Practicing Abolition Methodologies
Dr. Carrie ChennaultÌý
Assistant Professor of GeographyÌý
Department of Geography and AnthropologyÌý
Colorado State UniversityÌý
Abstract:
The Prison Agriculture Lab (PAL) and the Toxic Prisons Mapping Project (TPMP), two abolitionist collectives, work to advance the practice of abolition in daily life through scholar-activist projects focused, respectively, on food and environmental injustices in prisons. PAL is a collaborative space for inquiry and action that links innovative research, science translation, storytelling, and public engagement on prison agriculture. TPMP, a collaboration between academics and members of the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons, maps and shares the stories of environmental hazards that incarcerated people in prisons, jails, and detention centers face, working to support on-the-ground crisis response, public education, and long-term organizing.ÌýIn this seminar, I will discuss the development of PAL’s and TPMP’s abolition methodologies—the concrete liberatory and life-affirming methodological practices we undertake to achieve abolition. Introducing five principles of abolition methodologies, I will show how PAL and TPMP have put these principles into practice through a range of strategic, educational, protest, policy, storytelling, and artistic projects including GIS maps, storytelling and story maps, a satellite image gallery, data visualizations, related resources for research, teaching, and public engagement, a zine, and a counter-archive and countermappingÌýproject. Through practicing abolition methodologies, we’ve identified possibilities (and some pitfalls) for supporting radical fights against the social-ecological crises innate to the prison system and broader carceral state.
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