
As the continued health of the plantation sector in Sri Lanka remains a vital part of the Sri Lan... more As the continued health of the plantation sector in Sri Lanka remains a vital part of the Sri Lankan economy, so too must the continued well-being of the people working and living in the estates remain an important concern. The tea industry must confront several challenges in the near future, some which have remained unaddressed for several decades and others that are only now becoming apparent. This paper analyses the current challenges and opportunities facing the people involved in the plantation economy in Sri Lanka – most specifically, the Up-country Tamils, who comprise most of the labour force. Arguably, the plantation system is an unethical economic scheme engendering a parallel political structure to reinforce the plantation economy. Despite some changes to the system during the nearly 200-year existence of plantation economics in Sri Lanka, transformative structural reform remains elusive, with the plantation sector dependent on a resident labour force that exercises limited power over both the economy in which they participate and the spaces they inhabit. This article thus focuses on the efforts of Up-country Tamils to challenge patterns of power and control in the plantation region and forge a new society within an increasingly authoritarian post-war state.
This thesis focuses on the presence of livestock waste in the Raccoon River watershed in northwes... more This thesis focuses on the presence of livestock waste in the Raccoon River watershed in northwest Iowa. In particular, I examine the liquefied mixture of feces and urine that pools underneath these animals in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) that is collected and then sold to local farmers. These farmers then use this waste as manure for spreading onto crop fields. The process through which hog waste re-enters the agricultural economy as "manure" relies on interwoven networks of power that continually produce the landscape and conceal the everyday, lived experience of this waste when it is spread near homes and communities. Relying on fieldwork completed in 2015, this thesis examines how seemingly small, bureaucratic interventions produce specific discourses that have spatial implications in everyday life and can change our understanding of waste, landscape, rurality, food, and farming.
The Immigrant-Food Nexus: Borders, Labor, and Identity in North America, 2020
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2020
Recent interventions in geography regarding the Anthropocene have demonstrated how Western logics... more Recent interventions in geography regarding the Anthropocene have demonstrated how Western logics of order and containment have produced massive geologic transformations. This paper focuses on odor as a sense that, when engaged critically, disrupts those logics by exposing the porousness of the body to other bodies and spaces. Visceral reactions to smell produce affective responses in the body which are informed by circulating political discourses. Thus, this paper explores how research focused on odor can reveal the complicated dynamics through which bodies are enrolled into subject formation and become a terrain of political struggle. Research on the everyday experience of hog manure in a rural Iowa watershed forms the case study through which these questions are raised. Since the transition to concentrated livestock agriculture at the end of the twentieth century, the disposal of animal waste has caused serious concern. This waste is often collected and later spread on fields across the state, producing foul odors and potential toxins. Political discourses that maintain this system claim waste is ordered and properly maintained , generating positive affective responses to foul odors and thereby maintaining support for industrialized agriculture.
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2019
In the midst of the current global turn to the right, striking resonances across oceans emerge: s... more In the midst of the current global turn to the right, striking resonances across oceans emerge: strongmen and their allies point to specific and vivid tales or images signaling demographic shifts as signs of danger. These could be lesbian farmers (supposedly) staging a takeover of the US Midwest, tales of virtuous headscarf-wearing women under attack by secular men (in Turkey), or of Muslim Romeos luring Hindu women to convert (in India). In each of these cases, the story lodges in the body and takes on a life of its own, inspiring fear and devotion, and centering the need for a heroic rescue. Here, we argue for the need for feminist engagement with political narratives about population change and point to the important work that fantastical stories focused on demographically based fears have done for the recent rise of right-wing politics in the United States, India, and Turkey. We refer to these stories as demographic fever dreams to emphasize their simultaneous obsession with demography and detachment from demographic data. Our analysis shows that demographic fever dreams deploy gendered tropes to create a narrative of vulnerability for dominant groups in relation to a takeover by religious, racial, and sexual others. Attending to the discursive constitution of demographic fever dreams in media and by political leaders in each context, we examine how they effectively invoke populist fears and identify which bodies become threatening and which ones need protection. We show that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Donald Trump in the United States, and Narendra Modi in India have all deployed an imaginary of an authentic nation under threat—whether that is racialized as the white working class in the United States or given religious inflection as authentically Sunni in Turkey and authentically Hindu in India. This imaginary becomes a fetishized group under threat from all manner of others threatening demographic destruction. In each of these instances, we argue that figures with political power use a vivid and fantastic fiction to amplify, imagine, and obscure demographic patterns of migration, birth, or mortality so as to consolidate political power or to dismiss and undermine class tensions and create fictitious communities of homogeneity. Thus, demographic fever dreams effectively produce a rationale for strongman masculinity and contribute to the retrenchment of nationalist values.
Christopher Neubert: Manure Politics: Making Space for Modern Agriculture in the Landscapes of Ev... more Christopher Neubert: Manure Politics: Making Space for Modern Agriculture in the Landscapes of Everyday Life (Under the direction of Sara H. Smith)
As the continued health of the plantation sector in Sri Lanka remains a vital part of the Sri Lan... more As the continued health of the plantation sector in Sri Lanka remains a vital part of the Sri Lankan economy, so too must the continued well-being of the people working and living in the estates remain an important concern. The tea industry must confront several challenges in the near future, some which have remained unaddressed for several decades and others that are only now becoming apparent. This paper analyses the current challenges and opportunities facing the people involved in the plantation economy in Sri Lanka – most specifically, the Up-country Tamils, who comprise most of the labour force. Arguably, the plantation system is an unethical economic scheme engendering a parallel political structure to reinforce the plantation economy. Despite some changes to the system during the nearly 200-year existence of plantation economics in Sri Lanka, transformative structural reform remains elusive, with the plantation sector dependent on a resident labour force that exercises limited power over both the economy in which they participate and the spaces they inhabit. This article thus focuses on the efforts of Up-country Tamils to challenge patterns of power and control in the plantation region and forge a new society within an increasingly authoritarian post-war state.
Conference Presentations by Christopher M Neubert
Following recent calls for critical and feminist human geographers to take demographic change ser... more Following recent calls for critical and feminist human geographers to take demographic change seriously (Robbins & Smith 2016), we are inviting submissions about the origins of demographic fever dreams and fantasies. We're interested in the work that they do, the danger that they pose to building solidarity across difference, but also the potential for play and subversion that is embedded in their vivid specificity. Traditionally, critical human geography has overlooked or ignored demographic change, and yet global demographic shifts are animating and inspiring political movements worldwide. Often, these shifts are mobilized in political discourses through specific demographic fantasies to instill anxiety and fear of perceived threats to the success of nations. These fantasies rely on normative ideas of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious difference, but also invent compelling narrative justifications for those ideas and a means for them to mutate and multiply. In the 2016 US election cycle, for example, we have recently been privy to a deluge of dreams and fantasies: a migration-engendered epidemic of " taco trucks on every corner, " an Obama-sponsored invasion of lesbian farmers to undermine red state agricultural strongholds, and a " basket of deplorables " containing half of all Trump voters. We describe these as fever dreams and fantasies because of their strikingly specific and dream-state features that leap from numerical measures and policy into a surreal and multivalent landscape of threat…or delight. As we consider the political purpose of these demographic fantasies, the fears underlying them, and how the vivid imagery ties into fears of white masculine decline and panic, we wonder how we can unravel these oddly specific imaginaries. Beyond the US election, we also read an underlying element of demographic fantasy in worries about the presence of burkinis on French beaches, attempts to ban " sharia law " across the southern US and Europe, the rhetoric surrounding the Brexit, and numerous other global cases. In each of these instances, a vivid and fantastic fiction is used by figures with political power to amplify, imagine, and obscure demographic patterns of migration, birth, or mortality to consolidate political power or to dismiss or undermine class tensions and create fictions communities of homogeneity. While it is easy to be smugly dismissive of fears about an unlikely takeover by " others, " here we hope to more carefully consider the content, deployment, and mechanisms of these vivid demographic imaginaries of threat. In so doing, we hope to build on, but also disrupt and complicate theoretical explorations in feminist political geography, which evoke the embodied life of territory and borders and the political life of demography.
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Papers by Christopher M Neubert
Conference Presentations by Christopher M Neubert