Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Eliza Darling

Research interests

US/UK, political ecology, environmental justice, housing, rural gentrification, urban social theory, the production of nature, class conflict over landscape

My scholarship combines the ethnographic methods of anthropology with the spatial analysis of geography in a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to political ecology. Fundamentally, I am interested in nature as the basis for exploitation, and especially the role of space and place in the formation and maintenance of the class relationship under the capitalist mode of production. I conduct fieldwork at sites which constitute "home" for some people and "playgrounds" for others, a dynamic which makes them crucibles for conflict over geography, class, belonging and identity.

At present, I'm conducting ethnographic research on the spatial politics of country music, with a particular focus on bluegrass, in Britain. Further details here:

http://elizajanedarling.typepad.com/fireonthemountain/

 

Selected publications

2009, "O Sister! Sarah Palin and the Parlous Politics of Poor White Trash." Dialectical Anthropology 33(1):15-27.

2006, "Nature's Carnival: The Ecology of Pleasure at Coney Island." In In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism. Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika and Eric Swyngedouw, eds. London and New York: Routledge.

2005, "The City in the Country: Rural Political Ecology and the Rent Gap." Environment and Planning A 37(6):1015-1032.

 

Further information