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Engineering Colonialism: Race, Class, and the Social History of Flood Control in Guyana Joshua Mullenite Florida International University, [email protected]

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Engineering Colonialism: Race, Class, and the Social History of Flood Control in Guyana Joshua Mullenite Florida International University, Jmull031@Fiu.Edu Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 6-22-2018 Engineering Colonialism: Race, Class, and the Social History of Flood Control in Guyana Joshua Mullenite Florida International University, [email protected] DOI: 10.25148/etd.FIDC006833 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Part of the Human Geography Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, Other International and Area Studies Commons, and the Social History Commons Recommended Citation Mullenite, Joshua, "Engineering Colonialism: Race, Class, and the Social History of Flood Control in Guyana" (2018). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3800. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3800 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida ENGINEERING COLONIALISM: RACE, CLASS, AND THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF FLOOD CONTROL IN GUYANA A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in GLOBAL AND SOCIOCULTURAL STUDIES by Joshua M. Mullenite 2018 To: Dean John F. Stack, Jr. choose the name of dean of your college/school Green School of International and Public Affairs choose the name of your college/school This dissertation, written by Joshua M. Mullenite, and entitled Engineering Colonialism: Race, Class, and the Social History of Flood Control in Guyana, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this dissertation and recommend that it be approved. _______________________________________ Roderick Neumann _______________________________________ Percy Hintzen _______________________________________ Kevin Grove _______________________________________ Todd Crowl _______________________________________ Gail Hollander, Major Professor Date of Defense: June 22, 2018 The dissertation of Joshua M. Mullenite is approved. _______________________________________ choose the name of dean of your college/school Dean John F. Stack, Jr. choose the name of your college/school Green School of International and Public Affairs _______________________________________ Andrés G. Gil Vice President for Research and Economic Development and Dean of the University Graduate School Florida International University, 2018 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks are due to my doctoral committee, Gail Hollander, Rod Neumann, Percy Hintzen, Kevin Grove, and Todd Crowl, all of whom provided important insights into the project at various points along the path to completion and I feel extremely privileged to have had such a wonderful dissertation committee. Though no longer at FIU, April Merleaux, Laura Ogden, and Caroline Faria each provided me with their own encouragement throughout my academic career that was vital to my growth as a researcher. April deserves special thanks as serving as a committee member for most my time in graduate school and shaping many of the historical aspects of this project. Paul Losch of the Latin American Collection of the Smathers Library at the University of Florida and Carl van Ness of the University of Florida Archives also provided valuable assistance at various points during the writing and research phases of this dissertation, respectively. Paul’s in-depth knowledge of the collection helped me find materials that I otherwise would not have seen. Though not featured in the dissertation, the materials curated by Carl in the preliminary stages of my dissertation research directly shaped the direction and outcome of my dissertation project. I owe a great deal of gratitude to an uncountable number of colleagues in Guyana. There are too many friends to name individually, but I owe a tremendous debt to them all. I am particularly grateful to Moray House Trust who provided me with a venue and an audience with whom I could share portions of this research, make important connections to Guyana’s civil engineering community, and receive invaluable feedback. Collis Augustine and Nikhil Ramkarran also provided me with great crash courses on life in Guyana that made my fieldwork relatively smooth and extremely productive. iii Various parts of this dissertation have been presented over the past several years at conferences around the world. I have a great deal of appreciation for my co-presenters and attendees who have offered me challenging questions and valuable insights that have made this work significantly stronger. Several of the ideas presented here also have their roots in publications submitted to and published in Geography Compass, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Geoforum, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Human Geography, and Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development. The feedback of reviewers and editors for these publications has been invaluable and has had a direct impact on this dissertation. This dissertation has been made possible in part by financial support from the Stephen J. Green School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University through a Morris and Anita Broad Research Fellowship as well as a Doctoral Evidence Acquisition Fellowship and a Dissertation Year Fellowship from the University Graduate School at FIU. Additionally, the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, the College of Arts and Sciences (Now the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education), and the Graduate and Professional Student Committee at FIU have each provided me with travel funding associated with the conduct and presentation of this research at various times. The FIU Alumni Association supported me through a Panther Pride Scholarship in the fall of 2014 and the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society provided a Love of Learning Grant in the summer of 2016 that were essential to conducting preliminary research. iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ENGINEERING COLONIALISM: RACE, CLASS, AND THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF FLOOD CONTROL IN GUYANA by Joshua M. Mullenite Florida International University, 2018 Miami, Florida Professor Gail Hollander, Major Professor Overabundance and scarcity of water are global concerns. Across the world’s low-lying coastal plains, flooding brought on by sea level rise acts as an existential threat for a multitude of people and cultures while in desert (and increasingly non-desert) regions intensifying drought cycles do the same. In the decades to come, how people manage these threats will have important implications not only for individual and cultural survival, but also for questions of justice. Recent research on flooding and flood management probes the histories of survival, and adaptation in flood threatened regions for insights into emergent flood-related crises. However, scholars have thus far overemphasized the technical aspects of how engineered flood control systems functioned, overlooking both the specific social, political, and economic contexts within which past practices emerged and the social worlds that they helped create. This dissertation examines the social, economic, and political histories of flood control projects in the South American country of Guyana in order to understand the long lasting social, political, and environmental impacts of colonial-era projects. v To do this, I utilized archival data collected from the National Archives in London, UK, historical newspaper articles collected through online newspaper databases, press release statements from Guyana’s major political parties, and unstructured and semi-structured interviews with residents from coastal Guyana. These data were imported and analyzed using qualitative data analysis software in order to make connections across spatial and temporal scales. The key finding of the dissertation is that, in Guyana, flood control engineering has historically played multiple social, political, and economic roles beyond the functional explanations assumed in many present environmental management discourses. Colonial engineering projects served as a way to protect colonizers from economic crises and social upheaval and were not just a means for protecting the coast from flooding. Additionally, the dissertation found that these projects were key to creating the racial geographies that helped to protect colonialism in its final years and which continue to shape coastal life today. Finally, the dissertation found that, after the end of colonialism, flood engineering projects were incorporated into larger projects of racialized regime survival. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODU CTION - ENG INEERING COLON IALISM .................................................. 1 A n Introdu ction to Coast al Guyana ........................ .......................... ................ 3 Wa ter and Water M anagement in Coast al Guyana and Beyond ........ ............... 8 T he Politi cal Ecology and Crit ical Physical Geogra phy of Flooding ............... 14 H istorical Analysis and Socioecological Resilience ........................................ 16 P ostanarchist r esilience ................ ............. ............. ........................................ 27 F lood Control I nfrast ructure as Imperia l Ruins....... ........................................ 33 Genealog ies of Race and Infrastructure in Guyana ........................................
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