Booth: 0112 Developing a precipitation climatology to determine seasonal bias in a southeast Alaska ice core Presenter(s): Rebecca Miller Advisor(s): Stacy Porter Arts and Sciences - Social and Behavioral Sciences Ellen Mosley-Thompson Arts and Sciences - Social and Behavioral Sciences

Ice cores have provided critical paleo-proxy data from which Earth’s climate variability has been elucidated well beyond the instrumental period. The Bona-Churchill (BC) ice core (61.4°N, 141.7°W; 4420 masl) was recovered from the col between Mt. Bona and Mt. Churchill in the Wrangell – St. Elias Mountain Ranges in southeast Alaska by the Ice Core Paleoclimatology Group at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center.  Annual layer thicknesses in the ice core indicate the net annual accumulation of snowfall at the drill site. This record is compared with nearby meteorological station precipitation data to determine the degree of regional representation preserved in the BC ice core. The BC accumulation record is limited to annual resolution, thus the monthly precipitation station data must be used to determine the seasonal distribution of precipitation and potential biases in the ice core record. Coastal stations record higher precipitation in autumn while more inland stations exhibit higher summer precipitation. Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis was performed on the station data to identify primary precipitation patterns associated with the ice core-derived accumulation.  EOF analysis reveals that BC accumulation is representative of widespread winter precipitation and is also influenced by a summer pattern of high coastal and low inland precipitation. This analysis was also performed for the Mt. Logan (60.595°N, 140.5°W; 5340 masl) ice core located in the northwest Yukon about 110 km from the Bona-Churchill drill site. Despite their proximity, their accumulation records are substantially different.  These dissimilarities likely stem from their different elevations and site orientations amidst the complex topography of Wrangell - St. Elias Mountain Range. To further investigate these disparate records, future work will include modeling efforts to simulate high resolution precipitation distribution. The methods employed in this study can be applied to future research investigating ice core accumulation variability in topographically complex regions.

Booth: 0499
Gentrification in Over-the-Rhine: a targeted removal of social service providers
Presenter(s): Michelle Hablitzel

Over-the-Rhine (OTR) is a majority low-income, African American, urban historic district in Cincinnati which been transformed into the city’s core arts and entertainment district. The large-scale displacement of working class African Americans this re-development has entailed represents a textbook example of gentrification. In 2003, the City of Cincinnati formed the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), a non-profit organization that has spearheaded re-development efforts in OTR. 3CDC is led by prominent CEOs in the city and represents the interests of investors in the re-development of the neighborhood. 3CDC ignores the rich history of community and social reproduction practices that constituted life in pre-gentrification OTR, and instead emphasizes the transformation of a neighborhood marked by endemic poverty, crime, and crumbling infrastructure into a trendy center of economic activity benefitting newcomers and long-time residents alike. 3CDC has pursued the relocation of two prominent homeless service organizations in OTR: Shelterhouse and City Gospel Mission. 3CDC secured funds for these organizations to build new facilities with an increased capacity to provide services to more people, albeit from a location outside of OTR. Preliminary background interviews with members of these organizations, as well as archival research, suggests this is a strategic move – a deconcentration of poverty in OTR through a variety of policy initiatives, financial incentives, and discursive moves – to displace marginalized populations from OTR in order to increase the perceived attractiveness of the neighborhood as re-development efforts proceed. This study will contribute to a pressing need to better understand the lived reality of those displaced by gentrification by addressing a gap in the literature surrounding the targeted removal of social service agencies. While the new facilities gained in this transition are a benefit to the populations served by these agencies, I wish to explore how a network of progressive individuals and organizations in OTR has been affected by relocation. This study will reveal how organizations and individuals understand and operate in a context of displacement as a result of gentrification.                  

Booth: 0505
The political ecology of insurgent violence and hydropower in the northeast region of India
Presenter(s): Kevin Inks

Developmental discourse in the Northeast region of India has long centered on the problem of insurgency – a violent political process in which groups excluded from power contest the ruling authority. These movements, active in the region since shortly after India’s independence (1946), have recently begun to grow in scale and influence. Most scholarship on insurgent violence within geography has examined the issue through the lens of geopolitics, focusing on the actions of the state and how insurgent movements are organized over space (e.g, Schutte 2015, Buhaug & Lujala 2005). In contrast, there has been very little work done to place insurgent violence within its political-economic context, particularly with respect to the contest over resources (land, water). The need for such analysis is particularly acute in the notoriously understudied and resource-rich Indian Northeast. Based on my preliminary research in the Northeast states of Assam and Meghalaya, I examine insurgent violence through the framework of political ecology and use spatial analysis to connect insurgent violence to resource competition and widespread displacement caused by proposed and operational hydroelectric dams. Initial findings suggest that the growing number and scale of new damming projects undertaken by the Indian state in the last ten years has caused increased resource competition, particularly in agricultural areas. These conflicts have created hundreds of thousands of environmental refugees in the region. When these internally displaced communities are officially ‘resettled,’ traditionally-understood ethno- territorial boundaries are disrupted. This exacerbates conflict between ethnic nationalist insurgent movements and environmental refugee communities. While these conflicts predate large dams, the dams appear to be playing a key role in intensifying conflicts, particularly along ethno-territorial borders.  My project uses GIS to analyze these dynamics spatially, and to cartographically depict the spatial interplay between ethnic territories, damming impacts, incidence of insurgent violence, and concentrations/flows of internally displaced peoples.

Booth: 0511
‘Their privilege is their loss’: placing the postcolonial intellectual in development theory and practice
Presenter(s): Hannah McCandless

This study was born from an attempt to situate my own voice in development theory and practice following a year spent in Arusha, Tanzania. I struggled to justify a desire to help the poor within a theoretical framework of postcolonial and Marxist theory. I turned to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s 1988 essay, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ which offers a critique of the role of the Western intellectual as representative of the subaltern. Subaltern often refers to socially, politically, and economically marginalized groups in the developing world; though for Spivak, the subaltern exists only in differential: not elite. By examining the relationship between power, interest, and desire, Spivak submits that in attempt to criticize the West as subject, certain Western intellectuals haphazardly reinforce it. Spivak’s essay leads the reader to question the implications of her analysis on development interventions ‘on the ground.’ The purpose of this study is to examine how the festishization of the concrete experience of the subaltern subject, the search for lost nostalgias, and the woman as subaltern are complicated, not only within radical intellectualism, but also in humanitarian efforts meant to empower marginalized groups, particularly women, in the developing world. To address this problem, I offer a critical reading of Spivak’s essay, drawing from her sources (especially Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze) and engage in a close reading of the sections of Spivak’s essay specific to the aforementioned topics. Finally, I reflect on the ways these concepts manifest in development practice, calling into consideration my experience working in the field in Arusha, Tanzania. If we examine efforts to alleviate suffering among subaltern social groups through Spivak’s lens, neoliberal development practices mistakenly allow the concrete experience of some to embody a (perhaps irretrievable) consciousness of the group. In turn, interventions become semioses for establishing a ‘good society’ in which women are supposedly empowered, but in reality, ‘good society’ acts as an allegory for Western society. This deconstruction of the relationship between radical intellectualism and development practice offers an ethic to guide the Western intellectual and development practitioner.

Booth: 0513
The electoral geography of Turkey: a story of uneven development
Presenter(s): Olivia Nejedlik

When analyzing the policy cornerstones of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), a conservative, internationalized, Islamist party, one would assume that its popularity would be strongest in rural Eastern Turkey, where conservative Islamic values are more prevalent.  Regional and provincial voting statistics say otherwise, though: AKP support is spread fairly evenly over the country as a while, including the more urbanized provinces of Western Turkey. The purpose of this poster presentation will be to explore the reasons for this. Several possibilities suggest themselves.  First, migration from Eastern to Western Turkey, and migration from rural to urban areas brings conservative Islamic values to urban areas.  The party’s internationalization has also attracted conservative businessmen from the East who move to the cities, act as patriarchal figures for the men in their community and workplace, and spread AKP support.  Second, the AKP reaches out to the Gecekondus, pop-up living areas on the edge of cities populated by poorer migrants, and provides goods and help, essentially in exchange for votes.  Third, because Gecekondu residents are stigmatized as ignorant and lazy by the established residents of Western cities, they respond by constructing themselves as not only different from, but also better than the city residents.  The CHP, a liberal left-wing and secular party, is popular with longtime city dwellers, which makes it unattractive to the Gecekondu residents.  The AKP is the beneficiary.