Connective Tissues: Everyday Engagements with Urban Yards

Abstract

This photo essay is rooted in the overlapping edges of urban environmentalisms, the politics of care, and everyday microgeographies of cultivation and inhabitation. The essay offers situated and partial views into yards in Minneapolis, Minnesota, made during several years of research with residents in their yards. Here, yards constitute often overlooked connective tissue for residential landscapes—both territorially, and also relationally. I pair images I made with text—not as objective or neutral illustration, but as part of a search for modes of address adequate to circulations of affect, power, difference, and care. There are many possibilities, as well as pressing reasons, to imagine yards relationally. My research investigates how yards do social and political work as affective realms of embodied engagements, skill, and practice within collective capacities for handling difference, emotion, care, and experimentation.

此一影像论文是植基于城市环境主义、照护政治，以及耕作和居住的日常微观地理之间的重叠边界。本论文提供在明尼苏达州的明尼阿波利斯中，对于庭院中的居民进行为期数年的研究所生产的有关庭院的情境化与局部观点。于此，庭院构成了居住地景中经常被忽略的连结组织——同时是领域性的，也是关系性的。我将自身生产的影像与文字进行配对——并非作为公正或客观的描绘，而是作为寻求适合情绪、权力、差异与照护流通的应对模式之研究局部。有诸多可能性和迫切的原因，会对庭院进行关系性的想像。我的研究探讨庭院如何在集体能力中作为身体化之参与、技术和实践的情绪领域之社会与政治工作，以处理差异、情感、照护和实验。

Este ensayo fotográfico se arraiga en los bordes superpuestos de ambientalismos urbanos, las políticas del cuidado social y las microgeografías cotidianas del cultivo y la habitación. El ensayo presenta vistas situadas y parciales en los patios de Minneapolis, Minnesota, hechas en esos escenarios durante varios años de investigación con los residentes. Aquí, los patios constituyen un tejido conector a menudo olvidado de paisajes residenciales ––tanto territorial como relacionalmente––. Emparejo las imágenes que yo hice junto con texto ––no como ilustración objetiva o neutral, sino como parte de una búsqueda de modos de abocamiento adecuados a las circulaciones de afecto, poder, diferencia y cuidado. Hay numerosas posibilidades, lo mismo que razones apremiantes, para imaginar los patios de manera relacional. Mi investigación indaga cómo los patios cumplen trabajo social y político como reinos afectivos de compromisos encarnados, habilidad y práctica dentro de capacidades colectivas para manejar la diferencia, la emoción, el cuidado y la experimentación.

Key Words:

• affect
• everyday life
• representation
• visual ethnography
• yards

• 情绪
• 每日生活
• 再现
• 视觉民族志
• 庭院

• afecto
• vida cotidiana
• representación
• etnografía visual
• patios

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to the participants in the project, who showed me more about yards than I could have imagined at the start of the project. Thank you also to Vinay Gidwani and Helga Leitner. I also thank two anonymous reviewers and Deborah Dixon, whose comments greatly improved the piece.

Notes

Preceding pages: Color figures available online.

^1. Stewart (2007) has consistently pushed the boundaries of representation through her approach to writing and ethnography in cultural theory, anthropology, and geography.

^2. Here I follow Singh’s (2015) recent emphasis on the joy inherent in environmental care activity, as Singh expanded theorizations of collective conservation efforts by political ecologists and more traditional development economists alike, which often focus instead on the quantifiable economic costs of such activities and land uses.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ursula Lang

URSULA LANG is an Assistant Professor in Residence in the Department of History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI 02903. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include urban environmental politics, with a focus on lived experiences and everyday environmental expertise.