Doctoral Dissertation Proposal: Benjamin Wang: Contamined Landscapes: Explosive Remnants of War in Sudan

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation examines how local populations, nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations and other development groups, and policymakers physically construct and conceptually understand environments contaminated by explosive remnants of war (principally landmines) in Sudan. Other explosive remnants of war include unexploded rockets and mortars in the ground that can explode long after being fired. The presence of latent explosives in civilian areas long after a conflict ends significantly alters the local environment and the interactions communities have with that environment, as well as how the explosive technologies and landscapes are understood. Through historical and ethnographic methods, this dissertation seeks to unmask and make visible the processes of perception, interaction, and management within a contaminated landscape, particularly by local communities in Sudan. This study is thus in part a response to the existing body of literature on global scale responses to contaminated landscapes. While such literature rightly points to the profusion of landscapes contaminated with explosive technologies that result from conflict, the local knowledge in a contaminated landscape becomes abstracted, thus obscuring the context of knowledge production as well as local meanings and experiences. This project makes several contributions. First, it aims to address the lack of scholarship on the environmental impacts of explosive technologies in Sudan, especially away from the Darfur states. Second, it connects the analytical dynamic between environmental history and science and technology studies to contemporary policy decisions, particularly those pertaining to development. These research findings will be relevant to academic researchers, policymakers, and nongovernmental activists. This study will examine the archives at the Modern Military Records unit of the National Archives, the UN Archives, the Mine Action Information Center at James Madison University and the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining in Switzerland. Oral histories and ethnographic observation will be conducted at the headquarters of an NGO dedicated to clearing landmines and in affected states of Sudan.