Research Q&A with Dylan M. Harris: Climate, storytelling and political ecology

1. How would you describe the main idea or main takeaway from your most recent research or creative work to someone outside your field?

In general, I would say that my research follows four interconnected paths. First, I am interested in the stories we tell and don’t tell about climate change, and I am drawn to the transformative power of storytelling to enact meaningful change in communities that are among the most impacted by the changing climate. Second, I am developing work on what I call ‘climate consciousness’, which is to say the ways in which climate knowledge and politics have developed over time. Energy, specifically, has become a big part of my work, as energy politics are core to climate politics in the US. Third, I want to do research that helps us better understand what I see as the ‘transit’ of the Just Transition. Rather than studying the aftermath of transition projects, focusing on what could have been better, I want to do work that actively engages in the process. Fourth, as an educator and student debtor myself, I am doing research to better understand the contours of the student debt crisis. Specifically, I am drawn to the political ecology of student debt, highlighting where – and in what ways – student debt intersects with other socioecological issues (like funding for fossil fuels). I do this work because I want to help guide activism towards student debt abolition.

Regarding my two most recent articles, they both fit squarely within this framework. The paper, “Ruins and Ruination in Political Ecology,” is the introduction to a special issue for Capitalism, Nature, Socialism (CSN) on what I, and my collaborator Joshua Mullenite, see as a generative tension between the way that political ecologists (scholars that study how power relations inform environmental decisions) have historically seen ruins as sites of capitalist dispossession, and how more recent nature-society scholars see ruins as sites of hope, of possibility despite capitalism. The special issue includes six other papers, each one exploring this tension through a different theoretical lenses (e.g., archaeology) and empirical case studies (e.g., Bolivia). This special issue, and our introduction, grew from conversations we initially had at the 2019 Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference, where Josh and I were sharing a room (and where we actually met for the first time in 2013). This article fits within my broader understanding of climate consciousness, regarding the ways capitalist development informs (and constrains) climate politics, and aligns with what I see as the ‘transit’ of the Just Transition. As Colorado closes multiple coal-fired power plants, for example, they are repeating histories of ruination, extracting value from abandoning these spaces while also, significantly, opening up opportunities for what these spaces can be.

The other paper, “Socioecologiocal topologies of student debt in the United States,” also grew from conversations with my collaborator, Rae Baker, who, incidentally, I also met at a Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference. We have both talked, for years at this point, about our own experiences with student debt, and how those experiences have been mirrored by our own students. We have thought a lot about how our livelihoods, informed by working in public institutions of higher education, is linked to debt for our students (and their families). We draw on emerging research examining ‘debt topologies’, which looks at the way debt manifests materially and physically in people’s lives, to examine what we see as the socioecological undercurrents of the student debt crisis. Specifically, Rae looks at legal precedents that are contributing to blocking student debt relief. For example, US Supreme Court cases on clean air have a direct bearing on how debt is legislated in the US. I look at what I see as the political ecology of student debt, discussing how agricultural policy, for example, contributes to higher debt burdens for rural students compared to their urban peers. I look at how this is coming to fruition in Colorado, as the CU system increasingly looks to rural areas of the state for student recruitment. The overall goal of this work is, as mentioned above, to help guide student debt activism, providing more data points to inform legislative action to cancel student debt for all.

2. What is the key paper or author/performer who has most inspired your recent research/creative work?

My work on ruins and ruination has been largely inspired by scholars like Anna L. Tsing, whose books “Mushroom At the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins” (2015, Princeton University Press) and “Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene” (2017, University of Minnesota Press), have given me new ways to think about ruination and, against all odds, hope. Other scholars, like Laura Ogden (“Loss and Wonder at the World’s End” (2021, Duke University Press)) and Eben Kirskey (“Emergent Ecologies” (2015, Duke University Press)) have inspired this work, as has key scholars of queer and Black critical theory, such as José Esteban Muñoz’s (2009, NYU Press) “Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity” and Katherine McKittrick’s (2020, Duke University Press) “Dear Science and Other Stories.” Importantly, however, the history of political ecology – and the works of people like Michael Watts, Judith Carney, and Nancy Peluso – have greatly shaped how I understand the impact of capitalism on nature.

My work on student debt is inspired most prominently by the activism of the Debt Collective, a massive and growing union of debtors (of which I am a part) fighting for student debt cancellation. Intellectually, I am inspired by Christopher Harker’s research on debt topologies. Specifically, he discusses the ways in which financialized capital has grown over the past few decades, and how this has profound impacts in places like Palestine specifically. I am also inspired by emerging scholarship in critical university studies. Scholars like Charlie Eaton, and his book “Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education” (2022, University of Chicago Press), have helped me understand some of the structural issues — such as rescinded public funding and increasing neoliberal governance policies — undermining higher ed in the US. Similarly, books like Leigh Patel’s (2021, Beacon Press) “No Study without Struggle: Confronting Settler Colonialism in Higher Education” have helped me conceptualize how the issues we face in higher education are intimately connected to broader social and political struggles worldwide. To that end, I have an article forthcoming with seven other international collaborators that examines the global uneven geographies of student debt (and how to get rid of it).

3. How do you see this research/creative piece contributing to new insights in the field/sparking conversation?

While my writing on ruins and ruination, at least this special issue introduction, is largely theoretical, insights from this work have inspired my ongoing work with transition communities across Colorado, including Colorado Springs. I am currently doing research with a small city, Hayden, in Western Colorado that is actively transitioning, and, rather than repeating historical mistakes (e.g., relying entirely on fossil fuels to support the economy), I see them branching out, building possibility from ruins. So, I see this work as having direct policy relevance, and I am eager to continue this work, which is in conversation with the state’s Office of Just Transition.

I see my work on student debt as directly helpful to the Debt Collective. Based on conversations to date, I know it has been helpful. Moreover, I use this research as a jumping off point in my GES 3500 class, where we spend a week discussing the political ecologies of student debt and, ideally, what higher education can – and should – look like. In 2021, launched a loose research collective to study the uneven geographies of student debt, which has led to more writing and research… but importantly towards opportunities for active engagement. This work – and broader work on making higher ed more accessible – informs my involvement with United Campus Workers of Colorado (CWA-7799), the UCCS Chapter of the AAUP, and the newly formed national wall-to-wall, coast-to-coast Higher Ed Labor United union. Further, this fall I am working with collaborators to convene a workshop at Grand Valley State University, poetically in the DeVos Center, that brings together multiple scholars, activists, and, importantly, students to conceive of a more equitable and accessible vision of higher education.

4. Can you describe the contributions of co-authors or collaborators who were essential to the success of this project?

I am fortunate to have met several people through my work, many of whom have become close friends and collaborators. As I mentioned above, I first met Joshua Mullenite in 2013 at my first academic conference (Dimensions of Political Ecology at the University of Kentucky). I was 23, having just returned from several months of doing research in Bolivia on climate change adaptation in high mountain environments. We connected immediately, bonding over our favorite thinkers and bands, and we have stayed in touch. It was years of friendship, and us both having political ecology backgrounds, that informed the special issue on ruins and ruination in political ecology. Further, the contributors were largely also friends and friends of friends, most of whom we met at the 2020 Dimensions of Political Ecology conference, where Josh and I organized a session on ruins.

Clearly the through-thread in this work is the Dimensions of Political Ecology conference, which, again, is also where I met Rae Baker. We have been close friends ever since, and we have talked about writing together for years. This finally became a possibility as our thoughts converged on student debt. We have had an ongoing dialogue about our experiences – as student debtors and as faculty who teach students with debt – which mostly began as something akin to therapy… that then developed into a more fleshed out research agenda. We have also organized several conference sessions over the years, and I have learned so much about research ethics and community engagement from them. I look forward to seeing where this work on student debt goes from here.

5. What impact do you hope this work makes?

If I had any say in where and how my work is taken up, I would hope that my writing on ruins and ruination can help inform broader discourse around the Just Transition in Colorado and elsewhere. If nothing else, I hope that it helps expand the typical purview of political ecology to consider research on events that are currently happening (e.g., energy transitions) or have not yet happened (e.g., catastrophic climate change). In short, I hope that this work helps political ecologists focus more on process rather than outcomes.

Regarding my work on student debt, I hope my work, in some way, results in action – legislative or otherwise – to cancel student debt for all, which I realize is ambitious. In a smaller way, I hope that this work can at least inform dialogue on ways to create more equitable higher education in the United States.

6. What is on deck for you as you get started on your next project?

The four research pathways I outlined above are always expanding, growing in different and generative directions. I have a co-edited volume under contract with a friend/collaborator, Alex A. Moulton, that brings together diverse scholars to think about potential erasures resulting from climate change and their impacts on prospects for climate justice in the future. I have another co-edited volume, an anthology of speculative fiction about post-capitalist futures featuring authors from around the world, coming out soon (maybe later this year?). I am also working on a book manuscript on climate consciousness, looking specifically at the way material culture and folklore can help us better understand and respond to climate change.

More pressingly, I just received a grant from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to study the emerging trend of forest carbon management as a tool for fighting climate change. I will be returning to Appalachia, where lots of my research takes place, to study how – and if – these management mechanisms help or further dispossess small landowners, people who stand to benefit the most from a truly Just Transition…but who have also historically been left behind by similar programs.

7. Where and when do you feel you are the most productive/creative/inspired?

Perhaps it is unhelpful, but I am often trying to find time and space to not be inspired, to give myself a chance to relax and think clearly. My work is inspired by the world around me, by the people I meet and the things I see. I allow myself to be guided by my normative commitments, which includes an always-emerging sense of social justice, that take me to places I feel are important or relevant for my research. To provide a more useful answer, however, I can say that I often look to fiction – novels, short stories, tv shows, movies, art – for inspiration. I am always interested in ways the world could be, and I feel like so much of my work, research or otherwise, is guided by that insight.