Discussion Form Question

read all the materials slides and watch the video in the link below and read he reading then Answer this discussion form

http://www.isuma.tv/inuit-knowledge-and-climate-change/movie

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In this module the topic is climate change… We are examining what role anthropologists have to play researching and assisting the efforts of different societies around the world as they comprehend, negotiate and adapt to climate change.

After you have viewed the lecture and completed your reading please answer the question below. We suggest you write 160-200 words for your forum post.

What is the aim of the Chicago program that anthropologists are involved in? What do anthropologists contribute to the program? What are some of the key findings of their research in Chicago?

Culture & Environment:
Anthropological Approaches
to Environmental Issues
ANT3CAE

MODULE 4.2: Case study: local communities and
glacial retreat in Peruvian Andes

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=17331

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php%3Fid=17331

Jacamba Glacier, Peruvian Andes, 1980 and 2000 (Photos by Tim
Helwig-Larsen)

Case study: Glacier hazard
zones Cordillera Blanca,
Ancash region, Peru (Carey 2014)

Cordillera Blanca;
Ancash region,
Peru

Summary: Culture and climate change
• Anthropologists have an important role to play in understanding and

highlighting the human dimensions of climate change;
• Climate change mitigation and adaptation projects are unlikely to

succeed without close understanding of the societies in which they
are to be implemented;
• Resilience in communities is embedded in historical, social, and

cultural constructions that govern social interactions and the
material development of communities.
• Climate change practitioners can promote resilience to the physical

and material components of a socio-ecological system;
• However the cultural side of resilience requires that livelihoods that

fulfil material, moral and spiritual needs in the context of major
environmental or political change need be maintained to ensure
sense of continuity of meaning and coherence.

References
• Batterbury, S. 2008. “Anthropology and Global Warming: The Need for Environmental Engagement” The Australian Journal of Anthropology Vol. 19 No.

1, pp. 62-68.

• Bolin, I. 2009. “The Glaciers of the Andes are melting: Indigenous and Anthropological knowledge merge in restoring water resources” in S. Crate & M.
Nuttall. (eds.) Anthropology and climate change: from encounters to actions, Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California, pp.228-239.

• Carey, M. 2013. “The Politics of Place: Inhabiting and defending Glacier Hazard Zones in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca” in M. Dove (ed.) The Anthropology of
Climate Change: An Historical Reader, Wiley, Hoboken, pp.247-257.

• Crate, S. & M. Nuttall (eds.), 2009. Anthropology and Climate Change: from encounters to actions, Walnut Creek., California: Left Coast
Press.

• Hassan, F. 2009. Human agency, climate change, and culture: an archaeological perspective. In Anthropology and climate change: from
encounters to actions (eds) S.A. Crate & M. Nuttall. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press.

• Haraway, D. N. Ishikawa, S. F. Gilbert, K. Olwig, A. L. Tsing & N. Bubandt 2016, ”Anthropologists Are Talking – About the
Anthropocene”, Ethnos, 81:3, 535-564

• Hassan, F. 2009. ‘Human agency, climate change, and culture: an archaeological perspective”, in S. Crate & M. Nuttall. (eds.) Anthropology and climate
change: from encounters to actions, Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California, pp. 39- 69.

• Orlove, B.S. 2009. ‘Glacier retreat: reviewing the limits of human adaptation to climate change’. Environment Vol. 51, pp. 22-34.

• Rockstrom et al 2009. “Planetary Boundaries; exploring the safe Operating space for humanity”, Ecology and Society, Vol. 14 No. 2, p. 32

• Roncoli, C, T. Crane & B Orlove. 2009. “Fielding Climate Change in Cultural Anthropology”. In Anthropology and climate change: from encounters to
actions, S. Crate & M. Nuttall (eds.) Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, pp. 87-115.

• Wilk, R. 2002. Consumption, human needs, and global environmental change. Global Environmental Change vol. 12, pp. 5-13.

HOUSEWORK: REMINDER
• We are moving to trial online discussion forums each

module: (no online tutorials) choose one of 3
questions to respond to – find link to Forum under
each Module banner.

• No online lecture or discussion forum next week
(Module 5)

• Online quiz opens next week Tuesday 7th April at
8.00am, closes Thursday 9th at 11.55pm.

• 12 multiple choice/true-false questions
• 45 min. to complete
• All drawn from subject material.
• The quiz cannot be rerun; if you miss it you miss it.

Culture & Environment:
Anthropological Approaches
to Environmental Issues
ANT3CAE

MODULE 4.1: Climate Change and the
Anthropocene

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=17331

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php%3Fid=17331

Image: Nick Smith 2003

What is the anthropocene?

The Anthropocene: a
problematic concept?

• Eurocentric
• anthropocentric
• allied to development of capitalism;

modernization, & accompanying
dispossession and destruction of
Indigenous societies

Kogi cosmology

http://tairona.myzen.co.uk/index.php/culture/kogi_religion_and_cosmology

Planetary
Limits

Fig: Rockstrom et al 2009 Planetary Boundaries; exploring the safe
Operating space for humanity

Carbon Footprint

http://www.english-online.at/environment/copenhagen-climate-summit/copenhagen-climate-summit-and-global-
warming.htm

Population, consumption and
climate change (Wilk 2009)

• Consumer economy in ‘developed’ countries a way of life
based on moving and transforming huge amounts of
materials and energy

• At current rate of consumption we need 18 billion global
hectares of productive land to support lifestyle and absorb
waste.

• Only 11.9 billion hectares available on earth
• We Australians are consuming more than 3 times our fair

share of the planet’s natural resources. (if everyone
consumed like us, we would need 3 earths to support)

• China and India even while consuming less on per capita
basis now rival national levels of consumption and carbon
emissions of ‘developed’ countries

Anthropology and Climate
Change

CC is about people and power, ethics and morals,
environmental costs and justice, and cultural and
spiritual survival

CC is environmental colonialism: global processes were
neither caused by inhabitants of the majority of
climate-sensitive world regions. Yet their inhabitants
experience far-reaching effects.

Episode 1: Summary

• Caution in use of term “the
Anthropocene”

• Treading carefully between “alarm”
and “action”

• A new form of ecological imperialism
(or environmental colonialism)

• climate change ”a threat multiplier”;
magnifies and exacerbates existing
social, political, environmental and
economic problems

13
LINKING CLIMATE ACTION TO
LOCAL KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTIC

A Case Study of Diverse Chicago
Neighborhoods

Jennifer Hirsch, Sarah Van Deusen Phillips, Edward
Labenski, Christine Dunford, and Troy Peters

‘The point is to learn, how does one community start and scale out

Because the best
impact starts with individuals on a small level and grows out.’

Community Leader, North Kenwood/Oakland
neighborhood, Chicago

Over the past decade, environmental anthropologists have increasingly argued for the
importance of inserting anthropological arguments into debates on climate change
(Magistro 2001, Human Organization 2003, Crate and Nuttall 2009, Baer and Singer
2008). In a recent volume, Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to
Actions, Crate and Nuttall (2009) lay out at least three areas in need of new research
that focus on human-environment relationships: 1) anthropology’s role in exploring
the cultural implications of climate change, 2) facilitating collaborative, community-
based projects focused on mitigation and adaptation, and 3) developing culturally-
sensitive strategies for communicating climate change to diverse audiences. However,
few studies have examined climate change or climate action efforts in diverse urban
areas or even in the United States (Crate 2008).

This chapter presents ongoing applied ethnographic research being led by The
Field Museum’s division of Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo) to
understand sociocultural viewpoints on climate change in Chicago’s diverse neigh-
borhoods (The Field Museum 2009, 2010a, 2010b). This research was commissioned
by the City of Chicago Department of Environment (DOE) to help them develop
locally relevant communication strategies and programs for engaging diverse com-
munities in the Chicago Climate Action Plan (CCAP). Launched by the City of
Chicago in October 2008, the CCAP aims to reduce carbon emissions to 25 per cent
below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050 by implementing five strategies
focused on energy efficiency in buildings, clean and renewable energy, improved
transportation options, waste reduction, and adaptation (City of Chicago 2008).

Environmental Anthropology Today, edited by Helen Kopnina, and Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/latrobe/detail.action?docID=957669.
Created from latrobe on 2021-03-23 11:18:33.

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To date, The Field Museum has completed studies in five communities (three of
which are available on the Web at: http://fieldmuseum.org/explore/department/
ecco/engaging-chicago-communities-climate-action), and we are now in the midst
of doing five more after which the project will be complete. This chapter reports on
the results of our first two studies, in the South Chicago and North Kenwood-
Oakland/Bronzeville (hereafter ‘NKO’) communities, as well as the community
engagement work that has resulted from all of them.

The Field Museum’s goal in undertaking this research project was to help
strengthen climate action in the Chicago area by facilitating the active involvement of
diverse communities. More specifically, using the research as a jumping off point for
additional work with community, environmental, and government organizations
(discussed in the final section of the chapter), we aim to help communities actively
participate in city-led CCAP programs as well as incorporate climate action in their
community-led work and lead grassroots climate action campaigns. To facilitate
innovation in both, our research aims to help establish processes for collaboration and
sharing of ideas. These processes should allow for a multilateral flow of information,
ideas, and best practices—between the City and communities, and among commu-
nities themselves—and also result in building the capacity of community leaders to
lead climate action based on their visions of what it means to be a low-carbon, sus-
tainable city. If our projects are successful, community leaders will not only carry out
CCAP strategies but will participate in long-term planning around climate action
goals and strategies focused both on their specific communities and on the city and
region more generally. We see this as the urban equivalent of involving local popu-
lations in the planning and management of protected areas (Introduction to this
volume).

In addition to serving as an ethnography of human-environment interactions, this
study addresses intersections among climate change mitigation and adaptation strate-
gies and the varied multi-stakeholder interests at the local level, which are often
situated in long-standing historical, institutional, and culturally rooted values and
practices (Poncelet 2004). Our research explores what climate change and climate
action initiatives look like within a context of both innovative collaborations and
multiple long-standing histories of distrust of efforts initiated by outside entities,
including the government. It attempts to address two fundamental questions: 1) how
and under what circumstances can climate change and climate action become an issue
pushed forward at the local level, and 2) what will make climate change feel relevant
and urgent to urban communities? Our research suggests that even in communities
where climate change may not be a predominant local concern, there still exist
opportunities for widespread adoption of carbon reduction strategies by promoting
local quality of life benefits of climate action in areas such as environmental health,
energy efficiency, food security, heritage promotion, affordable housing, youth
engagement, job creation, community safety, or other locally relevant issues.
Anthropology has a great deal to contribute to these debates, and to understanding
how addressing key local concerns—which may or may not be directly related to
climate change—and working effectively with local partners can be central to the

268 Anthropologists and the real world

http://fieldmuseum.org/explore/department/ecco/engaging-chicago-communities-climate-action

effectiveness of climate policy, and to generating engagement strategies that work best
for policy makers and community residents alike.

The chapter has five sections. Section 1 presents The Field Museum’s research
methodology and approach to applied anthropology. Section 2 provides a brief
introduction to the communities of South Chicago and North Kenwood/Oakland,
based on our research findings. Section 3 examines findings on climate change
awareness and local environmental practices and values. Section 4 explores commu-
nity concerns that have the potential to link to the CCAP climate action strategies
(referred to in climate change circles as ‘co-benefits’). Finally, Section 5 reviews The
Field Museum’s on-going efforts to turn research findings into action. Throughout,
we highlight the commonalities and differences in our research communities and
suggest ways in which local community assets and environmental values can be built
upon and enhanced by climate action. We aim to provide a specific example of the
role that applied environmental anthropology can play in developing broader parti-
cipatory models for democratic decision making and policy development in a complex
and socially differentiated urban environment.

Section 1: The Field Museum’s Approach To Exploring
Human-Environment Interactions

The division of Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo) is the applied sci-
ence arm of The Field Museum of Natural History. Since its founding in 1995 as two
separate departments (the Center for Cultural Understanding and Change [CCUC],
and Environmental and Conservation Programs), the division has always viewed
research as a step in a larger process of community engagement. As a respected insti-
tution embedded in Chicago’s cultural fabric – and with strong connections to gov-
ernment agencies, area universities, and planning institutes – our work often focuses on
facilitating equitable relationships between small and large organizations (Wali 2006,
The Field Museum 2007). As a natural history museum with four departments focused
on biological and cultural diversity—zoology, botany, geology, and anthropology—our
thematic focus has always been on people and their environments.

Undergirding all of our major projects is a framework developed by CCUC’s
founder, environmental anthropologist Alaka Wali, termed ‘Common Concerns,
Different Responses.’ This framework explains cultural diversity as the product of:
1) environment – the material resources available to us, 2) history – an accumulation
of past actions, ideas, and values, and 3) creativity – human ingenuity that allows us
to develop strategies for overcoming constraints and creating new opportunities for
survival and collaboration (Wali 2006, The Field Museum 2010c). It resonates with
the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) emphasized in this volume, which recognizes
that humans, though capable of complex cultural achievement, are still biological
organisms that exist in a complex relationship with their ecosystem and are therefore
subject to processes of ecological balance (Catton & Dunlap 1980, Dunlap 1980,
1983, Dunlap & Marshall 2007). By overtly recognizing that human cultures operate
within ecological systems of scarcity, we can begin to understand how groups of

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 269

people come to make sense of their place in both local and global ecological systems.
Furthermore, we can encourage innovative cultural adaptations to scarcity that can
mitigate some of the negative human impacts on the environment, like those that we
now know result in climate change.

ECCo’s focus on human-environment interactions has led us to undertake
anthropological projects focused on place-making: examining and strengthening
residents’ and communities’ relationship to and stewardship of the neighborhoods and
regions in which they live through the nurturing of innovative collaborations
between organizations focused on environmental and sociocultural issues (The Field
Museum 2003, 2008). More specifically, the Common Concerns, Different
Responses framework has led us to focus our research and action programs since the
early 2000s on identifying:

1 community concerns and understandings that link environmental and sociocultural
issues,

2 community assets that can serve as a starting point for broadening community
involvement in work around these concerns,1 and

3 barriers to increased participation in environmental practices and programs.

Climate Action Research: Methods

In the climate action research that is the focus of this chapter, we have conducted
rapid ethnographic research, completing each study in approximately six months,
with the ethnographic component lasting approximately four months. Each study is a
participatory action research project (The Field Museum 2007), which in this case is
conducted by a team including Field Museum anthropologists, staff from the Chicago
Department of Environment, and leaders of community-based organizations in the
communities being studied. Working with community organizations that have strong
social capital has been key to the success of the project: in gaining rapid access to the
community, capitalizing on existing community knowledge, and using the research
process itself as the first step in climate action engagement to begin to build residents’
and community leaders’ understanding and awareness of climate change as well as
their capacity to address it. Involving the DOE has also proven crucial, in ensuring
that we accurately describe the CCAP and the City’s goals, connect to DOE com-
munity partners, and help craft research questions and recommendations so that they
can easily translate to action.

In each of the studies discussed in this chapter (South Chicago and North Ken-
wood/Oakland), we engaged or observed approximately 200 leaders and residents.
Our research activities included the traditional ethnographic methods of interviews,
focus groups, and participant-observation at community meetings and events. We
also employed visual and performative methods (see examples in Figures 13.1 and
13.3), including drawing, object-based storytelling, participatory photography and
photo elicitation, community mapping, and visual prompting (e.g., using photo col-
lages of environmentally-friendly practices to prompt discussion). We find that these

270 Anthropologists and the real world

methods draw out local understandings about climate change and environment in
creative ways, and thus help us access information and ideas that might not come forth
using traditional research methods. For example, in South Chicago we conducted a
focus group with Latino residents in which we asked participants to draw what climate
change looks like to them. Some of our approaches (and interdisciplinary methods)
have been influenced by our role as a natural history museum with a strong focus on
material life. Two examples include 1) focus groups that use objects to prompt dis-
cussion and 2) home interviews in which we take photographs of participants inter-
acting with objects and spaces that represent their environmentally-friendly practices.2

Section 2: Community Overview

We chose South Chicago and NKO (for map see Figure 13.2) as the first two
research sites because they seemed fertile ground to explore the potential of making
climate action relevant to a diverse range of residents. Both communities are located
on the city’s South Side and have significant differences in demographics, geography,
and history. South Chicago is racially and ethnically diverse – with a population that
is 62 per cent African American, 33.4 per cent Latino, and 5.6 per cent white – and
largely working-class, with a 2000 Census median income of $34,279. NKO is
racially homogeneous, with a population that is nearly 97 per cent African American,

FIGURE 13.1 Drawing from a focus group in South Chicago in response to the question,
‘What does climate change look like to you?’ the accompanying caption
reads (translated from Spanish): ‘I drew something that represents the
good we can do [for the environment] and the consequences of doing so,
as well as of the bad we are doing and the consequences of that.’

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 271

but it has recently become highly class stratified with many subsidized public housing
residents living next to increasingly affluent homeowners.

Like the rest of the Southeast Side in which it is located, South Chicago was born
with the expansion of the American steel industry in the 19th century. Much of the
community derives its identity from an interwoven history of heavy industrialization
and ecological richness, as well as the subsequent histories of immigration and
deindustrialization. As a result, the heritage of South Chicago is grounded in working-
class origins, particularly the strong tradition of labor union activism among the lar-
gely immigrant workers who were the backbone of the mills. Many of the social and
environmental practices we documented in South Chicago can be traced back to the
traditions different groups brought with them and fostered through their experiences in
the steel mills, from Appalachia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America (Sellers 1998 and
Walley 2009).

FIGURE 13.2 Map of research areas in Chicago © The Field Museum, ECCo.

272 Anthropologists and the real world

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In recent years, the Southeast Side has been defined by nearly constant and dra-
matic change. As a result of the steel mill closures in the 1980s, community demo-
graphics shifted and City services contracted as well. Our research suggests that during
this process, residents came to believe that mainstream organizations, including the
City, were not going to take care of them as their livelihoods failed. This, in turn, led
to a strong culture of self-sufficiency and the birth of a plethora of community
organizations that provide social services and advocate for community needs. It also
resulted in a strong tradition of community-based activism that mobilizes residents to
address big challenges—some of which have been related to the environmental
degradation left behind in the region by heavy industry.

Discussions of heritage in South Chicago and the Southeast Side often emphasize
the community’s history of standing up to powerful forces and fighting for justice and
a good quality of life. Stories about the steel mills emphasize not only the work itself,
and how hard it was, but also steelworkers’ experiences organizing for their rights
through union activism—again, across lines of race and ethnicity. This particular
theme is embodied in the popular play, Unfriendly Fire, by local author Kevin
Murphy (2003), which details the events leading to, and the fallout from, the
confrontation between police and union members at Republic Steel on Memorial
Day of 1937. The important role of confrontation also emerges in discussions of the
birth of the region’s environmental movement in the 1980s, which stemmed from
conflicts concerning proposals for increasing landfills in the area and building Chicago’s
third regional airport. Ongoing volunteer efforts to address pollution through restor-
ing and rehabilitating city lots, public parks, and nature preserves are one example of
how this environmental activism in South Chicago continues to this day.

In comparison, NKO has been shaped by competing needs for housing near
downtown. In the late nineteenth century, Chicago’s growing white middle-class
built up NKO as a residential area. Shortly thereafter, the exploding African-American
population—fueled by the Great Migration—was forced to crowd into the neigh-
boring communities that would become Bronzeville. After restrictive covenants fell
in the 1940s, African-American families started moving into NKO from older parts of
the adjacent ‘Black Belt’ to find better housing, and the neighborhood was quickly
absorbed into the greater Bronzeville cultural area. Over its history, NKO has been
influenced time and again by government experiments in urban planning. It has been
victim to discriminatory federal home appraisal practices in the 1930s and 1940s, host
to thousands of public housing units in the 1950s and 1960s, neglected by city plan-
ners in the 1970s, and more recently a site of property redevelopment and gentrifi-
cation as a result of changes in public housing that removed thousands of now
dilapidated units and their residents (Patillo 2007: 4).

Due to constant in and out migrations, as well as the flow of those who commute
for work and services, NKO area residents described strong connections with many
other parts of the city, particularly African-American areas on the South and West
Sides. This, in addition to the Bronzeville area’s historic significance as a national
center for African-American culture, results in residents identifying with a broader
conception of African-American heritage than a purely location-based one. As an

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 273

outgrowth of this many NKO residents support broad notions of racial uplift, but the
specific shape of that identity and uplift varies by class and social aspirations. Many
NKO residents are also personally committed to projects that improve the appearance
and perception of their community, in response to the legacy of concentrated poverty
brought on by public housing developments. Campaigns for well-managed affordable
housing, resident-led efforts to keep area parks safe by involving youth in structured
activities, and neighborhood councils that monitor the quality of new developments,
renovations, and general property maintenance are all examples of the types of
concerns that have mobilized community action in NKO.

Environmental issues have only recently begun to be talked about and addressed in
NKO, partly in response to promises of green jobs and cost savings via energy effi-
ciency spread through the wider media and Chicago’s organizational networks. In
addition, though, a small minority of community leaders are passionate about climate
change-related issues, such as peak oil, and are actively trying to spread awareness and
mobilize action, in part by framing these issues as strategies for tackling other com-
munity challenges. For example, the Bronzeville Alliance holds monthly movie
nights featuring sustainability-themed movies and is creating community gardens to
address a number of issues including access to affordable healthy food, job training,
and beautification.

Like South Chicago, NKO also has a strong culture of self-sufficiency, but it is
embedded in their close relationship with city government and with nearby research
institutions like the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Our research suggests community leaders warily adapt pragmatic engagement strate-
gies: staying aware of various policy initiatives and research projects to try to harness
them to their local goals. This is complicated by internal differences among com-
munity organizations, which often prevents them from forming a unified front. One
of the most significant points of difference exists between those groups who work to
increase property values and others who focus on developing residential capacities to
improve life for the entire community without displacing its lower-income members.

Both the South Chicago and NKO communities have a mix of agencies with
outside connections, local community organizations, small businesses, and activist
residents who operate as primary advocates for various community concerns. But
while the South Chicago community’s history of rapid industrialization and dein-
dustrialization has given rise to a vibrant set of grassroots organizations and local social
networks, NKO with its changing population patterns and long history of direct
government intervention is primarily led by organizational brokers: groups that act as
bridges between the community and powerful institutions. Our research in the two
communities suggests it is key to have both types of community assets working in
concert—grassroots organizations and cultural brokers—to implement and drive successful
initiatives to mobilize residents around climate issues.

Understanding the histories and social contexts of these two communities, as pre-
sented in this section, provides a basis for thinking in a more nuanced and embedded
way about their environmental engagement and how to increase this engagement by
linking it to other community concerns—as discussed in the next two sections.

274 Anthropologists and the real world

Perspectives On the Environment and Climate Change

In both South Chicago and NKO, awareness of climate change figures into com-
munity life, but to differing degrees and in different ways. For example, in South
Chicago and on the Southeast Side there is significant interest in the concepts of
climate change, global warming, and ‘going green’ that relates to the area’s long
interconnected history with the natural environment. This recognition is directly tied
to historical memory of the impact of mills on local air and water quality, as well as
current struggles with open space, landfills impacting the region, and coal piles
releasing pollutants into the area. In contrast, for residents of NKO, climate change
tends to be a more abstract and distant concern that is not recognized as an
immediate threat to the environment in the Chicago region.

Despite differences about the immediacy of climate change impacts, residents of
South Chicago and NKO both recognize that climate change is an important con-
cern. One area where this was particularly evident was in discussions of the weather.
In South Chicago, we documented numerous examples of residents expressing con-
cern over recent changes in weather patterns. For example, a local owner of a body
shop described small talk he engaged in with clients about winters being milder and
having less snow than in the past, while participants in a neighborhood focus group
observed how bird migrations have changed and geese now remain in the area all year.
In NKO, local awareness of changing weather patterns emerged through interviews in
which participants were asked to answer the question: ‘What three words come to mind
when you hear ‘climate change’?’ Responses such as ‘extremely hot,’ ‘extremely cold,’
or some variation (see word cloud in Figure 13.3) reflected recognition that weather
and climate is now or will be more variable or unpredictable; in addition, participants
tied these statements to observations about recent changes in local seasons, noting
warmer winters and cooler summers. Other observations in NKO highlighted chan-
ges in local growing seasons and the mix of local flora and fauna, thus demonstrating
awareness that climate change is not just a global, but also a local phenomenon.

Not only do residents in both communities recognize that changes in climate are
taking place, but they attribute these changes to anthropogenic causes (although
speculation varies widely on the technical nature of these causes). For example,
respondents in both South Chicago and NKO reported a conviction that the space
shuttle going up into space pokes holes in the atmosphere that lead to changes in
weather, with an NKO resident stating, ‘We have emissions going out and the sun
coming in.’ In another example from South Chicago, an immigrant from Mexico
City regretted that human pollution of the ocean is resulting in the dramatic hurricane
and tsunami events she sees reported on the news.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that both communities recognize the impact of
human behavior on their environment, differences emerged in views concerning
individual responsibility for altering behavior to mitigate climate change. Specifically,
residents in South Chicago tended to have a sense of personal responsibility vis-à-vis
the environment, while those in NKO felt that personal impacts on the environment
are insignificant compared to the large-scale damage caused by corporations and the

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 275

U.S. government. For example, a young Mexican woman born in South Chicago
related her distress about the polar ice cap melting and the plight of the polar bears
and said, ‘We need to comport ourselves well with regards to the environment.’ In
contrast, a resident of NKO expressed skepticism regarding the effectiveness of indi-
vidual behavior when government spending and businesses are destroying the atmo-
sphere by launching satellites and space shuttles, rhetorically asking what point there
is to doing little things to address the problem when the government is sending up
the space shuttle? This attitude of skepticism was also echoed by many NKO resi-
dents who believe that the scope of climate change and the solutions to address it are
beyond their control.

Awareness of climate change and its human causes are further evidenced by the
ways in which people in both communities report learning about these issues, speci-
fically by relating them to personal experiences.3 Our research shows that residents of
South Chicago often have had experiences that demonstrate to them the concrete
effect that humans have on the environment. For example, Mexican immigrants to
South Chicago drew on first-hand experiences of water scarcity and changing tem-
peratures in Mexico to shape their environmentally proactive behaviors in Chicago,
while white families from the U.S. and Eastern Europe who survived the closing of
the steel mills actively linked industrial air contamination to the high incidence of
pulmonary illness, cancer, and degenerative mental illnesses experienced in their
communities. In NKO, residents drew on personal experiences related to the envir-
onment more broadly—about pollution, weather, the atmosphere, and consumerism

FIGURE 13.3 As part of our interviews in NKO, participants were asked, ‘What are three
words that come to mind when you hear “climate change?”’ Their
responses are depicted in this word cloud. More frequently occurring
words appear larger.

276 Anthropologists and the real world

(what they can purchase to help the environment)—to construct models of how
climate change works and what can be done to address it.

Beyond personal experience, the media and different social institutions play an
important role in both communities as information conduits about climate change.
Both communities report learning about the impacts of humans on climate change
from a variety of formal and informal institutional sources, including media, schools,
and community organizations. For example, in both communities, mass media is an
important source, especially television. More formally, in South Chicago and NKO, a
number of schools and educational programs offered by community organizations
seek to explicitly raise environmental awareness and teach people about climate
change. There are more of these programs, though, in South Chicago. For example,
a number of South Chicago community organizations—including many that have
not traditionally advocated for environmental issues, but instead have focused on
housing, health care, and jobs—have expanded their programming over the last few
years to include support for local gardening, campaigns for improved recycling pro-
grams, and field trips to local natural areas. Examples of such programs include a local
health clinic sponsoring a community garden as a source of local, fresh produce, the
South Chicago Chamber of Commerce coordinating efforts to install solar-powered
trash compactors along a major street to reduce litter, and a local community center
sponsoring a summer camp program that takes children on field trips to local ecological
areas to learn about invasive species.

Environmentally-friendly Practices

Our research found that local practices often re-enforce CCAP goals because sig-
nificant portions of both communities have already sought out creative means for
conserving their scarce financial resources. For example, residents of NKO and South
Chicago report taking steps in their homes to help offset some of their energy
expenditures, including turning off lights and television sets when leaving rooms,
turning off water when brushing their teeth or doing the dishes, and replacing
incandescent bulbs with City-provided CFLs (often received from local organizations
that distribute them at community events). Similarly, residents of both NKO and
South Chicago reported frequent attendance of DOE-sponsored events where they
learn about energy efficiency and receive weatherization kits and CFLs to help them
improve energy efficiency at home.

Both communities are also actively engaged in different forms of recycling. In
South Chicago, recycling has a long history and is tied to local efforts to minimize
pollution and reduce the expansion of landfills into valuable wetlands. Community
organizations run programs that aim to reduce the negative environmental and health
impacts of landfills on the community while at the same time addressing a lack of
City-sponsored recycling programs that are more readily available in other parts of
Chicago. For example, a community health program worked with City offices and
education organizations to increase access to recycling centers and to further increase
awareness of the need to recycle in the neighborhood. In NKO, community

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 277

interviews and surveys revealed a near universal awareness of the importance of
recycling; however, participation is hampered by widespread skepticism of the City’s
ability to effectively manage recycling programs. That said, schools in the NKO area
actively engage children in recycling efforts, and some parents report that the
enthusiasm their children bring home from school encourages them to recycle,
despite doubts of its efficacy.

Other environmentally-friendly practices that residents and community organiza-
tions engage in are cultural in origin: they are learned behaviors inculcated through
heritage traditions and through the creation and maintenance of social relationships.
Continuing with the topic of recycling, in both communities, specific forms of local
practice have emerged around a variation on recycling: repurposing. In South Chi-
cago, these are rooted in long standing traditions of thrift, dealing with scarcity, and
entrepreneurship in the Latino community. Though community members complain
about a lack of easily accessible recycling centers for large items like appliances and
electronics, local organizations work hard to provide recycling outlets for smaller
household items such as clothing, used furniture, metal and plastic goods, and paper.
For example, a local community center collects and distributes gently used furniture
and clothing to community members who need them, and then uses the cloth from
worn out clothing for summer camp craft projects such as making Aztec calendars. In
NKO, in keeping with the community’s long standing participation in Chicago’s
mural movement, a community-based design center and a local artist have both cre-
ated high profile recycled art projects. The design center aims to use art to raise
environmental awareness and is interested in transforming its building into a green
demonstration site.

In South Chicago, some environmentally-friendly practices reflect the diversity of
its immigrant heritage (see tapestry made of recycled objects in Figure 13.4), while in
NKO, similar practices tend to reflect strong ties to agrarian roots in the rural South.
These practices also reflect the communities’ working class origins and residents
creatively adapting to limited financial resources. For example, one practice that is
part of everyday life in South Chicago, and increasingly in other areas including the
suburbs, is found in the junqueros—Latino scrap metal collectors—who pick up
defunct appliances and other large metal items that are cast off in alleys and transport
them to reclamation centers for income. Residents specifically report leaving defunct
appliances on the curb for junqueros to collect rather than calling a removal service
because they know the appliance will be recycled. This practice is complemented by
appliance repair shops owned and operated by local community members that
refurbish small electronics for resale—items that would otherwise find their ways into
landfills. Meanwhile, Latina women reported that they prefer to use rags to clean up
messes in their homes rather than paper towels because that is what their mothers and
grandmothers did. Similarly, seniors in South Chicago told stories of growing up
crafting quilts and other handicraft items from household odds and ends to sell in the
neighborhood and for use at home—a tradition that some continue.

Gardens are also popular in both communities. In South Chicago, there are a
growing number of community and backyard gardens, and even one effort to create

278 Anthropologists and the real world

a backyard gardeners’ network. Residents and organizations grow fresh vegetables
that they cannot find locally, including vegetables that have cultural significance, such
as chili peppers, tomatoes, and corn for Latinos and okra, greens, sweet potatoes, and
watermelon for African Americans. For one senior who participated in a focus group
in South Chicago, gardening is an important part of her own community heritage—
and others’ cultural heritage. She recalled: ‘ … there was a spot … that was put aside
for the people to grow their vegetables. And the Mexican people used to call it the
jardines. They used to grow corn, potatoes, to feed, supplement their needs, especially
during the Depression that started in 1929.’

Gardeners in NKO typically garden in their backyards; there are very few com-
munity gardens and a few new school gardens. Residents attributed their horticultural
interest to family or the community where they were raised (e.g. Iowa, and Ten-
nessee), while members of both communities recall gardening as an important part of
their past. A number of community members in NKO expressed a nostalgic con-
nection to their childhood chores tending plants in the rural South, while others
recounted memories of their grandparents gardening, though they do not engage in
the activity themselves.

FIGURE 13.4 A partnership between a community organization and an environmental
organization in South Chicago resulted in a program on creative recy-
cling. Families involved created this tapestry, which combines recycled
objects from contemporary life with skeletons, a common symbol used
during ‘Day of the Dead’ celebrations, which are based on Mexican cul-
tural beliefs that see death and life as an integrated whole.

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 279

These examples of how South Chicago and NKO engage in locally meaningful
practices that are also environmentally friendly represent key opportunities for gen-
erating participation in CCAP work. We recommended to the DOE that CCAP
programs should recognize, reward, and build on the diverse conservation practices
that already exist in communities—and which are often ignored in climate change
discourse focused on the importance of behavior change. As our research in South
Chicago and NKO demonstrates, a variety of sustainable practices exist in low
income communities where residents have developed innovative strategies for main-
taining a high quality of life based on minimal resource use, re-use, and extensive
sharing. Furthermore, in both NKO and South Chicago, community heritage is
central to how residents view themselves and confront challenges, thus much effort is
put into preserving this important cultural history. Climate action programs can work
to encourage heritage preservation efforts to also identify eco-friendly community
traditions and valorize them as an important part of local heritage and a means of
meeting broader-scale mitigation and adaptation goals.

Barriers to Participation in Climate Action-related Programs
and Implications for Action

As the examples above demonstrate, our research uncovered a number of ways in
which heritage traditions and lifestyles of low income populations facilitate envir-
onmentally-friendly practices. However, we also identified patterns in both commu-
nities in which past experiences and cultural norms serve as barriers to conservation
behavior. For example, in the same focus group referenced above in South Chicago,
many seniors reflected on how hard life was for them as children and expressed relief
at no longer having those hardships. One resident captured this sentiment by saying
she was grateful for paper napkins and other disposable items that make life easier
now. Relatedly, one community leader in South Chicago told us that the African-
American youth she works with are not very interested in recycling or re-using old
products. She said that they equate these concepts with ‘used,’ and the youth tend to
feel that they ‘aren’t good enough to get new stuff.’

Our research found cultural barriers to climate-friendly practices even more pre-
valent in NKO, due to its socioeconomic diversity and concern that some residents
have about raising the community’s image. While African-American cultural tradi-
tions of frugality, outdoor socializing, and growing food can be seen as community-
rooted climate action, some cultural expectations and community rules discourage
these practices. For example, when researchers showed one community leader and
long-time NKO homeowner a set of photographs that included a clothesline, she
told us (paraphrased):

[A woman down the street] made the mistake of hanging clothes on a line. …
I think everybody within two blocks was down at her house telling her to
take those sorts of clothes off the line! ‘Where do you think you are?’ And I’m
sure she’s got a dryer in the house, but she thought she was going to get some

280 Anthropologists and the real world

clothes dried on a line and get the fresh open air. … disastrous (laughs). This is
just not that kind of community.

The key here is that hanging out clothes carries a stigma because it suggests people
cannot afford basic modern amenities and thus conflicts with a local identity of
middle class respectability. These expectations are reinforced in the lease terms at
mixed-income developments that prohibit the use of clotheslines on balconies and
thus encouraged residents in part through the provision of dryers, to practice a more
energy intensive, urban middle-class lifestyle—in this, cultural barriers are reinforced
by institutional barriers. Raising chickens—a practice that is becoming increasingly
popular around the Chicago area—is another practice that interviewees suggested
would not be tolerated in NKO.

These ambivalent sorts of sentiments toward environmentally-friendly practices
reveal some of the cultural complexity involved in pushing people to change their
behaviors—especially when, as is the case with some of the practices called for in the
CCAP, the behaviors being promoted counter American markers of success, signaled
by a more consumptive lifestyle. But this does not mean that such sentiments have to
be barriers to climate action success. Rather, the DOE can build on existing cultural
practices that promote conservation to develop creative strategies for diverse engage-
ment. Key to this is recognizing and rewarding practices that mainstream society
frequently denigrates by emphasizing how such practices can come to indicate a high
quality of life that is not based on excessive material possessions. A truly successful
climate action engagement plan will help people recognize and take pride in the
expertise they already have in conservation and sustainable living, thus changing their
behavior in proactive ways that become locally meaningful. Indeed, our research
illustrates that communities are interested in such changes. For example, in NKO a
staff person from the local design center responded to our research findings by sug-
gesting that the center start a community-wide clothesline art project to validate and
promote the reintroduction of clotheslines, which for him brings to mind memories
of his grandmother socializing with the neighbors while hanging out the clothes.

Our research in both communities also revealed that distrust of the City, large
institutions, and major efforts initiated by them is another major barrier to climate
action—especially when the action desired is participation in the City’s climate action
plan. In both South Chicago and NKO, there is significant suspicion among both
community leaders and residents about ‘green’ initiatives that are introduced to the
community from outside. South Chicago is a community that feels it was cast aside
when the steel mills closed because it was no longer valuable to the city. There, residents
suspect that current interest in ‘helping’ their community by improving environ-
mental conditions is more about gentrification and displacement—the potential value
of new lakefront residential properties to the City and developers—than about a
genuine desire to help current residents or even improve the environment. This
attitude of suspicion has some of its roots in a particular case concerning Waste
Management (the local garbage collection company), in which the company dis-
guised a proposal for a five-year extension for dumping at a landfill slated for closure

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 281

as a plan for redeveloping the landfill as a park. When the community discovered
Waste Management’s duplicity, they took their complaint to the City, where they
encountered what they perceived to be strong support for Waste Management’s
position over their own. Ultimately, the community prevailed and the landfill was
closed as scheduled, but the experience left behind resentful feelings. Further evi-
dence of distrust manifests as concern that redevelopment will push residents out of
homes that some families have lived in for generations. This fear was represented
most clearly in signs posted around the South Chicago neighborhood that said: ‘Jobs
4 Green not Green 4 Condos,’ sighted by a researcher during a bus tour sponsoring
green development initiatives in the area. As with the Waste Management proposal,
residents see green redevelopment as a City-sponsored process that overlooks their
concerns and problems rather than addressing them, a stance that is captured parti-
cularly well in one woman’s ironic response to being asked to participate in an energy
savings challenge on the City of Chicago’s CCAP Web site: ‘Does having your gas
and electric shut off count as energy conservation?’

In NKO, distrust of City and outside institutional programs stems from the
community’s long history of racial segregation and what some community leaders see
as the City’s efforts to capitalize on community assets—including its close proximity
to downtown and Lake Michigan—to benefit outside businesses and government.
One recent example can be seen in the abortive 2016 Olympic bid, during which
a shuttered local hospital on the lakefront was acquired by the City of Chicago for
the Olympic village rather than for community needs. Subsequent to the loss of
the Olympic bid, the City has abandoned its promise to build proposed housing
regardless of the bid’s outcome. Even as many residents sense that the area is ‘on the
cusp of something big,’ this history of outside influence has encouraged many to be
suspicious of new initiatives, as demonstrated by one community leader’s statement,
‘The City of Chicago has always known how to keep its blight close … The City
sees where money is coming from. When money was coming for public housing
they built them. When there was no money in that they dismantled the buildings to
salvage the copper and sell that … They are looking at this neighborhood to
find gold.’

This cynicism also extends to the CCAP. Community leaders fear that the City
and its outside collaborators are once again going to reap the benefits of externally
driven change without gains accruing to area residents, or that resources will, as one
resident and climate action advocate put it, travel ‘down well worn paths’ and com-
pletely bypass the area for better connected communities and constituencies. How-
ever, this distrust does not translate into a lack of interest in working with the City.
On the contrary, the fear that resources will not make it to the community is
prompting community organizations to seek meaningful partnerships to ensure they
are not left out. For example, the director of an area development partnership, who is
well aware of the City’s history of implementing top-down housing policies, said that
she still believes ‘win-win’ partnerships are possible to address climate change, because
it is an issue around which they can design programs that meet both government and
community stakeholders’ expectations.

282 Anthropologists and the real world

As the discussion above illustrates, people in NKO and South Chicago encounter
very real barriers—particularly in terms of trust and historical memory—that may
prevent them from readily engaging with CCAP programs. In response to this dis-
trust, we recommended that the DOE expand its work around energy efficiency
focused on existing buildings and raise its visibility. Though residents in both com-
munities express skepticism of the motives underlying green development, they are
open to environmentally friendly building projects as long as they do not result in
gentrification and displacement. The DOE is already actively partnering with a
number of community organizations in South Chicago through distribution of
resources such as weatherization kits and CFLs—efforts that have proven popular
with local residents. By extending these efforts in NKO and demonstrating their
value to improving and maintaining historically important building stock, the DOE
can contribute to community efforts to preserve its heritage and support residential
stability.

Co-Benefits—Linking Climate Action To Community Concerns

In our research we look for local concerns that could be addressed through climate
action work around the five CCAP strategies: energy efficiency in buildings, clean
and renewable energy, improved transportation options, waste reduction, and adap-
tation. We start by exploring what efforts are already underway that are directly or
indirectly related to the strategies. For example, as mentioned earlier, in South
Chicago we found community organizations helping residents reduce their energy
bills by installing CFLs and weatherizing their homes, and we also identified a suc-
cessful collaboration between the South Chicago Chamber of Commerce and com-
munity organizations to launch a low emissions community trolley. Likewise, in
NKO we found a network of community organizations advocating for a new train
route and a number of efforts, both organizational and individual, to raise awareness
of peak oil and energy efficiency issues. These types of efforts—climate action that is
emerging from the local community—provide useful starting points for engaging the
communities directly in the CCAP strategies.

We also look for co-benefit opportunities: for action and interest around issues that
are indirectly related to the CCAP strategies. Economic development, cost savings,
health, and transportation are co-benefits of climate action that are often cited in
national discussions about climate change and are mentioned specifically in the
CCAP. These issues are considered co-benefits because addressing any one of them
has the potential to help improve day-to-day life for residents and reduce carbon
emissions. We found action around all of these issues in South Chicago and NKO.
For example, in both communities, there are emerging efforts to develop awareness of
green jobs and to provide residents with healthier food options, through community
gardens and farmers’ markets.

But even concerns that look similar can vary significantly from community to
community depending on ecological landscapes, community demographics, and the
social, economic, and political history of the area. People in post-industrial South

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 283

Chicago, for example, are used to thinking about air quality as both a health issue and
an environmental issue. This offers an opportunity for building on concerns about
health and pollution to make connections to CCAP strategies that may affect air
quality. On the other hand, people in NKO, a largely residential community, did not
often express deep concern about pollution or air quality. They did express concern
about ground-level pollution from cars and bus exhaust, however, and connections
might be made between this kind of pollution, climate action, and another big con-
cern in the area, respiratory health. In our work we aim to identify local variations of
common co-benefits in order to help the City and its partners develop climate
awareness and action programs that match local issues, values, and practices.

In addition to the most commonly considered co-benefit areas, our research sug-
gests that many other community concerns can in fact provide building blocks for
creative entryways into increasing climate change awareness, knowledge, and action.
The following table (Table 13.1) shows the community concerns in South Chicago
and NKO that have the potential to link to climate action, and where and how these
concerns overlap and vary.

In South Chicago and NKO, these productive co-benefits relate to housing (South
Chicago: affordable, NKO: residential stability, restoration and preservation), youth
development, use of space (South Chicago: open space, NKO: public space), heritage
(South Chicago: community and multiple cultural traditions, NKO: African-American),
and crime and safety. In South Chicago, our research also highlighted healthy food as
a strong potential co-benefit as well as an overall interest in ‘living local’—related to
the strong sense of self-sufficiency that pervades that area (as explained earlier). In
NKO, our research identified a broad focus on economic development as a potential
co-benefit, encompassing not just the traditional focus on green jobs but a broad
array of activities from marketing the community as a destination neighborhood and
establishing commercial corridors to offering financial literacy training for former
public housing residents to help with resident stability.

TABLE 13.1 Community concerns in South Chicago and NKO.

South Chicago Issue Both NKO/Bronzeville Issue

Affordable Housing Residential Stability,
Restoration & Preservation

Youth Development
Crime and Safety

Open Space Use of Space Public Space

Community/Cultural
(multiple traditions)

Heritage African-American

Healthy Food Economic Development
(broadly defined)

‘Living Local’

284 Anthropologists and the real world

Following is a discussion of how residents in South Chicago and NKO have very
different perspectives on two of these concerns: housing and use of space. The
comparison illustrates the importance of developing a nuanced understanding of
community concerns to make CCAP community engagement recommendations that
residents will welcome and that will result in significant action. For example, a nuanced
understanding of these issues and how they differ by community can help explain why
many residents in South Chicago are interested in ‘living local’ and might support
affordable, energy-efficient maintenance or renovation programs that benefit long-time
home-owners; and why many residents in NKO are more interested in supporting
programs that either preserve or maintain historically and aesthetically significant
housing stock or that build or maintain newer, mixed-income housing developments
that are attractive to a changing, economically diverse influx of home owners.

Housing: Affordable v. Residential Stability, Restoration
and Preservation

Residents in South Chicago and NKO have different histories with housing, different
types of housing, and different concerns about housing. Our research suggests that
South Chicago residents are primarily concerned with maintaining affordable local
housing options, and would participate in programs that help them improve their
current homes. Many residents in NKO would also participate in programs that
maintain or improve existing homes. But due to NKO’s history as a historic African-
American community as well as its participation in major housing initiatives over the
decades and the wide socioeconomic spread of its current residents, there are a
number of other housing concerns in this community that can also serve as links to
climate action.

Many residents in South Chicago see their homes as their primary personal asset;
they want to keep their homes in good shape; and they want to stay in the com-
munity. Over the past few years, a majority of the most visible ‘going green’ efforts in
South Chicago have revolved around development of new affordable housing and
green design. This largely stems from the work of the Claretian Associates, a non-
profit developer that focuses on building affordable housing that is easy to maintain.

While some South Chicago residents welcome new, energy-efficient housing,
many expressed worry that green building initiatives will result in greater scrutiny of
the neighborhood by outsiders, gentrification, and displacement of current residents
(see examples of new developments in Figure 13.5). Because of this fear, some
organizers in South Chicago have critiqued the definition of ‘affordable,’ arguing that
most residents cannot afford to rent or buy ‘green’ housing, and have also observed
that the jobs that this development brings are generally non-union and go primarily to
non-residents.

On the other hand, residents do welcome initiatives that help them retrofit exist-
ing structures. This concern was expressed in terms of an expanded time horizon of
green initiatives related to energy efficiency, durability of construction, and conser-
ving water as meeting generational needs for durable, easy to maintain, and affordable

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 285

housing for future generations. Based on these findings and concerns about gentrifi-
cation, we recommended that the DOE connect its energy efficient buildings strategy
to residents’ desire to improve their own homes and their interest in cost effective
and long-term affordable housing for current and future generations. We also sug-
gested that they de-emphasize their standard message around housing, which is that
weatherization will increase home value—a proposition that can seem negative to
people whose primary concern is to stay in their homes for the long-term, not
sell them.

In NKO housing is a key mobilizing issue that has many facets. Beautiful greystone
homes are seen as one of the community’s primary assets; most of the major com-
munity organizations in the area make housing a priority; and all major community-
planning projects over the past decade list housing as a concern. There have been
dynamic shifts in housing stock and resident type throughout NKO’s history, and the
last 30 years have been no different. During this period—as thousands of subsidized
housing units were demolished, and many residents were displaced—the African-
American community changed from what many saw as a gang controlled model of
urban blight located around a number of public housing buildings to being one of
the hottest real estate markets in the city. Some of the demolished public housing was
replaced with new, mixed-income housing developments; and a wave of new

FIGURE 13.5 Recent construction and green development are signs of new opportunity
for the community, according to some South Chicago residents.
However, many more are concerned that the community will gentrify and
eventually they will be forced to move.

286 Anthropologists and the real world

construction along with a great location close to downtown drew affluent home-
buyers to the area. While NKO might be an attractive option for all new home
buyers, the area’s history as an African American neighborhood just next to the his-
toric Bronzeville community made it particularly attractive to middle- and upper-class
African Americans who were welcomed ‘back’ by most of the remaining home-owning
residents.

While the economic downturn has slowed the pace of housing construction and
sales in NKO and throughout the city, many community leaders and residents believe
it can and will become a stable, mixed-income community with nearby commercial
amenities. Different community leaders, however, have different visions of stability
and different motivations for achieving it. Some want to expand existing affordable
housing and support for low-income residents because they believe good housing is
essential for people struggling to get an education, raise a family, or maintain
employment. Others want to expand mixed-income housing to include a combina-
tion of market-rate, public, and subsidized housing and renting options because they
fear an over emphasis on lower income affordable housing might concentrate poverty
in the area and drive down property values. Many community residents engage in
significant activity around maintaining and improving their homes. Several respon-
dents singled out the physical aesthetics of their homes as the primary reason they
moved to the area in the 1980s and 1990s. They explained that they purchased
homes in NKO because they saw beauty and history beneath disrepair and dilapida-
tion and were excited to rehabilitate their homes. Residential and political leaders as
well as a powerful local community council place a high value on preserving his-
torically significant landmark buildings and maintaining the visual aesthetics of the
housing stock more generally.

Based on these findings we recommended that the DOE support initiatives that
use energy efficiency as a strategy for addressing the shared concern of residential
stability, by helping residents afford to stay in their homes. We also suggested that
they increase awareness and knowledge of green options for home restoration,
remodeling, and repair specifically by focusing on green technology and practices that
are consistent with maintaining the historic character of the built environment.

Use of Space—Open Space v. Public Space

Local place-making practices and the use of space are important community interests
in both South Chicago and NKO, but concerns differ in each community. Residents
in South Chicago are primarily concerned about open spaces, including natural
areas (many of which were degraded from decades of exposure to industrial pollu-
tion), parks, and community gardens. South Chicago residents often talk about past
or current experiences outdoors. Some talk about how these experiences (like fishing,
walking, or restoration of natural areas) have been key to building personal attach-
ments to and understandings about nature; others talk about how interacting in the
outdoors has been important in building relationships between diverse groups of
residents. In contrast, residents in NKO are primarily interested in controlling

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 287

outdoor public space, like undeveloped lots or vacant areas, parks, boulevards, and
even private yards and other outside areas that are visible to the public.

Environmental restoration and open space have been significant concerns in South
Chicago and on the Southeast Side more generally for many years, largely due to the
industrial history and unique ecology of the region—the lake shore, the Calumet
River, and the wild lands near the industrial corridor and mill areas—and a strong
community tradition of cross-cultural interaction in outdoor spaces. As a result, there
are many active restoration efforts operating within the South Chicago community.
Alongside these are community initiatives related to securing or maintaining open
space in neighborhoods. For example, at a local subsidized housing development,
residents and the local tenants association are working with a teacher at an elementary
school and other community residents to reclaim a series of vacant lots as an outdoor
learning classroom, while local restoration efforts organized by C3 leaders (an envir-
onmental stewardship training program offered by the city), local high school tea-
chers, and the City seek to rehabilitate city lots, public parks, and forest preserves for
public use. South Chicago as a community is also focused on building a sustainable
agricultural system, and a number of organizations are operating community gardens
as a strategy for growing healthy food and building community, in part by drawing
on different cultural traditions (heritage gardens). Open space initiatives, particularly
gardens, have also been seen as a strategy for addressing crime, by reclaiming vacant
land and providing youth with jobs and something to do. Community organizers are
adamant that crime in their community has decreased in the summertime because so
many youth have been working in the community gardens through a youth
employment program sponsored by the state.

Because open space is a strong community asset in South Chicago, and gardens in
particular are gaining so much momentum, our report to the DOE (The Field Museum
2009) recommended that they help the organizations running community gardens turn
them into hubs for community engagement around climate action. We suggested that
the organizations could be trained to use gardening as an entry point into education and
action related to climate change and accompanying co-benefit issues that will improve
quality of life. As an environmental practice linked to multiple community concerns
and embedded in the cultural heritages of a number of populations, community
gardening could be used to validate and encourage sustainable behaviors that reduce
emissions and encourage low-resource, collective lifestyles connected to the outdoors.

In contrast, leaders and residents in NKO are concerned about how public spaces—
including publicly visible private spaces—are used. These spaces include parks, side-
walks, boulevards, vacant lots, store fronts, and even front porches. Public space in
NKO is valued for providing opportunities for people to socialize, do business, and
exercise. Photographs taken during our research capture men playing chess, cyclists,
people carrying their groceries, people catching public transportation, and runners.
But use of public space is also highly contested due to concerns about community
respectability and fears about safety. Many residents disapprove or are suspicious of
unstructured activities in public spaces even as they support collective and purposeful
efforts to beautify them.

288 Anthropologists and the real world

Responses to certain public behaviors exemplify these concerns about the correct
use of public space and how they connect to other concerns, not the least of which is
building community among different people from different socioeconomic strata.
Loitering is one kind of public behavior that connects to concerns of crime and safety
(see Figure 13.6). Several respondents, including seniors and recent arrivals to the
neighborhood, complained about men who stand in front of area grocery and con-
venience stores, and some reported that such behavior discouraged their patronage of
those stores. Other residents expressed concern about public activities that they per-
ceive as bad etiquette. For example, one middle-class homeowner complained that
she is frequently awakened at five in the morning by honking as someone picks up a
neighbor who lives in subsidized housing. She suggested that there should be a required
orientation for these types of residents on proper community etiquette. Another
respondent complained that one of the main boulevards has too many benches.

However, not all uses of public space in NKO are so contested. Many residents
value creative uses of public space that bring together diverse residents to foster
positive impressions of the community, around art. In fact, NKO has a history of
public art projects that seek to bring the community together around collective
representations. It is the site of at least two historically significant Black Arts Move-
ment era murals from the 1970s—‘A Time to Unite’ (1976) and ‘Black Women
Emerging’ (1977). A local artist in NKO has also gained significant recognition across

FIGURE 13.6 Signs prohibiting loitering hang in storefronts along the Cottage Grove
commercial strip in NKO. A banner for ‘The Grove’ hangs from the lamp
post by the street as part of a marketing strategy to attract new custo-
mers and business to the neighborhood.

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 289

the city for turning a vacant overgrown lot across from his house into a sculpture
garden and open air art museum (Spicer and Rivera 2004). As members of a histori-
cally marginalized community, many long-time residents are deeply concerned with
the community image and welcome public and private efforts to ‘beautify.’ The artist
got approval from the local alderman and planning council, involved local gang
members to help protect the artwork, and was encouraged in his efforts by neighbors
who gave him flowers to plant around the statues—ultimately creating a space owned
by the whole community.

Because strengthening communities’ connections to the outdoors is key to climate
action, and public space in NKO has been the site of both contestation and vision,
we recommended that the DOE support organizations’ efforts to build bridges (and
reduce suspicion) between residents by means of creative and collaborative uses of
public space. In particular, we suggested that they encourage climate action work that
brings together different sets of community members to create, maintain, beautify,
and take ownership of public green spaces.

Moving From Research To Action – Impacting The City’s Climate
Action Programs

This final section provides an overview of the initial impact that our research has had
on the development of the City of Chicago’s climate action programs. It discusses our
efforts to build on anthropological insights to help connect climate-focused programs
to community goals, link service delivery to engagement, and assist community
organizations in gaining access to and some sense of ownership of a large-scale,
government-sponsored initiative.

As explained at the outset of this chapter, our community studies have had a very
applied goal since the beginning: to recommend strategies to the City of Chicago and
its partners in the Chicago Climate Action Plan for engaging diverse neighborhoods
in the plan’s implementation. In all of the reports that we write, our recommenda-
tions focus partly on process: building strong relationships with community stake-
holders. They also focus on program design: developing climate action programs that
start with local understandings, resonate with issues that communities care about, and
build on existing values and practices.

Originally we expected that our role would more or less end once we submitted
our research reports to the Department of Environment. However, soon after sub-
mitting the report on our pilot study in South Chicago and the city-wide focus
groups we had conducted with community leaders, ECCo was asked to work with
the DOE and its partners to help them build on the research findings to design
community engagement programs focused on residential retrofits, under the CCAP
strategy, ‘Energy Efficient Buildings.’ Our role in program design and implementa-
tion has continued to expand and has proven to be crucial in ensuring that the
research findings have significant impact.

Our biggest impact has been on the development and facilitation of the City’s first
major CCAP community engagement program, the Energy Action Network (EAN),

290 Anthropologists and the real world

a pilot program that launched in November 2009 (see Figure 13.7). The EAN com-
prises 21 community-based organizations that are receiving extra funding and training
to work with residents to expand heating assistance and reduce energy use through
utility subsidies, weatherization, and housing retrofits. It is administered by the Com-
munity and Economic Development Association of Cook County (CEDA), a nonprofit
organization that contracts with community-based organizations throughout the county
to administer social service and training programs, and has participation from the utility
companies ComEd and Peoples Gas. ECCo receives funding to help run the program
with CEDA staff and City consultants, as part of the EAN Planning Committee.

The concept of the EAN developed in part in response to some key recommen-
dations that we made in our initial report on South Chicago about the importance of
working through trusted community organizations to engage residents in climate
action. Specific EAN guidelines followed a number of the suggestions embedded in
this recommendation:

Help build the capacity of community organizations to take the lead on climate action,
individually and in collaboration with other organizations and agencies. To do
this, DOE should help community organizations become role models and
demonstration sites (not just distribution sites) by providing them with both
material resources (e.g., funding, compact fluorescent light bulbs [CFLs]) and
symbolic resources (e.g., t-shirts, public acknowledgment). DOE could also
nurture collaborative relationships that result in innovative programs aimed at

FIGURE 13.7 Members of the Energy Action Network at the second quarterly meeting
of Program Year 1.

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 291

creating sustainable communities by simultaneously addressing environmental
and social issues. This could be accomplished by offering workshops and
expanding networking opportunities that help organizations: 1) understand
climate change as well as mitigation efforts and their co-benefits, and 2)
diversify their organizational partnerships and constituencies.

(The Field Museum 2009: 37)

The influence of the research—and of ECCo’s participation in the network’s devel-
opment—can be seen initially in the EAN goals and requirements (developed by the
EAN Planning Committee), in three ways. First—and overall—they aim to build the
capacity of the member organizations to become climate action leaders in their com-
munities, as opposed to just having them implement outside programs. For example,
we made the specific goals, such as increasing the number of weatherization applica-
tions, open-ended—in the end the DOE/CEDA provided no set required increase
across-the-board—to allow for broader interpretations of ‘success’ that would account
for a combination of increased social services, outreach, awareness, and effort. We are
also working with utility companies to provide member organizations with energy
assessments and facilitate free building retrofits to help them become community-
based demonstration sites for climate action. Second, they emphasize the importance
of member organizations working to increase the community’s awareness of and
engagement in energy conservation and climate change/climate action overall
(including all five CCAP strategies). Third, they require that organizations collaborate
with other organizations in their communities and emphasize the importance of the
network itself as a mechanism for peer learning.

The network has now been running for one year, and in that time ECCo has
assumed what one DOE staff person describes as a ‘visionary’ role, which basically
involves working with the Planning Committee to ensure that we provide member
organizations with materials, trainings, and networking opportunities that will help
them move beyond service delivery and energy subsidies—signing more residents up
for utility assistance and weatherization—to community engagement and organiza-
tional capacity-building. Additionally, we also focus on helping member organiza-
tions connect their energy service work with their communities’ assets and values
related to environment and place. This is important because many of the members
came into the EAN with very little understanding of environmental issues, let alone
climate change, and understood the network as an energy-focused program but did
not relate to the big picture of the program as part of the CCAP. Even with the
narrow focus on energy and social services, we try to help them broaden the work
that they do by talking to residents (‘clients’ as they refer to them) not only about
available subsidies and services, but also about home-grown, inexpensive or no-cost
conservation measures such as unplugging appliances when not in use or using a
clothesline instead of a dryer.

As we now enter the beginning of program year two, our challenge continues to
be striking a balance between the need to demonstrate immediate quantitative suc-
cesses—evaluated primarily by the increase in utility assistance and weatherization

292 Anthropologists and the real world

applications processed by each member—with ECCo’s main interest in building
the capacity of member organizations to incorporate energy efficiency and other cli-
mate action work into their core agendas for long-term change. In 2011, we will
continue addressing this issue, both with the EAN and a new pilot program being
launched by the DOE in South Chicago focused on developing models for ‘co-
delivering’ residential services for green and healthy homes and, ultimately, increasing the
number of residential retrofits. In the South Chicago project as in the EAN, we will
be responsible for helping the lead community organizations bring together a broad
range of stakeholders to link home energy issues to other organizational and community
concerns, such as those discussed in our report. This project will be our first opportunity
to build directly on report recommendations that are community-specific.

Conclusion: Broadening The Discussion On Climate Change

Ecological paradigms in cultural anthropology necessarily take into account both the
physical and social environments in which people live. This has been the case in our
research on engaging diverse Chicago communities in the Chicago Climate Action
Plan. While climate change frequently has a popular dimension informed by mass
media, political interests, and global opportunities and markets, our research looks at
climate action as a culturally relevant and historically situated local concern. Rather
than a one size fits all program for carbon reduction, or a single approach to research
methods, our approach has been to accentuate local diversity, the resilience of
local communities to adapt to changing environmental circumstances and scarce
resources, and new opportunities for collaboration between policy makers and local
stakeholders.

Our research also takes the diverse urban environment as a distinct challenge for
policy development and suggests ways to build upon an existing history of human-
environment interactions that are already present in communities and are meaningful
to residents (although people may not always understand them as such). We’ve
documented in our research how two distinct communities in Chicago have very
different histories, social demographics, and relationships with the natural environ-
ment. South Chicago was dominated by the steel industry and the rapid social and
environmental adjustments required by its collapse. The history of NKO, on the
other hand, has been dominated by shifting City government interventions to meet
competing housing needs: segregating African Americans and then poverty on
one hand, and satisfying the demand for middle-class residences near downtown on
the other. While these particular experiences have shaped everyday attitudes about
the environment and the purposefulness of government action, they also encompass
common concerns (e.g., about food security, changing weather patterns, crime,
housing, and jobs), and it has been the point of our research to draw out some of
these important commonalities and differences.

The City faces a number of important challenges in making climate action relevant
to local residents. So far, policy makers have been enthusiastic about new ideas and
approaches suggested by our research. Where other approaches have focused on the

A case study of diverse Chicago neighborhoods 293

most cost effective means of carbon reduction, or global political frameworks and
challenges, our research suggests a myriad of other avenues for engaging communities
in climate action. These include:

� building on culturally relevant local practices;
� addressing local barriers—many of which are embedded in complicated histories

related to social exclusion; and,
� connecting climate action to multiple co-benefits, including but beyond cost

savings.

These approaches should help the City attain community buy-in on larger policy
related goals as well as identify and develop more creative strategies for facilitating
widespread engagement across diverse communities. This can be done in part by figuring
out how to implement climate action initiatives that begin in the community and ‘scale
out’—as suggested by the community organizer in the opening quote to our chapter.

In sum, our research suggests that climate action can help advance community
agendas addressing everyday concerns. It also brings to light some of the ways in
which the diverse social and institutional focus of anthropology can assist in illumi-
nating the human-environment interactions in urban environments and provides
opportunities for developing broader participatory models for democratic processes
and policy development in climate action.

Notes

1 ECCo’s asset-based approach builds on the asset-based community development model
pioneered by Kretzmann and McKnight (1993) by adding a focus on cultural values and
beliefs and on human-environmental interactions.

2 Some of our studies also include social network analysis, which adds a quantitative
component. We have been collaborating with Northwestern University’s Science of
Networks in Communities (SONIC) Research Lab to draw on ethnographic research
findings to design and administer computer-based social network surveys. The surveys,
which are given to community leaders and residents—many of whom participate first in
the ethnographic research—aim to better understand and map communication and
knowledge networks related to environmental issues. Findings result in recommenda-
tions regarding how the City and its partners can disseminate information through
existing networks and work through trusted organizations to mobilize the community
around climate action—even when those organizations have not traditionally focused on
environmental issues. The first full-scale SONIC research project was conducted in
North Kenwood/Oakland and the data are currently being analyzed; thus the results are
not discussed in this chapter.

3 This finding is in line with other research on public perceptions of climate change. See
Kempton (1997).

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