Ryan Schram
ANTH 6916: The social in justice
October 9, 2024
Slides available at https://anthro.rschram.org/6916/2024/10

Restoration as a practice of cultural continuity Many of the Black coastal communities I worked with were similarlysteeped in histories of autonomous worldmaking deeply rooted tolocal ecologies that shaped their approach to coastalrestoration. Compared to frameworks of restoration predicated onland loss and natural processes, many Black community leaders inPlaquemines Parish approach questions about land and future ofPlaquemines around the past—specifically through invocations ofholding land across generations of kin over time. My visits withMs. Irvine in the small town of Ironton, which neighbors theproposed Mid-Barataria River Sediment Diversion project, regularlyreinforced this point to me. (Barra 2023, 153)

See Mauss ([1925] 1990), pages 10–11.

Barra, Monica Patrice. 2024. “Restoration Otherwise: Towards Alternative Coastal Ecologies.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 42 (1): 147–65. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758221146179.

Mauss, Marcel. (1925) 1990. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W. D. Halls. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. https://archive.org/details/giftformreasonfo0000maus/page/10/mode/2up.