The Anthropocene stinks! Odor, affect, and the entangled politics of livestock waste in a rural Iowa watershed

Abstract

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.

Remembering and reconfiguring industrial heritage: the case of the digester in Moss, Norway

“…The case of the digester demonstrates that heritage is multifarious and encompasses tangible, intangible and emotional dimensions (see also Skrede & Hølleland, 2018). Locals continue to re-create the 'smell of Moss' and the embodied (olfactory) memory of the digester, as smell produces visceral reactions and affective responses in the body (Neubert, 2020). However, the case of the digester demonstrates that objects can also 'take on' memories in ways that may help people remember their industrial landscapes and the pride of having worked at industrial plants such as Peterson.…”

Aporias at the intersection of geography and feminist science and technology studies: Critical engagements with Black studies

“…Physical, chemical, and biological processes are imminently stitched together with historical and social unfoldings, intertwining landscapes and philosophical concepts that break from geographical determinism and historicity (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994;Saldanha, 2013). As subterranean, atmospheric, and other geopolitical spaces come under increasing scrutiny, feminist geophilosophy links and grounds these inquiries in an entanglement of earth, thought, and scientific practice (see Bosworth, 2017;Neubert, 2020;Pérez, 2020;Squire, 2020). Methodologically, feminist geophilosophy stresses a "cosmological perspectivism" (Grosz et al, 2017: 3) that understands resistance and political experimentation as the conceptualization and enactment of new material relations with the earth.…”

Sustainable Gains: Dutch Investment and Bureaucratic Rationality in Eighteenth-Century Saxon Mines

“…District maps like these were an increasingly important tool for infrastructure planning but must be placed in the context of early modern resource economics. 81 Trebra's commentary included a detailed description of Marienberg's silver production over the centuries and provided reasons for the relative abundance or lack of revenue. 82 Hansen translated this work to give potential investors "an idea of the previous prosperity of these mountains, how your contributions can now be usefully applied to your benefit, and what can be expected from this investment in the future."…”