CODA: The Racial Ecologies of Urban Wetlands

Abstract

AbstractIn this coda to the intervention on slow violence and the administration of urban injustice I reflect on the role of racialization—broadly defined—in creating deeply unequal and risk‐laden wetland ecologies. I identify ‘racial ecologies’ and ‘ambivalence’ as two key concepts tying together wetland politics across the contexts of Philadelphia and Mumbai. While the concept of ‘racial ecologies’ underscores how systems of human valuation (including racism, casteism and religious discrimination) are ordered through ecological and property valuation, the concept of ‘ambivalence’ stresses the materiality and strategic governing logic which underpins wetland ecologies.