Grantee: Anna Schlenz

Discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences

Funding Cycle: 2023-2024

Project Status: In Process

White Paper: 

About the Project:

This project seeks to trouble narratives of state regulation of public space, highlighting the role municipal governments play in processes of accumulation and privatization at local scales. Examining coastal space in particular, this project interrogates the contradictory relationships between hospitality capitalism, accumulation, and settler-colonial logics in the conflict over public shoreline access in Narragansett, Rhode Island. Preliminary findings for this project show that despite the shoreline’s importance as fixed capital for municipal revenue, a coalition of homeowners with seasonal residence in Narragansett are successfully mobilizing for enclosure of the shoreline via municipal ordinances. These preliminary findings point toward an opportunity for mapping the spatialities of settler-colonial logics that undergird contemporary conflicts over shoreline access.