Making and Mastering Violent Environments: Following the Infrastructures of Accumulation in Coastal Louisiana

Abstract

Louisiana’s coastal wetlands have been disappearing at an alarming rate over the past several decades, with the greatest harm experienced by vulnerable populations (poor and racialised residents). It was not until 2005 that the state legislature responded with a much‐lauded Master Plan tasked with integrating the construction of new flood control infrastructure with wetland restoration. Seeking to unsettle this initiative, we develop a historical‐geographical materialist approach to follow the entanglements between infrastructural production and capital accumulation in Louisiana over the past several hundred years. In so doing, we present a two‐fold argument: that the making and mastering infrastructural violence has always been part of the historical unfolding of the socio‐spatial dynamics of capitalism; and that infrastructural development has played an integral role in this duality at every historical turn. The capitalist state, at both the federal and state levels, has played a vital role in producing and controlling this violence.

Infrastructure of Vulnerability, or, How the Fraser Valley Flooded Twice

“…What is more, failure to adequately maintain the dikes has led to increased flood risk and threats to agriculture in areas not yet converted to shrimp production (Barbour et al 2022). Likewise, dikes and other related flood control infrastructure have been a precondition of the development of oil and gas industries in Louisiana (Phillips and Soederberg 2023). These infrastructures have prevented sediment from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers being deposited in the delta, leading to erosion and rendering the population more vulnerable to hurricanes (Jessee 2020:150).…”